NIMF To Close Its Doors

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."

Comments

Sad news

[Kagura]

A lot of us NIMFomaniacs will miss this organization. It always worked to satisfy us in creative ways. :*(

Fortunately

[Dunbal]

This is one good thing that comes with economic hardship. Idiotic, wasteful, inefficient ideas like this get swept away in the tide while people start focusing on more important issues, like keeping a roof over their heads or feeding and clothing themselves and their children.

      We need many more years of economic hardship to get rid of all the free-loaders who make a living from telling other people how guilty they should be feeling, or making nonsensical claims with no evidence to back them up.

Re:Fortunately

[Machtyn]

While I disagree that this is an idiotic and wasteful idea, I will agree that it is inefficient. It is not idiotic, because it gives us a baseline of what content to expect. It's not wasteful, because some of us use these ratings. It is inefficient because it makes the more hardcore games seem more appealing and some parents just don't care and will let their kids play anything. And when they find out their little precious boy is severely depressed, grades have dropped, and has no social life they are *shocked*!

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:Fortunately

[91degrees]

There's nothing inherently wasteful about game age ratings.

There's nothing wrong with parents wanting to prevent their children playing certain types of games. If you think they're harmless, that's fine. Let your own kids play them. A lot of parents do care, and do like some sort of age rating. The NIMF encouraged this in a generally fairly reasonable manner.

Re:Fortunately

[hairyfeet]

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.

violence is go

[czarangelus]

We lost the war on exploding craniums, explicit torture, and visible viscera - but as long as penises, vaginas, and boobs are still kept off limits in a game by adults for adults, we can consider this a victory.

That is terrible!

[gavron]

These people protected our MORALS and our VALUES and our CHILDREN.

*sniffle*

You are thinking of the children, aren't you? Michael Jackson did.

E

Economic climate... or lack of concern?

[Somebody Is Using My]

Is NIMF's inability to procure funding just a sign of the harsh economic climate or is it an indication that people are becoming less concerned with the issues it promoted. 15 years ago, computer and video games were making the transition from "toys for children" (Sonic, Mario) to more graphic and mature titles (Doom, Duke Nukem). Parents and (older) adults saw these gore-soaked, stripper-filled games and wondered what effect this would have on the younger generation. Worriedly, they funded -through contributions or taxes- groups like NIMF.

More than a decade later, a generation has come of age having played these games for most of their lives and -surprise, surprise!- they are not any more messed up than any previous generation. Video games, it seems, are not the corrupting influence people thought they might be. Not only are the supporters of yesteryear lest likely to fund these groups, but the same generation NIMF etal were meant to protect -now grown up themselves- are equally unlikely to open their pocketbooks to them.

Claiming it is merely the "economic climate" that is shutting down these groups is buying into their argument that there is a necessity for the services they provide but that harsher realities requires our finances to be redirected to more essential things. People generally consider "protecting the children" to be a priority. That NIMF is closing is just as likely an indication that we recognize they are not necessary to keep the kids safe because there never was any real danger to them in the first place.

Re:Economic climate... or lack of concern?

[Tim C]

Either that, or the Video Game Bogeyman has been replaced by the Terrorism Bogeyman, and people are simply concentrating on that instead.

Already said, but true...

[painehope]

Whenever someone brought up "think of the children" to me, I always asked them "What, are you a pedophile?".

Has resulted in the occasional fist-fight and me having to bail before the cops arrived, but I think it's worth it just for laughs (and knocking some sense into an idiot - you can't teach a moron, but repeated beatings at least discourage them). If you need proof, look at the protesters at Marilyn Manson concerts. When they started out, there were hundreds of fundamentalists. The last time I saw him play, it was one teenage girl who looked so pathetic and discouraged that I offered to buy her a ticket.

Now if that guy who writes all those fundamentalist pamphlets suggesting that rock'n'roll or whatever leads to demonic possession or what-have-you dies, and the MPAA/RIAA goes away, they legalize drugs, and the government gets to deport illegal immigrants (like it was for a while and should be - I never minded waiting the extra 8 hours or so when getting released from jail while ICE came in and hauled off every one of those fucks away, 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) my native country will be a better place (and before you start in with bits about American Indians, I'm part Cherokee as well as a White, so shut it).

Ah, if wishes were fishes...

Re:Already said, but true...

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Already said, but true...

[Tim C]

my native country will be a better place (and before you start in with bits about American Indians, I'm part Cherokee as well as a White, so shut it)

Irrelevant. If you were born there, you're a native. Doesn't matter if your parents invaded the country and stole the land your house is built on, you'd still be a native.

Without the Cherokee blood (and perhaps even with it) you can't claim to be a Native American, but that is not the same thing as claiming to be a native American (= native of America).

Re:Already said, but true...

[painehope]

Point taken. But I like to shoot down the PC crowd before they get one in.

And, yes, by law I meet the standards and I can claim the reparations/benefits by virtue of being part Cherokee. I meet the qualifications more than a lot of people who claim to be so. That I choose not to do so is a personal decision. I'm predominantly White, my mother is a German citizen, and I feel that it would be hypocritical of me to do so.

Why? Because we have enough parasites in this country, playing up on events that happened a century or more ago. Or who aren't even citizens, yet feel they deserve the rights of citizens simply because they fucked up their own country or community.

Why would I participate in that sort of behavior if I find it reprehensible in others? I don't need anything the government has to offer. Not that they give White people anything anyways - the one time I claimed unemployment, I received 300 USD twice a month (despite having a previous salary much higher than the average citizen - this amount was not even the maximum allotment) and it was terminated after 6 months (despite full compliance with job search regulations). This wasn't even enough to pay my house note, and I lived in a working class neighborhood. They wouldn't even give me food stamps. The only way my ex-wife and I made it through that period was by taking under-the-table work and some illegal activities on my part. Meanwhile, I could look right next door at the black "family" (almost all females) with about twenty kids, who were all unemployed, yet were wearing expensive clothing and driving vehicles that cost at least as much as my own truck. And they weren't having to sell dope or risk their lives by collecting debts for loan sharks whose clientele were mostly armed and paranoid. Makes one a bit bitter.

Full-blooded Native Americans, I can understand. They're by-and-large dirt poor, got royally screwed through no fault of their own (it was their land and they fought to defend it, or were decimated by plagues, so I have sympathy there), and deserve a chance to go to college and better their selves. Descendants of Black slaves (there were plenty of White slaves in America as well...they just called them "indentured servants" who had been "transported")? Sorry, but you were sold by your own people when slavery was acceptable (read the history of slavery in Africa). You've had many opportunities and grants to fix your problems, but you'd rather sell crack and shoot each other (or prey on White civilians). Mestizos? You fought wars and lost, you still have your countries - fix them.

And just because you're born somewhere does not make you a citizen. Ever heard the term "anchor babies"? I find it ridiculous that a Mestizo woman can give birth to a child in this country and it's a citizen. I'm a citizen because my father is an American citizen who married a German woman he met while stationed in Europe (if they divorced, she would not be a citizen). If my mother had somehow illegally entered, say, Australia and given birth, I would not be an Australian citizen. I would be deported along with her.

So you might be right about one thing (the actuality of citizenship of American citizens), but you're completely full of shit about Native American laws and being born somewhere making you a de facto citizen.

Now, now. Be nice

[Telecommando]

I'm sure there will be quite a few disparaging remarks about the NIMF in this thread. And while some comments may be deserved, we should all just step back and take the time to say something good.

I'll start.

  They're gone.

Good.

And so we say farewell...

[Chris Mattern]

...to the Rats of NIMF.