Videogames' 'report card'

American kids need to be put on a media diet, said David Walsh as he unveiled his watchdog group's 11th-annual "Video Game Report Card" in Washington today, the Associated Press reports. The Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family "urged parents to take a stronger role in safeguarding their children from games that glamorize sex and violence. Game industry news site Gamasutra reports that "the two major topics highlighted in the report concerned 'parental ignorance' and the 'public health crisis' of obesity and gaming addiction.... While the Institute's surveys found that two thirds of parents said they had house rules over game play, only one third of surveyed children reported the same." The institute says this year's report card "focuses less on the flaws of a complex [$13 billion] industry and more on what all of us can do about the real risks posed by some types of video games [ignorance, obesity, game addiction]" and points out that nearly half of "heavy gamers" are 6-17 years old, even though gamers' average age is in the high 20s. Meanwhile, the video game industry won another victory in its battle against state laws "designed to criminalize sales and rentals of violent or sexually explicit games to minors," CNET reports. A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court decision declaring unconstitutional an Illinois law restricting sales of violent videogames to minors. The law's wording was apparently too broad. Similar laws in Louisiana, Minnesota, Michigan and California, and others face pending challenges.