

Games Now Eligible for NEA Funding - DanielRibeiro
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109835-Games-Now-Legally-Considered-an-Art-Form-in-the-USA

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blahedo
I wonder if a lawyer can comment on the implications for the interaction
between games and First Amendment case law. Specifically, I'm pretty sure I
remember (vaguely) some suit coming down to a game publisher saying "this is
speech, you can't censor us" and the judge deciding "it's just a program, yes
we can."[0] It strikes me that if the NEA is treating games as a form of art
and in the same category as (say) a film or a radio show, it's harder to make
the claim that it shouldn't have the same legal protections. (But IANAL, which
is why I'm hoping someone else will comment. :)

[0] Prompting the Penny Arcade quote, "If games can't communicate ideas, then
why does he care who buys them?"

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teamonkey
I can't remember any successful attempts at censorship in the US, but not for
lack of trying. I think all the claims were overturned for the reasons you
state.

The only effective way of censoring a game in the US is for Walmart to
threaten not to sell it.

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Batsu
_What matters is that the NEA now officially considers video games worthy of
artistic merit, which is pretty damn cool._

Since the first I heard of this (apparent) debate, I wondered why artwork,
music, and story were all works of art separately, but the three of them
together with a form of interaction by a person was not. The consideration of
video games as a form of art doesn't seem like a judgement to me, it seems
more like a rationalization.

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sp332
If the game is just a delivery mechanism for "art" (like the music or visual
design or whatever), then the game itself is not art any more than an art
gallery is art. I've always held that games can be art _as games_ and not just
as packages of visuals and audio. Because the act of playing the game can be
affective. Like when you had to burn the companion cube in Portal. That kind
of experience can't be conveyed in other forms of art.

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roryokane
Ideas for games that could be considered as for the public good:

    
    
      • educational games
          • for public schools
          • to help train government employees at their job
      • games set up in kiosks in parks or playgrounds
      • works that are part game and part interactive art, to be
        put on an otherwise boring street
          • such as buttons along the sidewalk that need to be
            stepped on in a certain rhythm to move a ball on a
            screen across hilly terrain
    

What else can you think of?

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dkersten
Touchscreen walls with collaborative multiplayer (both in the sense that
multiple people could be using the touchscreen wall and that it could be
networked to other touchscreen walls) drawing programs. Not exactly a game,
but it is something I've considered building in the past.

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vibhavs
Here NEA refers to National Endowment for the Arts. Not, as I thought, the
venture capital firm...

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alexanderswang
Interaction makes video game the most successful entertainment ever. Of course
video game is a kind of arts. Different from other art forms, we can see
wisdom of not only the developers but also the players.

