The player

Art is in the eye of the gamer – and maybe a US quango, writes CIARA O'BRIEN

IN RECENT years videogames have tackled, and in some cases shrugged off, various stereotypes. Games are only for teenage boys. Games are only for couch potatoes. They’re anti-social. They’ll rot your brain. They’ll make you violent.

Here’s another about to be tackled: videogames can’t be art.

It’s not the first time this subject has been debated, with arguments both for and against hashed out online. There are plenty who have long argued that creating a game that both looks and plays well is an art form, while equally adamantly, their opponents have denied that claim.

US film critic Roger Ebert last year said: “Let me just say that no videogamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.” A few months later Ebert backed down, in a way. “What I was saying is that videogames could not in principle be art. That was a foolish position to take, particularly as it seemed to apply to the entire unseen future of games.”

Those arguing in favour of videogames as an art form have the official stamp of approval – at least in the US, where the National Endowment for the Arts recently added games to the list of art forms for which it will provide funding. This opens up a new line of financing for established and aspiring game developers.

The guidelines are clear. If your dream is to tap federal funding for your next shoot-’em-up or zombie rampage, forget it. Even those wishing to develop a mildly competitive, good- clean-fun racing game need not apply. The funding is aimed at not-for-profit, artistic or educational games, and, like other NEA-funded projects, it must “enhance the public good”.

That minor point, however, has already been lost by opponents of the move, and a debate has raged in the US over whether or not the NEA should be funding games development.

Games have also gotten the thumbs-up from the Smithsonian Museum, which will show an exhibit on videogame art in 2012. Eighty games will be on display, among them Bioshock, Mass Effect 2, Metal Gear Solid and Portal, plus classics such as Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Super Mario 64. The games were chosen by the public from a pool of 240 titles.

The exhibition’s existence gives a sense of legitimacy to the argument that games are indeed an art form. Opinion is building in its favour, it seems.