The National Institute on Media and the Family took a seemingly unprecedented step Thursday by praising retailers and the Entertainment Software Rating Board in their improved enforcement of not selling M-rated games to kids.” Another watch/attack group, Common Sense Media, released a similar statement.

“For eight years, retailers have steadily improved their enforcement efforts to keep inappropriate video games out of the hands of kids,” NIMF founder David Walsh said in a press release.

This was a stark contrast to the position of the Parents Television Council, as well as Walsh’s past. This is the man who once tried to label games “killographic,” likening them to murder porn, and accused the game “Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse” of promoting cannibalism.

I called Walsh to see why he’d changed his tune, what he thought of “Grand Theft Auto IV” and what he thinks of the proposed law that would fine retailers $5,000 for selling M-rated games to minors.

Walsh, 62, said he hasn’t played “Grand Theft Auto IV” and “couldn’t play a video game to save his life,” but doesn’t oppose adults’ rights to play whatever games they like. He has a staffer playing the game and so far feels content with the ESRB rating, so much so that he doesn’t feel the need to issue one of his infamous report cards accusing the ESRB of going to soft on games. Walsh decided to reach out to the ESRB and acknowledge its efforts in the wake of the “GTA IV” mega-release.

“We pretty much new from all ‘Grand Theft Autos’ that preceded it that it would pretty much be pushing the limits. (ESRB president) Pat Vance and I talked and she assured me the raters did a really good job,” Walsh said. “I trust Pat. She’s an honest person trying to do as good a job as she can managing the ESRB. When she assured me no content in that game would merit an AO rating like the Hot Coffee incident a couple years ago, I trusted her. I think the last nine days have shown that was a good decision.”

Walsh said the NIMF has always opposed legislation and would rather prod the ESRB, retailers and parents into doing a better job keeping adult-themed games out of kids’ hands. He equates such a law to censorship.

“We don’t want to go down any path that starts to go down toward censorship,” Walsh said. “I really believe First Amendment rights are very important. I don’t want the solution to the problem to be bigger than the problem itself.”

He wouldn’t comment on the PTC’s statements or other alarmist making false accusations about “GTA IV’s” content, but put in a dig by saying “if we don’t have credibility we don’t have anything.”

“About an hour a go I finished writing an op ed about two extremes: crusaders and defenders,” Walsh said. “What we really need to do is kind of get to the middle. There are some folks who make claims they can’t support in terms of research and the impact of video games, and on the other hand people say there’s nothing bad about these games, which is fine. What we’re trying to do is be a source people can’t trust. You don’t garner much trust without credibility.”