NEA gives Roger Ebert 2 thumbs down!

About a year ago, Roger Ebert made a statement that resonated in the ears of all developers, "video games cannot be art." Well Mr. Ebert, the National Endowment of the Arts gave you the thumbs down.

The NEA has decided to expand it's grant program to include digital games and renaming it Arts in Media. Their newest exhibit is going to be aptly named 2Player: Computers. Games. Art. It will feature five computer game artists displaying some of their work and what video game art means to them.

So far the exhibit has been showcased in such places as the New Museum in NY, The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, England, the National Museum for Contemporary Art in Athens, the Museu de Arte Moderna (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro, and this month, the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester, UK.

Many of these pieces are actually playable and can be played by two people and allows "players" to examine how art relates to the way we communicate. Taking the exhibit to numerous art galleries allows viewers to now consider graphics and the gameplay mechanics to be a form of contemporary art.

If graffiti was able to pull it off in the 80's, why not video games? There is so much artistic flow that goes into creating games. Not just graphic wise but story and mechanics as well. Sure they may never be on the same level as Plato, Homer or Michaelangelo but who's to say that it won't evolve. After all, our ancestors started by painting on cave walls and creating some of the most odd looking horses and animals but look at the works that came from the Renaissance.