This is an image of a happy family; a father and his two adorable children bonding over a video game. It's a stock photo, of course. Their excitement is fake, their game controllers disconnected. It's cheap theater, but I have to believe that somewhere in the country a genuine version of this scene is playing out — I…

Another year, another Nintendo handheld packed with pornography under the Christmas tree. Last year it was a five-year-old and a used 3DS. This year it's an eight-year-old and a supposedly brand-new 3DS.

Maybe Link doesn't need to be a young boy.

Commenter Normalaatsra has never told his parents or brother his darkest secret: he loves Tekken. For many people this would not be a problem. So why is Normalaatsra hiding the disc from his family? Find out in today's very special episode of Speak Up on Kotaku.

The ESRB has a fairly detailed and complex system that determines what games are marked kid-safe and which are considered appropriate for adults' eyes only. All major publishers participate in the voluntary rating system, and it is instrumental in physical, retail game sales in stores like GameStop and Walmart.

The menacing black box lurking within your entertainment center just got a bit less menacing, as Netflix adds the bright and colorful "Just for Kids" to the PlayStation 3 version of its streaming video app.

Attention parents of the world: GameStop is not a babysitting service. That fact was made abundantly clear to 21-year-old Kethia Dagrin-Francois of Florida when police arrested her for child neglect after her five-year-old son was found wandering the parking lot of Boyton Mall.

Why won't my father game with me?

Allegedly enraged over her five-year-old son's playing of a video game he received as a Christmas gift, Jutrina Tillman of Phoenix, Arizona, dragged the young boy into his bedroom and began to strangle him before threatening to kill him and his 13-year-old sister with a butcher knife.

It's a delicate subject but one that will inevitably come up for any parent, and you've got to be prepared. In this age of bright and shiny high definition games, how can we force our children to play through the games we grew up on first? This is commenter Balmung's question in today's Speak Up on Kotaku. Now eat…

In December of 2010, 18-year-old Alex Trowell of Idaho was on his way to visit his 12-year-old World of Warcraft girlfriend in New Mexico. Alerted by the girl's mother, New Mexico police called Trowell and had him turn his car around.

"It's too real and too much like the Columbine tragedy," says one concerned parent regarding a video shot at Rocklin High School in California depicting students pretending to play Call of Duty with imaginary weapons. Oh come on, really?

Do video games make girls healthier and happier? A brand-new study out of Brigham Young University's School of Family Life suggests they do, as long as parents are willing to play along.

Commenter Jopeter explores the joys of trying to balance gaming with a newborn baby in today's installment of Speak-Up on Kotaku.

Just because you're shooting other people online doesn't mean you're going to shoot them offline. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M International University, playing violent video games could promote civic engagement in children.

A father in the Canadian province of British Columbia contacted the police on Monday after receiving sexually explicit messages from a man his 12-year-old daughter had met playing while Resident Evil 5.

Using the television or video game console to babysit your child might be more detrimental than you think. The results of a two decade study show that actively participating in your child's life could save them from severe personality disorder.

A Gallup survey conducted over the weekend finds that while Americans believe the greatest responsibility for keeping violent games out of children's hands lies with parents, they aren't opposed to the government stepping in to help.

In last week's ripped from the headlines episode of Law and Order: SVU, a couple gets so wrapped up in a ridiculously fake video game that they forget who their daughter is. "This is the kingdom of Galagar!"