National Institute on Media and the Family shutting down

One of the long-standing organizations fighting the good fight for righteousness, decency and protecting our children from those evil videogames has fallen. The National Institute for Media and the Family (NIMF), whose annual report card has been pushing the games industry towards stricter self-regulation for over a decade, has announced that they will be closing their doors on December 31st, 2009. A lack of donations due to the current economy was cited as the reason.

There will be no 2009 MediaWise Video Game Report Card. Kind of a pity, really, as the group was finally starting to warm up to the games industry. The ESRB was rated very highly, getting an “A” in each of its two categories. Even retailers were getting a thumbs up for bringing incidents of children successfully purchasing M-Rated titles down to 20%. And it seemed like the group was finally digging that hip, new theory that maybe parents ought to pay a little friggin’ attention to what their little monsters are up to instead of blaming other people for their socially stunted, violent and/or undereducated children.

So, I’ll put it on the Destructoid readership. If you were going to assign letter grades to the industry this year, what would your categories be and how would they score? Don’t limit yourselves to questions of protecting children, either. Much as I may regret it, I’m interested to hear how you think this year has gone.