Web Game Lets Players Give Out Virtual Condoms

Jan. 28, 2010 — -- A new online game that allows users to give virtual characters contraceptives and adopt children is raising eyebrows in the U.K., but the game's creator tells ABCNews.com the critics either haven't played the game or are misinformed.

"There's a lot of misinformation out there about who our target audience is," said Christopher Brown, head of London-based Blighty Arts, the creator of the game. "This isn't a game for children and there's nothing to indicate that kids are playing this game."

Brown said the average age of players who register to play the online game is 19 years old, and that most of the players on the site are older than 30.

My Minx has rattled British media and at least one parents group by allowing players to clothe their virtual women in lingerie and other revealing outfits and to purchase "trophy orphans" that are named after children already adopted by celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

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 adoption agency on the site also has a David Banda, four, and Mercy, five, of Malawi, apparently modeled after Madonna's adopted children.

There is also a Mongolian girl called Jamiyan, which appears to be based on actor Ewan McGregor's Mongolian 4-year-old daughter.

Players also can adopt children from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Once adoption fees have been paid, players can outfit their new children in stylish designer wear and then try to sell image rights for them to celebrity magazines.

The game also allows players take their women binge drinking and clubbing as they try to attract men. For the women that succeed in one night stands, there are virtual condoms and morning after pills.

"We created this as a Web experience for fashion-savvy teens and adults," said Brown, adding that the site has attracted 30,000 members since being launched last September.

But one British tabloid, the Daily Mail, quoted Andy Hibberd, a spokesman for a U.K. parents' rights group, Parentkind, as saying: "There are more than enough pressures on children to grow up already. We don't need any more. ... Their parents will not have any idea that they are playing this game and the children will fail to appreciate its irony."