Proposed presidential budget cuts could hurt game development and education

The proposed budget put forth by President Trump yesterday could hurt educational game development programs that rely on funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is one of the departments that would be completely eliminated under the plan. 

The NEA has funded at least 34 grants relating to video games since 1998, reports Kotaku. Much of the money distributed by those grants goes to funding game design studies in public colleges and supporting games that educate or promote social change. 

In the past, the University of Southern Carolina has received around $65,000 to fund two educational video games. The non-profit Games for Change has also received eight grants from the NEA totaling over $400,000, to host game design competitions and workshops focused on using video games as tools for social change and education.

“The loss of federal funding affects our overall operating and programming budget significantly,” Susanna Pollack, Games for Change President, told Kotaku. “We will have to re-evaluate the scale of the G4C Festival and the reach that we can have with our educational programs.”

Despite the proposed plan, the NEA says that its 2017 operations will be unchanged and that it will still accept 2018 grant application until a budget plan is passed. For a closer look at how the potential impact of this budget plan on the video game industry, take a look at Kotaku’s full writeup.