pissing in the fountain: videogames and expressive performance

The drawn-out discussion of videogames as art took a significant step in May last year when the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States added digital games to their list of financially supported art forms. It placed games in the category of Arts in Media among "documentaries and dramatic narratives; media created for theatrical release; performance programs; artistic segments for use within existing series; multi-part webisodes; installations; and short films". This context defines the nature of videogame art – generally thought of in terms of expression through narration and performance – relatively well.