The US government - through the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities - decided in 2008 that video games were a medium worth supporting.
Unfortunately a new budget plan currently brewing in Congress is set to eliminate arts funding.
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities are two government agencies that were founded in
1965. Though these departments may seem like conjoined twins they actually have different missions. The National Endowment for the Arts,
often shortened to NEA, offers support and funding for projects that exhibit artistic excellence.
Since its founding the NEA has given over five billion dollars worth of grants to art exhibitions,
theatrical productions, and art programs across the country. The National Endowment for the Humanities
abbreviated as NEH supports research,
education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. Its purpose is to support the study of American history and culture and bring
that knowledge to the public. These, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
which runs PBS and NPR are generally what people mean when they talk about arts funding. In the last
decade, an interesting new thing started happening at the NEA and NEH; they started providing grants to video game projects. Now
I don't mean video games in general - the federal government isn't investing in the next Uncharted or anything -
but both agencies have supported
interactive media that deals with topics in their area. For example the National Endowment for the Arts has funded free
performances of video game music as a way to get kids interested in the symphony. It also gave $15, 000 to the annual
UCLA Game Art Festival which exhibits video games as art installations.
It's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of government funding, but that money allowed the
UCLA to provide stipends for visiting artists, print materials, and build an exhibition space that was more like an art gallery.
And that's really important because while most game exhibitions look like trade shows
removing corporate sponsorship helps the viewer to see the games as art and not just products. Then there's the National Endowment for the Humanities,
which has cut checks for games that deal with everything from
the history of religion, to the revolutionary war, to a virtual exploration of the Giza pyramids.
It's given especially heavy backing to Walden, a first-person survival game that explores the ideas of spirituality,
seclusion, and self-reliance in Henry David Thoreau's text. It also backed The Pox Hunter a game about a
Philadelphia doctor battling the 1802
smallpox epidemic. The Pox Hunter has special relevance in today's world since along with the disease the player has to battle public fears about
vaccinations which was a new and unfamiliar procedure in 1802. And can we just take a moment to recognize how
amazing all of this is many of us of a certain age still remember how in the 90s game developers had to go before Congress
to argue for games having the same free speech rights and protections as movies and books.
Still more of us will remember a mere six years ago when the Supreme Court decided that games were protected by the First Amendment, and
now here's the US government deciding that the medium has a positive enough cultural impact to warrant financial support.
I mean that is huge! That is a lot of huge victories for this medium in a pretty short span of time.
But government funding for the arts has never exactly been secure. Since the
1960s budget hawks have tried to reduce or eliminate
those programs and we are in the middle of another one of these pushes right now. The 2018
Congressional Budget currently calls for eliminating the NEA the NEH and PBS plus the Institute for Museum and Library
Services. All in the interests of cutting costs. Now we try not to delve into politics too often with this show
but these cuts have a direct impact on games, so we really can't not say something.
Eliminating the NEA and the NEH as well as the corporation for public broadcasting is penny wise and
pound foolish. These programs represent a tiny sliver of our government spending and
contribute heavily to our sense of cultural self as a country. Let's look at some numbers: last year the NEA and the NEH
each received $148 million dollars from the federal budget and public broadcasting received
$445 million and I know that sounds like a lot
but that money makes up only 0.02%
0.02% of the US government's $3.9 trillion dollar budget. Put another way, if the US budget was
$50,000, arts funding would account for only $10 and that comparatively meager sum does some tremendous good.
NEH funding is why we have Pulitzer Prize winning novels like 'The Color Purple' and beloved documentaries like Ken Burns's 'The Civil War'[.
The agency also gives grants to educational programs and libraries.
They're currently trying to collect and preserve an archive of early American newspapers,
which is vital for historians of the future and it might seem like those initiatives don't really impact games
but art has this tendency to feed other art.
Bioshock Infinite, for example, only exists because Ken Levine watched a PBS documentary called 'America in
1900'. When Team Bondi sent artists to get photo references for LA Noire, two of the archives they used were NEH grant
recipients. When we talk about arts funding, we're discussing the resources and future of our
creative economy. And the great thing about arts funding is that it benefits
everybody from the rich to the rural poor. For example look at the Houston based program called Writers in the Schools.
They use games and game design as a way to teach writing and they found that this is an
especially good way to reach
reluctant students. This year they received a grant to expand their workshops across the country and they hope to grow it further. And
increasingly, arts funding goes to online projects so that students can access art and culture and humanities resources wherever they are.
Initiatives like that are important not just for
society, but for the games industry. After all the young people who go through these programs may become the industry's next generation of artists, and
writers, and programmers.
Providing opportunities like that is an investment in this medium's future. So, what can you do to help protect these programs?
Well, you could call your congressperson
but put a pin in that for just a second first it might help to consider how arts funding, public
broadcasting, and libraries have affected your life.
We've included some links down below that will help you see what sort of programs the NEA and the NEH
have sponsored in your area.
Just put in your city, your state, and your congressional district, and you can get list of NEA and NEH funded
projects. Maybe play around with the search results a bit see if any local programs have benefited from NEA and NEH money. This will give
You some much more specific stuff to say when you do call Capitol Hill. And I know I've been talking about American agencies today,
but this doesn't just apply to Americans. A lot of places including the UK,
Australia, and Japan are currently considering cuts to their arts and humanities programs.
Some have already reduced those budgets. If you believe that these initiatives should continue make sure that your
representatives know. Don't like, harass them or anything, just make it clear that this is an important consideration for how you vote.
Arts and culture are an inseparable part of citizenship. They tell us who we are and
where we came from, and they show what we think is worth supporting. And since games have only recently been elevated to that circle
we should do our part to help defend it too. For our medium, for the ideals of arts and
scholarship, and for the young people who are one day going to be our peers. See you next week!
Thank you for all you've done guys. The Extra Credits team feels like an old group of friends and I know you have no idea who I am, but thank you. From the bottom of my heart. until next week old friend.