How Washington Learned to Love Video Games

In this clip, the Smithsonian American Art Museum examines the love-hate relationship Washington has had with video games over the past two decades. The producers from Reason TV explored where Washington stood about video games twenty years prior to this art installment and my-oh-my we've come a long way. Footage from 1993 shows politicians damning video games, making unbased claims on the effect they have on children. 

It's interesting to look back on these arguments and see how much feelings have changed over the past twenty years. Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, explores the ever-present fear of change that the majority feels when something new is introduced into a culture. The same has occurred for music, movies, and comics over the past few centuries, so video games are in good company.

There are even some fantastic graphs tossed in showing off the decline in juvenile crime versus game revenue sales over the past twenty years. That type of good press is exactly what video games need.

The Art of Video Games will be in the Smithsonian American Art Museum until September 30, 2012.