Newsgames: Journalism at Play

by Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, Bobby Schweizer

How videogames offer a new way to do journalism. Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. But most online journalism just translates existing practices to the 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 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. Wired magazine's 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. 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.

Genres: Games, Journalism, Nonfiction, Game Design, Gaming

235 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Ian Bogost is a video game designer, critic and researcher. He holds a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies.

He is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames as well as the co-author of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and Newsgames: Journalism at Play. Bogost also released Cow Clicker, a satire and critique of the influx of social network games. His game, A Slow Year, won two awards, Vanguard and Virtuoso, at IndieCade 2010.

Reviews

[Rik Eberhardt]

Have not read this yet, but am looking forward to it, based on the website alone.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated by now, but an interesting read with lots of examples and screenshots.

[Josh Knowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hm. Interesting, for sure. I generally enjoy Bogost's writings. But this book left me a little cold. It's a fairly dry read and is more of an assessment of the current state of "news games" than anything. Which is fine. But part of the problem seems to be that these games have relatively little traction. At the end of the book, there's a discussion about Bogost's own troubles getting traditional journalism companies (the New York Times, for example) to pay attention to this genre. This gives the book a bit of an esoteric feel. Like we're attempting to have a deep discussion about something that hasn't really matured to the point of needing a deep discussion. Or something like that. Having a tough time putting it into words...

[Cesar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un repaso de ejemplos e ideas de juegos en medios digitales.

[Kafaayari]

"Newsgame" türündeki oyunlarla ilgili kaynak kitap. Huys oyununa da küçük bir referans bulunuyor içinde.