- Authors:
- Ian Bogost,
- Simon Ferrari,
- Bobby Schweizer
Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. But most online journalism just translates existing practices to the Web: stories are written and edited as they are for print; video and audio features are produced as they would be for television and radio. The authors of Newsgames propose a new way of doing good journalism: videogames. Videogames are native to computers rather than a digitized form of prior media. Games simulate how things work by constructing interactive models; journalism as game involves more than just revisiting old forms of news production. The book describes newsgames that can persuade, inform, and titillate; make information interactive; recreate a historical event; put news content into a puzzle; teach journalism; and build a community. Wired magazines game Cutthroat Capitalism, for example, explains the economics of Somali piracy by putting the player in command of a pirate ship, offering choices for hostage negotiation strategies. And Powerful Robots game September 12th offers a model for a short, quickly produced, and widely distributed editorial newsgame. Videogames do not offer a panacea for the ills of contemporary news organizations. But if the industry embraces them as a viable method of doing journalismnot just an occasional treat for online readersnewsgames can make a valuable contribution.
Cited By
Caselli S, Bonello Rutter Giappone K, Schellekens J and Gualeni S Satire at Play International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, (1-4)- Pallavicini F, Pepe A, Caragnano C and Mantovani F Video Games to Foster Empathy: A Critical Analysis of the Potential of Detroit: Become Human and the Walking Dead Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Applications and Practice, (212-228)
- Sergeyeva O, Orekh E, Bogomiagkova E and Kolesnik N Shift to digital gamification in political life (russian cases) Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Smart City Applications, (1-6)
- Bachen C, Hernndez-Ramos P, Raphael C and Waldron A (2016). How do presence, flow, and character identification affect players empathy and interest in learning from a serious computer game?, Computers in Human Behavior, 64:C, (77-87), Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016.
- Möring S (2013). The Metaphor-Simulation Paradox in the Study of Computer Games, International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 5:4, (48-74), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2013.
- Treanor M, Blackford B, Mateas M and Bogost I Game-O-Matic Proceedings of the The third workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games, (1-8)
- Treanor M, Schweizer B, Bogost I and Mateas M The micro-rhetorics of Game-o-Matic Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, (18-25)
- Stein A Sports newsgames Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, (5-10)
- Treanor M, Schweizer B, Bogost I and Mateas M Proceduralist readings Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games, (115-122)
- Brynskov M, Leong T and Fritsch J Bridging the affective gap to make news felt Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, (50-59)
- Cohen S, Hamilton J and Turner F (2011). Computational journalism, Communications of the ACM, 54:10, (66-71), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2011.
Index Terms
- Newsgames: Journalism at Play
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Reviews
John M. Artz
The term "newsgames" refers to "a broad body of work produced at the intersection of videogames and journalism." Video games and journalism__?__ Aren't video games supposed to be for fun and journalism for serious events__?__ I have to admit: my first reaction to the title was a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. I was unaware of the vast amount of work that has been done in this area, and I thought the focus of the book would be some airy vision of the future. I was wrong. This extensively researched, seriously written book provides an astonishing abundance of real examples of newsgames. The authors begin by anchoring the topic historically, pointing out that games and news are not as far apart as one might initially believe. For example, newspapers have included crossword puzzles for the entertainment of their readers since the early 20th century. When those crossword puzzles refer to events in the news, we have the earliest newsgames, albeit sans computers. Each chapter explains a different newsgame genre. For example, current events games are highly topical and short lived, editorial games can be thought of as interactive editorial cartoons, and infographics games provide data that can be synthesized in various ways to gain insight into a more complex situation. The strength of the book is in the extensive research done prior to writing and the abundant details provided in the text. The main drawbacks of the book are the lack of organizing principles and the lack of a future vision. To the authors' credit, they did provide some organization through genres and subgenres; however, this does not really provide a way to think about all the possibilities. And while they did attempt to provide some advice for the future in the last chapter, it feels more like a gratuitous add on than a sincere vision. Nonetheless, this is a must-read for those interested in "the way news and computers go together." It should be of interest to journalists who wish to keep up with the changing face of journalism and to video game enthusiasts who are interested in the range of applications. Online Computing Reviews Service
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