My Minx Enraging Parents, Lampooning Celebrity Culture

My Minx, a recently released web game, allows young girls to create celebutante-esque avatars, hit the clubs, have a virtual shagfest and take a morning-after-pill the next day. However, the game is drawing attention for allowing virtual adoptions from Haiti.

Here’s how the game imitates life (and adds in a healthy dash of stereotype) to an uncomfortable degree:

The adoption clinic in a virtual Style City features girls called Pax and Maddox and a boy named Zahara after Angelina Jolie’s children.

The virtual youngsters have the same nationalities as Jolie’s with Maddox, three, said to be Cambodian and a fan of eating cockroaches.

Similarly up for grabs are Vietnamese noodle-lover Pax, five, and Ethiopian lad Zahara, four, whose favourite food is said to be guinea pig.

The adoption centre also boasts a David Banda, four, and Mercy, five, of Malawi, clearly modelled on Madonna’s adopted children.

And there is a Mongolian girl called Jamiyan – based on actor Ewan McGregor’s Mongolian four-year-old daughter – who is said to enjoy eating rats.

In even worse taste, gamers can adopt children from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

After a player adopts the virtual kids, they can be dressed in stylish clothes. The game creators also allow for players to sell photos of their adopted children to tabloids to raise money. Not surprisingly, My Minx was created by the same company that had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it internet hit with Miss Bimbo, a game that outraged parents by endorsing the use of diet pills and glorification of marrying rich men.

Honestly, the game is deplorable, but it isn’t worth the outrage. As I wrote when Miss Bimbo made headlines last year, these types of cheaply produced web games are flashes in the pan. We clearly see that My Minx is the studio’s attempt to stay relevant in the market. And, considering the crappy interface and blatant product tie-ins, My Minx will soon be yet another distant internet memory.

Official Site [My Minx]
New internet game encourages children to make their characters wear sexy lingerie and buy ‘trophy’ orphans [Daily Mail]
Official Site [Miss Bimbo]
Gaming in the Media: Worried About Miss Bimbo? Don’t Be. [Cerise]