Games Now Eligible for NEA Funding | Hacker News Reader

Games Now Eligible for NEA Funding

escapistmagazine.com

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?"

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.

I've never heard of either the quote or the underlying case (might not be an American case?), but code is speech. A law directly solely at the code or content of a game would be struck down by the (US) courts. And indeed, nearly every (US state or federal) law so far directed at regulating the content of games has been struck down by the courts.

The execution of a program is "action" and can be regulated if it runs afoul of laws on action, i.e., in the sense that yelling "fire" in a crowded theater can be outlawed. It would be an extremely narrow set of circumstances in which such a law on video games would be allowed. The (US) states have tried to regulate video games many times, and have failed just as many times.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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