The National Endowment for the Arts has released their list of 79 grants that have been awarded for Media in the Arts for 2012, some of which are for video games, since the NEA now considers them a valid form of art.

“Fair and Balanced” indeed

Last year, radio talk show host Neal Asbury and Fox & Friends news show asserted that taxpayers would be “funding Call of Duty”, and of course President Obama was brought into this. Both Asbury and the talk show hosts showed a completely fundamental ignorance of both what the NEA actually is, and what considering video gaming a valid art form means. They misleadingly started off the piece with clips of a commercial video game, Call of Duty (presumably because of its popularity?) and then asked point blank: “Should the video game Call of Duty get Federal funding?”

Well of course a commercial video game won’t get Federal funding, but good luck telling these people that.

Time for more facts

The list of 79 grants, totaling $3,590,000 includes things such as a $40,000 grant to the University of Southern California to develop a game based on American poet Henry David Thoreau. The game is described thusly:

The player will inhabit an open, three-dimensional game world which will simulate the geography and environment of Walden Woods. Once developed, the game will be available online.

No guns. No ping-pong paddles. Perhaps the game will introduce a new generation to one of the great American authors.

Another grant for a video game goes to a project to develop a video game for social change (Not that the typical Fox & Friends audience member is interested in social change…). The game will use art and pop culture to encourage youth to explore democracy and diversity. It will be a mobile and online game.

The full list of grants for fiscal year 2012 can be found on the NEA website.

So far I’m not seeing any military simulators… Oh wait, the taxpayer-funded US Army has already done that…