Fox News Attacks NEA for Classifying Games as Art

[Dan Steele]

Video Games dont cause violence Fox, you cause violence by making gamers like us want to tie your executives to a tree by they're balls and beat them like piniatas

 

[Waaghpowa]

Wasteful? Oh, do tell.

This from the country that spent a million dollars on developing a pen that would function in space.

HAHAHA It's true, and to think that the Russians just brought pencils to the space station.

 

[Emergent]

That isn't a coherent argument. I don't even know what "It's a non-quote" means

I don't see how that matters. I'm sure after some thinking you could take a guess as to what I meant.

Emphasis mine. If you can't see how having an incoherent argument affects our discourse, then we're probably not going to get much farther along in this conversation. But we can try.

All you've succeeded to do so far is point out that it was, indeed, accurate of me to only refer to him as an expert ironically.

You could have just said "I meant to put the quotations in ironically" and saved yourself a bunch of time writing.

Were that all I meant, that is all I would have said.

The most likely conclusion is that it's because his opinions support those of the network's leadership.

Or not. Who knows? Who's to say? Right-wingers are against government censorship, don't know why they'd be against games as art. That's more traditionalist than conservative, really.

The segue into Obama-bashing made the intent clear. As I've already stated: when you refuse to cede the obvious, I doubt our discussion will be fruitful.

Thing is, it's an economic argument that has absolutely nothing to do with the debate at hand.

The two are very related. See below for explanation.

They were ostentatiously there to discuss the merits of including videogames to the list of projects the NEA will consider funding

Funding. Hence the economic argument. It is a legitimate argument to say "I don't think federal grants should go to games as we have better things to spend that pre-allotted money on".

Now, do you agree with that argument? Most likely not. Do I agree with that argument? Not really, no. But is it a legitimate argument to make? Sure is.

That's the thing. Even you're buying into this. By use of rhetorical technique called non sequitur, the talk shot host shifted the subject of debate, shifting the emphasis from "How should we spend the money alloted to the NEA?" to "Videogames raise taxes." His "legitimate argument" is offered in response to a claim that wasn't being made. Classic rhetoric. In internet terms, he hijacked the thread by trolling Obama.

Second, it doesn't matter whether he is only a talk radio host, the fact that he has been brought onto this show means, in most viewers' eyes, he is an expert.

It's made abundantly clear that he is a radio talk show host, his name and title appear under him whenever he was talking. Nothing indicated he was an expert in anything, and any assumption of such is entirely the fault of the viewer.

You don't know much about psychology, do you? Or marketing?

The problem I have with your argument is that presenting a talk show host opinion alongside a more knowledgeable opinion, they give equal legitimacy to both points of view. The well-versed games blogger has spent time and effort on his position. The talk show host is giving his point of view with much less background information as evidenced by his resorting to sound bite responses.

Then that information will be reflected in the debate.

We've talked about this already. Framing is important.

 

[Autohellion]

You Know to all the people defending the host by saying he was just against money being spent The money that would be spent is a pea against what our defense and military budget is as well as the other big items. So while you could say he wasn't slanted He presented a view that was overblown and presented the financial results of that way out of proportion. Its like bringing a bazooka to a boxing match and trying to justify it.

 

[willofbob]

ignorant fucks have no understanding of art. So, to all people employe at FOX NEWS and all those who watch it, please die in an extremely painful manner

 

[BlumiereBleck]

[Insert generic bandwagon comment on hating FoxNews] lolz jk, games, movies, and books cannot be art

 

[Vykrel]

Wow. I totally did not see this coming! *Sarcasm sphere self test complete*

Oh, good. That's still working.

 

[captaincabbage]

Goddamnit! You see!?? THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!

This is what happens when old people get involved with things they don't understand. Admittedly, El Donaldo Trumpo is a major republican player, so it would have been easy for him to persuade Fox (a.k.a Republican News Network) to run a story/smear campaign against the current government.

 

[KirbyKrackle]

Commenting on "should the goverment be developing "Call Of Duty" " is a fairly valid statement to begin with, with the name largely being used because it's something people are familiar with...

Actually, no it's deliberately misleading. The very question "Should Call of Duty receive federal funding" makes it sound as if that's what the segment will be about: whether or not Call of Duty should receive federal funding. But that's not what the segment is about, is it? It's about whether video games should receive funding from the NEA (and also whether the NEA should exist or not).

See, nothing prevents someone from using those federal dollars from making a game a lot like Call Of Duty, because by it's nature artwork can't be constrained by goverment standards in the US. Unlike nations like China where it holds onto the right to be exclusionary.

Actually, the NEA exercises a great deal of control over who can get the money. No person, or rather, organization can just walk up to them and say "I'm making art, now where's my $10 000". Sorry to disappoint. They have grants with specific purposes that must be applied to and competed for, and the receiver of the grant must keep them up-to-date on the project. Artwork in the US certainly is not constrained by the government, but which artists receive funding from the government is.

There are cases of artists living off of goverment funds, and then producing works of "performance art" where they say paint an American flag on the bottom of a basin, urinate it, and then drop a cruicifix into the urine... and various other ridiculous things. Artists get blasted for a reason.

Yes, they are generally "blasted" for challenging long-held beliefs that people would rather not see challenged (such as the sanctity of religious articles or nationalist symbols).

You can defend the artistic merits of anything, and that includes something like "Call Of Duty" or "Super Mario Brothers", art is easy to project if you want to. Nothing prevents some guy from crating "Call Of Duty" and then calling it art to justify the goverment funding it's received. That funding does not mean that it's the sum total of everything invested in the game either.

Actually, there's the teensy little fact that "some guy" can't apply for a grant from the NEA. It will only offer grants to a "nonprofit, tax-exempt 501c3, U.S. organization".

Then of course I probabyl would have gotten into the tax ranting, to make the point that this is not the right time to be adding new mediums to be covered to federal artistic grants when we have trouble paying our national bills to begin with, especilly ones that are so dubious in the results they would acheive.

It's not as if the additional medium requires additional funding. It simply increases competition for the existing funding.

Don't misunderstand this, I'm not saying I'd be right, or I even agree with what "I" say above, just that it would be easy to do.

Yes, it's very easy to say ignorant, misinformed things. I think we can all agree with this.

Really the only noteworthy thing about the whole thing was Fox News' way of framing the debate by using "Call Of Duty" and really I don't think they were doing anything bad, they were just generating hype for the debate which is their job.

Why do you think that "hype" must be good and cannot be "anything bad"? It seems a touch naive, don't you think? Especially when they create the hype by being deliberately misleading. Or is that okay with you so long as it generates "hype"?

but really I can't fault that because if some guy wanted to use the $10,000 budget to develop a game like that, nothing stops him.

Except for all those tiny little, insignificant, oh-so-easily overlooked rules that make it impossible.

The thing about gaming being defined as art is that it opened the door for various kinds of tax breaks. The most expensive thing about developing games nowadays, shooters in paticular, is buying the rights to the tool boxes like "Unreal", "Havoc Physix" and other assorted things. Rignt now we're probably going to see the companies making those tool boxes donating them to artists for good PR and of course sweet tax breaks (mostly the latter). The talent a lot of "AAA" games get can also be obtained by artists for free under a similar principle, movie studios, composers, etc.. will donate resources to artistic film makers, actors will donate their time (which is why you can get some big name people in student films), and all kinds of things, all because it's now again... a valid tax write off. There are like 15 minute art films out there done on a "shoestring budget" but actually have millions of dollars in resources invested in them all due to artistic donations of time and resources.

So your worst-nightmare scenario is tax breaks (as if that's something new to the US or the video game industry). Okay. And why is donating stuff bad? Or receiving donations for that matter? Are you one of those Romantic "art must puuuuuure" sentimentalists?

This is to say nothing of art communes, where there are basically hotels that provide free room and board for artists as long as they create. Granted the waiting lists for those can be pretty substantial, but it does mean that things like food and rent don't apply to various acknowleged artists. This is how some of these guys can live for 20 years without a job and only receiving a few thousand dollars a year for the goverment, and produce stuff, we just don't see it with gaming right now, but the door is open.

Creating things isn't a job? Have fun telling that to everyone who isn't part of the service industry. But yes, grants are often given so that artists can eat and have somewhere to live without needing to get a second job.

The point here being is that as bombastic as it was, Fox is actually right, the acceptance of games as art *IS* opening exactly that door.

Opening the door to what? According to you, to video game artists getting paid (or more specifically, non-profit organizations being able to afford paying an artist) to make video game art, possibly with the donations from some industry giants. So...it's opening the door to do exactly what it's intended to do? Why is it a problem that the same benefits other media receive be extended to video games?

So basically we're probably going to see a lot of these "art games" winding up with the same basic tools the big boys play with...

I honestly don't see why there's a problem with artists having the same material and tools that the "big boys" have. Please explain.

...and no real requirements to prevent them from making something like "Call Of Duty" other than they find some way to justify it artistically, saying that "killing these terrorist scumbags is all about a man's journey to enlightenment through the appreciation of muzzle flash".

...Except for all those requirements, carefully listed for each grant, each one of which has specific goals in mind that the organization (not the artist) receiving the grant must articulate beforehand, and which is carefully judged by the NEA's panel as to whether it is good, sensible, and serves the purpose of the grant before said grant is given?

There is no requirement such art be good, or even make sense.

Except for all those--well, you know the drill.

Also I can almost guarantee that big name game developers are probably going to be able to donate their time the way movie stars donate theirs down the road. Instead of paying taxes someone like say "Gabe Newell" could donate a few hours consulting on indie games and write it off of Valve's taxes.

I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but I still find your argument against making games art being "People could get tax breaks!" to be very, very funny.

I wouldn't be surprised if they find some way of using the system to cut development costs by having games developed "artistically" with the money invested being covered through tax breaks, as a way of experimenting, so that way they effectively get their R&D for free and can then choose which projects to actually grab for non-artistic professional release.

Not unless they're willing to become a non-profit organization.

We're probably going to see indie games developing on a much higher level now, as the actual grant money is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Being accepted as art means it's now eligible for tax deductable donations."

Indie games being pushed to a higher level and receiving more funding (in fact, that's part of the purpose of the NEA: to help organizations and their projects find additional funding)? The horror. The horror.

You had world enough and time to create a well-crafted, carefully researched and thought out argument. The two folks on FOX had about a minute each, with mere seconds to respond in short sound-bytes to the interviewer's questions. Don't quit your day job for debate club, is all I'm saying.

 

[CommanderKirov]

WAR!
ON!
VIDEO GAMES!

I guess that after them big cheese of terrorists is dead now they need to find another thing to wage war onto.

 

[Emergent]

*snip*

I agree with you that Tom's own biased reporting damages his credibility. I cannot agree with you that explicitly invoking the title Call of Duty in the headline is valid. Call of Duty is a specific, copyrighted franchise. It will not be eligible. That's a fact, not opinion or rhetoric. It's the sort of the you do research to clarify. Much of the rest of your argument (after some tangents) seems to be based around the idea of accepting that it's okay for them to blatantly misreport a fact if A) Not enough people understand the difference and, B) Doing so gains them higher ratings (and by extension profits).

You also made some good commentary about what classifying games are art means for indie game developers (which all sounded pretty fucking positive, if you ask me... anything to get the developers out from under the thumbs of publishers), which I couldn't agree with more.

Bringing it back around to taxes (the valid, if misleading*, argument remaining), you still left me with the impression that you believe less taxes, net, will be paid to the U.S. Government now that videogames are considered art. If you don't, please disregard the following: There's still a total limit on how much an individual or corporation can donate to charitable purposes and receive a tax break. That limit isn't changing, only what you can spend the money on. The net donations remain the same, but now movies and books and painting and sculpture and whatever else the NEA was funding (read: legitimizing as a charitable donation) now have to make room for videogame related projects to be thrown in the mix.

 

[2fish]

While I do not like any current news program fox has to just keep jumping up and down screaming look at me and fear everything else. I am waiting until that gets stale and they need to pull in reviews by uping the crazy pills.

What's next for the Fox crazy standard? Stripping during the news? Fireworks? Invading small countries?

 

[LaughingJester]

once again fox news gets the equivalent of thousands in free advertising by running offensive material and having angry people post their nonsensical dribble all over the web


with fox "news" mediums the best thing to do is ignore them, and they will literally die.

Ninja'd here.

I am genuinely concerned that this show can report garbage as fact and not be in some kind of breech (since ethical codes of conduct don't seem to be an ideal Fox News values), which pollutes the minds of many a lemming. Yet at the same time you cant make a joke about the Govt without making the FBI list... makes you wonder...

 

[Therumancer]

*snip*

I agree with you that Tom's own biased reporting damages his credibility. I cannot agree with you that explicitly invoking the title Call of Duty in the headline is valid. Call of Duty is a specific, copyrighted franchise. It will not be eligible. That's a fact, not opinion or rhetoric. It's the sort of the you do research to clarify. Much of the rest of your argument (after some tangents) seems to be based around the idea of accepting that it's okay for them to blatantly misreport a fact if A) Not enough people understand the difference and, B) Doing so gains them higher ratings (and by extension profits).

You also made some good commentary about what classifying games are art means for indie game developers (which all sounded pretty fucking positive, if you ask me... anything to get the developers out from under the thumbs of publishers), which I couldn't agree with more.

Bringing it back around to taxes (the valid, if misleading*, argument remaining), you still left me with the impression that you believe less taxes, net, will be paid to the U.S. Government now that videogames are considered art. If you don't, please disregard the following: There's still a total limit on how much an individual or corporation can donate to charitable purposes and receive a tax break. That limit isn't changing, only what you can spend the money on. The net donations remain the same, but now movies and books and painting and sculpture and whatever else the NEA was funding (read: legitimizing as a charitable donation) now have to make room for videogame related projects to be thrown in the mix.

Oh, I am saying that the goverment will get less in the way of taxes. This opens the door for a lot of people and groups who previously didn't have anything viable to contribute to, to do exactly that. Gabe Newell seems like a decent guy despite my criticisms of him and his company/buisness, but to use him as an example up until now he really hasn't had the option to donate time or something like one of his development tool kits for a tax write off. Now he does have that option. A lot of people like him are doubtlessly going to use that. I think this means that the goverment is going to wind up making substnatially less money off of the game industry. That isn't the central point I was making.

The point that I was making is that those donations affect the level artists can develop at. A company has to pay big bucks for the tool kits that they develop their games out of, but if one of the companies that sells or leases the took kits decides to donate them, that's a not insignifigant amount of development power and a decent percentage of the budget of a AAA game.

This mostly in respect to the defense being made that Call Of Duty is something differant because of the stated reason that it's a big production and this ruling only affects small, indie games. I think he's overlooking how much bigger this enables the indie scene to get.

Otherwise, saying what they did about CoD was just hype, we'll have to agree to disagree there, but I don't think that was anything paticularly special. Fox very much remained neutral come the actual debate and took neither side. Both the guys involved came accross as mental furballs in pretty much equal proportions, though I suppose that's largely because of the format.

The CoD comments did what they were supposed to: they got your attention. That's all that was intended there, and really we are probably going to have to agree to disagree on what was intended there as well.

 

[Therumancer]

[]
Indie games being pushed to a higher level and receiving more funding (in fact, that's part of the purpose of the NEA: to help organizations and their projects find additional funding)? The horror. The horror.

You had world enough and time to create a well-crafted, carefully researched and thought out argument. The two folks on FOX had about a minute each, with mere seconds to respond in short sound-bytes to the interviewer's questions. Don't quit your day job for debate club, is all I'm saying.

You almost tempted me to respond to some of that before we got to these last couple of statements. I don't report people, but I'm not going to discuss things with people who decide to put flames like this in their posts.

You'll notice I did respond to the guy who put up a message and didn't resort to this kind of thing.

I'm just pointing this out because you don't have that many messages to your profile yet. You can make the best points in the world but if you can't be fairly civil about it, it doesn't matter.

What's more you seem to be trying to take an adversarial approach here, when your talking to someone who is on the pro-video game side of things. I could responde to most of what you said, but it's kind of pointless since I get the impression your looking for a fight rather than discussion.

I'll also be blunt, since you see to misunderstand my motives. One of the big problems with fandom is that it gets out of hand with responding to critics, just because they don't like it when someone goes after something that they care about. Trying to act like there are no valid criticisms that can be made, and dismissing every statement or platform out of hand does not serve our cause. Attacking major news networks like Fox because of their politics and position does not serve our cause.

This kind of thing is what turned criticisms of D&D into a long term battle for the survival of the hobby. Rather than conceding when the other side had a point, and trying to come to a meeting of the minds, RPG fanboys refused to acknowlege anything the other side said, while claiming they were merely being "reasonable and rational". This kind of closed mentality also lead to a lot of people going so far as to mock and attack the other side, doing things like sending messages about annointing their dice with blood and so on. That *really* helped the cause for the acceptance of RPGs let me tell you, especially when the problems dealt with things like "The Vampire Clan".. do a search for it when you have time, you'll likely find hits for two seperate incidents connected to Vampire RPGs... and that's the tip of the ice berg... the point here being that these kinds of incidents were not the concoction of nutjobs while the criticisms of RPGs for this and other things were misplaced, trying to deny these incidents or worse yet mock them or act like everyone was involved in crazy stuff certainly did not help.

Right now the battles over video games seem like they are definatly getting into a similar place, and we're going to bring more trouble on ourselves by being offensive, and always dismissing the other side and it's platforms, sometimes quite rudely. Sites like "The Escapist" are becoming known (it's won webbies) and I'd imagine this is one of the sites that has a decent chance of being viewed by the other side, and it kind of reflects on the issue as a while.

Basically, while I would probably have debated certain points with you normally (especially given the length of this post) aside from those comments, I'll basically end off by saying along with the above that right now the best thing to do is concede that "our guy" didn't do too well there, which he didn't. What's more constantly going after Fox News for sensationalizing (that's what it does, all news organizations do), doesn't exactly help matters. To be honest there might very well come a time when Fox might be inclined to back us up, but won't if it feels the need to remain in a state of enimity with video gamers. That was one of the problems with PnP RPGs, a lot of the enemies the community made were so invested in the fight that they refused to concede any point on principle. That's something we need to avoid.

 

[Emergent]

*snip*

On the headline: I think we're both agreeing it's spin, but then have radically different views on the value, maybe even legality, of spin, which is good enough for me. If I read you right, you think the government will make "substantially less" money from the games industry, by virtue of massive numbers of individual game developers donating their time to charity. To put it mildly, Gabe Newell and "a lot of people like him" are fantastically successful businessmen. On that virtue alone they have been able to "donate their time" for all sorts of tax-exempt activities for quite some time already.

When you reference the availability of kits to produce games from, you seem to have forgot about the big drive to mobile games, social games, and other, much less "technically" advanced products that have come to challenge, then overwhelm the AAA industry. The barrier to entry to game design is at it's lowest point, ever. If the government loses any revenue from taxes it's a good bet that strengthening one of it's most promising domestic industries will more than make up for it.

 

[mooncalf]

Wait, Fox News is real? I thought they parodied Onion News!

There's an Onion News Headline in what you've said. "Fox News Accidentally Tells Truth, Public Apology Next Day."

 

[lumenadducere]

What's more constantly going after Fox News for sensationalizing (that's what it does, all news organizations do), doesn't exactly help matters. To be honest there might very well come a time when Fox might be inclined to back us up, but won't if it feels the need to remain in a state of enimity with video gamers. That was one of the problems with PnP RPGs, a lot of the enemies the community made were so invested in the fight that they refused to concede any point on principle. That's something we need to avoid.

You're operating under the assumption that Fox is going to be conciliatory at all, in any way, shape, or form. Given their track record, especially the past few years, I'm very doubtful of that. Even when they've been called out for having bad information they've still refused to acknowledge it, regardless of the topic.

I get that as a conservative it's tempting to be more understanding of similar viewpoints, but I think you're projecting here. You're being rational with solid ideas, but they aren't providing any of that - lately they've been descending into rants that provide little to no information and just sensationalize matters while being completely dismissive of the opposition. For there to be any chance of a meeting of minds both sides have to come with an open mind and when news outlets go off the wall on ideological rants like this that completely eliminates any chance for that to happen. You saw it yourself - the rant this time was against wasteful government spending and had little to do with the topic at hand, focusing instead on toeing the typical ideological lines. No debate, no discussion, no room for expansion and growth of conservative ideology and its application to the issue being brought to light.

It all just comes off as hateful, reactionary drivel in order to garner more attention, and it's completely reasonable that game fans/journalists/professionals would react in the way that they do.