Video Game Report Card organization to shut down

Posted Nov 20th 2009 12:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, Culture

One of the most critical voices of the game industry, particularly of how games handle violent content, is closing its doors. The non-profit National Institute On Media and The Family has announced that due to lack of funding it will officially shut down by the end of the year.

Formed in the mid-1990s by psychologist Dr. David Walsh, the group was best known for its Video Game Report Card which it issued every year with backing from US lawmakers. The report card always gave failing grades to games which had lots of violent or adult content, even games that had gotten rave reviews from game critics. According to WCOO's web site, Dr Walsh stated that despite his group's shut down he feels that it had a positive effect on keeping certain games away from children. He states, "The fact that the retailers will no longer sell video games, adult video games to little kids, is something we take a great deal of pride in."

Tags: dr-david-walsh, national-institute-on-media-and-the-family

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

""The fact that the retailers will no longer sell video games, adult video games to little kids, is something we take a great deal of pride in.""

Yep, take pride in doing something that the kids parent should of been doing in the first place, whatever makes you feel useful I suppose.Posted at 12:19PM on Nov 20th 2009 by devilsei

Man, USA is so far behind on this stuff. The BBFC (the UK equivalent of the MPAA) has been rating games in the UK for close to two decades now (not all games, but certainly those that warrant an '18' rating and a large percentage of the '15' rated games), and those age restrictions are treated the same as for film.

There has been so much completely needless controversy in the States. With a proper restrictions system, kids will only play violent games if their parents let them, which puts games on even ground with any other age-restricted content, like films.Posted at 1:05PM on Nov 20th 2009 by asfm

True, but parents in the US, for the most part, are lazy and prefer to make others raise their children.

Every shooting that's been "linked" to gaming could of been prevented rather easily in the first place. Its just a matter of white-trash-redneck p.o.s parents leaving guns out in the open and in easy reach, and having mentally unstable kids being unchecked.Posted at 11:42PM on Nov 20th 2009 by devilsei

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