The National Endowment for the Arts provides funding in the form of grants for a wide variety of creative endeavors. Now, the NEA has replaced its "Arts in Radio and Television" category of grants to a much more expansive "Arts in Media" one which includes digital games. Just so we're clear, the United States government will now be funding the development of videogames.
This is the most awesome thing I've heard all week. Independent developers are going to get money to make games. Videogames will get a little bit more legitimacy. And people who would like to see the NEA dissolved and stripped of all government resources now have a new thing to call wasteful. Everybody is going to come out a winner!
FY 2012 ARTS IN MEDIA GUIDELINES [NEA via icrontic -- thanks, SBC Slam]
Conrad Zimmerman is Destructoid's News Editor and home to the busiest mustache in the gaming press. An amateur historian and pop culture fanatic, Conrad possesses a nearly limitless wealth of videogame factoids and a passion for the power of games to teach, inspire and entertain. He enjoys reading, writing and turning things which should be fun into work.
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Contest:
8:20 AM on 05.06.2011 | 
GET THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO MAKE VIDEO GAMES!!!
@Isay Isay -- You get one hundred points for Matthew Lesko.
Anywho, glad they are funding games now. Hope to see some interesting stuff come out of these grants.
Not sure how I feel about subsidies going to a for-profit industry though. Worse things have happened though I suppose.
Horizontal stripes are art dammit!
I'm sure that there are guidelines, it's not like Activision is going to be getting any grants anytime soon, so I don't think that will be a problem. Also, I agree that Roger Ebert can suck it. Though his opinion will probably never change, at least there ARE people in high places out there who see that video games can truly be art. For that, I am happy that this industry has made it this far, and can't wait for the future.
@Max Scoville - The New York School painters made America the epicenter of art. Rothko is just as important as Caravaggio or Jacques Louis David.
So yeah, great idea in principle, but I'm a little unsure how it'll play out.
Typically I begrudge this sort of thing, but there's no denying the legitimacy that this sort of thing will lend to our favorite hobby.
Personally, I still take issue with the whole "games as art" debate, but this here's good for everyone.
I wasn't implying that the NEA completely and utterly determines what art is... I'm just saying that I don't don't think a bureaucracy is the best place to determine what's more valuable artistically to society. One person's David could be another person's mound of wet pubes.