Icrontic on Fox & Friends this Saturday morning (05/21/2011)
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
I'll be on Fox and Friends this Saturday morning (05/21) to defend the position that video games are a valid form of art and are worthy of NEA grants. Any suggestions/points you'd like me to cover?
With 2.1 million viewers, this is a cool opportunity for us. Definitely adds legitimacy to the Icrontic brand. Now, I'm not counting on an OMGHUEG traffic surge or anything. There's a good chance that Fox & Friends viewers are not exactly our demographic. I mean, it IS a Saturday morning talk show on FOX, but this is something we can point to on our professional CV and say, yeah, they came to us.
At any rate, I don't know when/if your local FOX affiliate airs "FOX & Friends", but either way, it will be online and embeddable after the fact.
With 2.1 million viewers, this is a cool opportunity for us. Definitely adds legitimacy to the Icrontic brand. Now, I'm not counting on an OMGHUEG traffic surge or anything. There's a good chance that Fox & Friends viewers are not exactly our demographic. I mean, it IS a Saturday morning talk show on FOX, but this is something we can point to on our professional CV and say, yeah, they came to us.
At any rate, I don't know when/if your local FOX affiliate airs "FOX & Friends", but either way, it will be online and embeddable after the fact.
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Do Video Games Make Kids Smarter?
Why Video Games Make You Smart (No Kidding!)
Playing with Our Heads
Can 'World of Warcraft' make you smarter?
And there's many more.
Let me know if I'm on the right path here. Good luck with that Brian.
For Fox's 50-something audience:
Farmville, Scrabble online
AOL/Yahoo have had multiplayer Hearts and Bridge games for decades, they don't encourage reckless gambling
Guitar Hero, especially the latest incarnation, is a game that encompasses many different kind of art and ENABLES PEOPLE TO CREATE ART by teaching them music.
The Wii and Kinect are art in themselves and CREATE PERFORMANCE ART (Dance games, etc)
as for the violent and sex games...war is violent. The world is gratuitous. Look at Saving Private Ryan - an incredibly gratuitous movie. But was a bar-setter for realistically portraying war in a world that wants to pretend war is a video game. We want to use predator drones and get a sanitized version of what goes on in warfare, and it's not right that we get to shield ourselves from what happens on the other side of the barrel. We wonder why PTSD gets worse at each war - the wars aren't getting worse, it's just becoming more and more of a shock. What is the endgame here? A country of people living out their suburban lives in Pleasantville?
No.
You want to get your shopping done as cheaply as possible? You should understand what it means to not make a living wage in India.
You want to get your food cheaper? Understand what it is to work for 40 years as a strawberry picker in California with no insurance or citizenship.
You want to have all of your war games devoid of blood or violence? See what it's like to be in Pakistan for a year or two, waiting for an IED to vaporize the person in front of you, or to watch a pregnant woman be used as a human shield.
You want to shield your child from any mention of sexuality until they're 18 and mov out of the house? Your lack of education to them leaves them unprepared to handle the responsibility of adult relationships.
Games are storytelling devices. If film can be considered art (and it absolutely can be), then the ONLY point of differentiation is the fact that gamers interact with their art. If gamers can attest to anything, it's that level of interaction that sucks a gamer into the story. They don't say "games are immersive" for anything, you are a part of the story, the world, the art. It's the same as film, and THEN some.
And just like a film like "Freddy Got Fingered" is so terrible that no one would dare call it art, a game like Shaq-Fu wouldn't be called art.
Heck, there are art installments in real life art galleries that are just as interactive, yet these still get the moniker of art.
Prime, your points sent to the producer are rock solid. That was the other point I was going to suggest - just how much traditional artwork goes into game design. Character illustration, shader diagrams, modeling, maquettes, storyboards, it all goes to the same lengths of film.
I can't think of anything that left me more prepared for the Project Management portions of my career than resource/research/building games like Age of Empires and Red Alert/ Supreme Commander.
Exactly. Using and shooting hookers isn't a requirement for GTA. You can play the entire game without it. People are put in a world where there are no consequences, and they're choosing to do it. If it were me, I'd say that GTA should give you an xx% chance of your power bar slowly draining away if you choose to go that route to mimic STDs...
But seriously, using the argument that hookers in GTA promotes prostitution is crazy - if anything, GTA promotes stealing tanks and light aircraft (a requirement in the game)
Neal Asbury
On that note, NEA's mission statement inherently supports video games because they are a common and proven medium for educational purposes. If anything, this is the most profitable form of art to appear on the world's stage since the downfall of Hollywood and the major recording labels. Simple economics are the primary external force that make major development studios avoid purly educational games and focus instead on shooters and mindless RPGs (still artistic, but not as educational as other genres).
The whole point of government is largely to step in when there is no economic incentive but there is a social need. In this case, socially our country would benefit if our thirteen year olds were playing games that were mathematically thought provoking and educational .. as opposed to Call of Duty. But who will fund such developments? There is no incentive for the studios, and hence government intervention is a possible solution.
If Asbury is the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 Florida Finalist (lol @ that) then certainly he will understand both the necessary and uncessary roles of government in regards to economics and further the requirement of taking risks to achieve great things.
If he throws out a red herring (which is probably the only fallacy he will use besides appeal to authority or populace .. ie. he is the spokesperson for the American people, which he already blantantly markets himself as .. ) and gets in to national debt etc. please call him on it and ask him to stick to the topic at hand. Or, throw out another red herring, and bring up one of the many interesting federal grants his state of Florida receives on a regular basis.
Hell, ask him how much federal grant money was involved with his recent interaction here http://www.conscientiousequity.com/articles/1906-1906 and compare the long term benefits of that with the long term benefits of building and sustaining an entirely new market focused strictly on educational tools.
I'd suggest reaching out to Ars and other journalism friends to see if there's anything they can help you prep for.
Prepare for them to bring up Bulletstorm, they've harped on that a lot recently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
You'll want to avoid discussing violence and sex in video games. If it's brought up, you rebut with the fact that art is a reflection of the world we live in, and movies containing violence and sex are often high art; see [insert litany of movies here.]
Roger Ebert is an idiot about art and videogames. He doesn't play videogames, and he doesn't create art, so his opinion on the matter is but that of one man. Plenty of others disagree.
Some videogame art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1kqtum5rI&feature=player_embedded
Smithsonian recognizes that video games are art:
http://eyelevel.si.edu/2011/02/the-art-of-video-games-vote-now.html
I'll see what else I can dig up.
That's the difference, video games haven't reached that level amongst the public yet due to a simple generational divide. Regardless of the NEA and what happens now, in 10 to 30 years the wide acceptance will be there. There is no fighting it. Asbury probably knows this, but he has to promote himself to his audience Saturday by being consistent with his brand.
Better to support people who are actually working on something than people who abuse the welfare system and do nothing. You're going to have a hell of a hard time sounding right on Saturday but if anyone can it's you.
This is a slam dunk if you go the job creation route. The 200k grant will create jobs for independent game companies in the US on US soil. Unlike any corporate loop hole that allows multi-billion companies to ship jobs overseas. It will inspire many talented artists and programmers to create a beautiful and well produced game. It will allow those independent companies buy the necessary software, computing power, etc to get the job done.
This is not TV, its FOX, so its a theoretical game that you will only be allowed to talk for ~30 seconds. Ultimately why does Mr. Asbury want to cut jobs to talented Americans that don't have the resources to buy high powered PCs and software necessary to create modern games.
Grant money of $200,000 is nothing in the overall federal budget, let alone city governments (e.g. Detroit fiscal budget 400+million). I'd try to emphasis how little 200k really is.
TLDR: Bottomline: Its about 200k for American companies to create jobs for the technology they need.
Look at America's Army - part of the game was to learn real emergency first aid. I know there's been at least 2 stories of lifesaving and correct tourniquet application directly related to America's Army. How much do we spend on emergency services to train for this, knowing that they'll rarely arrive in time to use it?