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Video games have officially been recognised as a form of art by the National Endowment for the Arts, a branch of the US Federal Government.
NEA has recently changed its guidelines for new grant applications and now recognises video games as a legitimate artistic medium, along side other digital media such as television and radio.
This has now been expanded to include “all available media platforms such as the Internet, interactive and mobile technologies, digital games, arts content delivered via satellite”.
Grants of up to $200k are offered by NEA to artists creating works outside the commercial world. This will allow not only traditional artists but small developers to fund artistic work.
This might only be a legal victory for anyone who believes in the artistic merits of games but it’s a step in the right direction.
After Roger Ebert’s spiel last year in which he argued “no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form,” a change in the legal perception of games is still an important one for the cause.
