Germany: Games as Culture?

Jurie Horneman, over at Intelligent Artifice, put up a post a few days ago about Germany considering tax breaks. It seems the discussion there has stalled on the EU “cultural exception”, that allows industries to be granted subsidies if they are deemed to have cultural value.

Of course, Germany has always tended towards scepticism on violence in games, demanding that any blood be replaced with green splatter instead. A part of the reason for all of this is something that afflicts all aspects of discussion about games:

I find it strange to imagine a point of view where computer games are not culture. In fact, I find it strange to imagine a point of view where computer games are not art, or culture, or a storytelling medium. I mean… isn’t it obvious? Discussing this was fun in the 90s. The early 90s.

While game developers have been discussing many things for years, wider cultural and political circles are only just discovering and hacking through the same debates (Just as the games industry has been learning to deal with political, economic and management issues). There’s always going to be this kind of delay as issues percolate into fields less familiar with them, but people in the industry have a job to lead the wider debates and guide less clued up people.

(Image: Katamari Damacy box art)