NIMF To Close Its Doors 68
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the but-where-will-nicodemus-go dept.
from the but-where-will-nicodemus-go dept.
eldavojohn writes "One of the driving forces behind the ESRB toughening its ratings is closing its doors on December 31st, 2009. The National Institute on Media and the Family was funded by Fairview Health Services, and simply could no longer justify the yearly $750,000 price tag given today's economic climate. NIMF's reign of nagging has been pretty consistent since 1996, and was often indirectly featured on Slashdot. Don't worry, president and founder Dr. David Walsh promises to keep writing and giving speeches ... and imploring us all to think of the children."
Re:Already said, but true... (Score:2, Interesting)
before the PC crowd managed to tamp that down as "civil rights violations"; this is one of the few times I've seen a government agency actually doing it's job effectively and properly
That's the problem with the two party system in America. It's the Democrats' job to be pansies for the sake of being pansies. It's the Republicans' job to be pansies in order to prove that the government can't do anything right.
This is also why there's psychos roaming the streets: Democrats said insitutionalizing the insane is inhumane (won't anyone think of the murderers?!), Republicans said institutionalizing the insane is too expensive (won't anyone think of my wallet?!), and so all the institutions were closed.
Pansies, the whole fucking lot of them.
Re:Fortunately (Score:2, Interesting)
To my mind; the fundamental problem with groups like NIMF isn't that they View With Alarm, that is a enshrined tradition of priests, politicians and the power-hungry since the dawn of human history. The real problem is human arrogance and an inability to keep from meddling. If can't we can't accurately imagine the future, how can we hope to shape it as we desire? The law of unintended consequences still reigns supreme
Re:Fortunately (Score:3, Interesting)
Be it known, I am not saying that playing violent games will lead to this, but it can be a side effect of playing violent games too much.
Re:Economic climate... or lack of concern? (Score:4, Interesting)
Either that, or the Video Game Bogeyman has been replaced by the Terrorism Bogeyman, and people are simply concentrating on that instead.
Re:Fortunately (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the problem isn't the games, it is parents that use the games as a babysitter and don't actually interact with their kids. My boys have always been allowed to play any game they want, but I actually interacted with them. I showed them how things like DOOM Wads (remember those) could be manipulated to alter what is rendered on the screen, showed them how 3D graphics are drawn, explained and showed them scripts work and how voice actors gave voices to the monsters, etc.
Of course it ended up with a rather funny side effect, they way my oldest 'curses" at the screen-"Who designed these levels? Look at all the tearing! I can see seams everywhere! What do they think this is, 1995? And what lamer wrote the AI for this thing? Can't they see I am standing not 30 feet away with a big rocket launcher? DUCK YOU DUMMY!"
I don't worry about my boys because there is no chance of them mistaking fantasy for reality. It has also made them shy away from the games that are all about violence and bad language, as they have seen how often that is used as a crutch to sell an otherwise piss poor game. The problem is too many parents just dumping little Billy in front of a screen and not caring WHAT little Billy is doing, as long as he ain't bugging them. How sad that some of my boy's friends have never even had a story read to them, just dropped in front of a game or DVD player and left. My mom read Asimov to the boys just as she did to me all those years ago, and the difference between them and their friends is just unreal. My boys think and question everything, and after playing a game it is like listening to Siskel and Ebert do game reviews.
To paraphrase an old movie "You need a license to drive a car, hell you even need a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any asshole be a parent". Sad but true. I have NO problems with ratings, except when companies like MSFT and Sony use them to ensure adults can't have certain games. But sadly too many times these things are just used as yet another excuse on why they don't need to interact with their kids. Like all 10,12,14 year olds have the same maturity level. It is just sad.