The conspicuous categorization (that is, now, the “legalization”) of video games as art has been widely reported and debated, but never as intensely as four years ago July, when the United States Supreme Court struck down a California law banning sales of violent video games to children. The decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, No. 08–1448, 564 U.S. ____ (2011), saw games as equal to — even the evolution of — other forms of creative expression, like “books, plays, and movies.” Yet some prominent precursors had been blinking on America’s screens prior to June 27, 2011.

Video games actually attained legal recognition as art in May 2011, when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced new eligibility guidelines for its grants. (Making games eligible for federal funds open to creative endeavors implicitly confers that legal status.) The NEA revisions reverberated a little throughout the art and gaming communities; most of the mainstream media frenzy accompanied the Brown decision. The Supreme Court was not asked, and therefore could not answer, the question, “Are video games art?,” though it came close: “video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices…” However, Brown’s effect on the gaming industry (beyond the legal freedom to sell violent video games to minors, of course), like many rulings, might be indirect and abstract.

The NEA, on the other hand, is a practical endeavor. Which is why its conferrence of legal status matters a bit more, and certainly is more immediate: categorizing their products as works of art via the renamed “Media Arts” category opened the federal vault to the gaming and media industries. Grants of $10,000 to $200,000, previously limited to work in TV and radio, are now available to “[a]ll available media platforms such as the Internet, interactive and mobile technologies, [and] digital games.”

From its inception, the NEA was tasked with developing democracy by fostering “wisdom and vision” and an ability to think independently. The stated objective of this use of public funds was to help citizens to “achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view of the future.”

Congress established the NEA in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government dedicated to supporting “artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation.” So far the NEA has awarded more than $5 billion through partnerships (with federal, state, public, and private organizations), fellowships, and more than 135,000 grants. It is the largest annual national funder of the arts in the U.S.