Newsgames

by Bogost, Ian

• ISBN13: 9780262014878
• ISBN10: 0262014874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

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 Newsgamespropose 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. Wiredmagazine'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. And Powerful Robot's game September 12thoffers 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 journalism-not just an occasional treat for online readers-newsgames can make a valuable contribution.

Author Biography

Ian Bogost is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. He is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (2006) and Persuasive Games. The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007) and the coauthor (with Nick Montfort) of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (2009), all published by the MIT Press. Simon Ferrari is a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Bobby Sctiweizer is a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Newsgames	p. 1
Current Events	p. 11
Infographics	p. 35
Documentary	p. 61
Puzzles	p. 83
Literacy	p. 105
Community	p. 127
Platforms	p. 151
Journalism at Play	p. 175
Notes	p. 183
Bibliography	p. 205
Index	p. 225
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