The National Institute on Media and Family said in this year’s MediaWise Video Game Rating Cards that violence in video games has actually been scaled back a little and is not as worrisome as last year. This is attributed, NIMF says, to the industry caring more and asking teachers for advice.

The 2008 edition of NIMF’s annual report saw the gaming industry get nearly perfect grades. Console manufacturers and the ESRB’s system and awareness raising projects got an A, while retailers got a B+ for ratings enforcement.

NIMF praised the ESRB, saying that the board has “stepped up its efforts to educate parents about the importance of video game ratings.” The organization is credited with organizing the distribution of buying guides to 26,000 PTA chapters, retailer training pamphlets, in-store PSAs and recent ratings summaries on their own website.

Retailers were also approved of by NIMF, for progress in keeping inappropriate games from reaching kids. They cited a survey according to which GameStop, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy sold games with ‘questionable’ content to minors less than 20% of the time.

Game makers too drew positive appraisal from the institute, for making family-oriented titles more prominent, in spite of M-rated games still being the most popular.

"Video game producers continue to release ultra-violent and mature-content titles, but increasingly, the big industry players are targeting parents and families as an important market for their products and services," reads the report. "Despite the controversial M-rated games (for Mature) still receiving much of the hype and the headlines, the vast majority of game titles have family-friendly ratings."

NIMF was also careful, however, to point out the challenges which still face the industry, such as MMOs where predators run unchecked and the impact of certain new technology on children’s development.

The only underperforming category in the report is that of parents; they received the grade of “incomplete.”