Newsgames by Ian Bogost & Ferrari Simon & Schweizer Bobby

Author:Ian Bogost & Ferrari, Simon & Schweizer, Bobby [Bogost, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: video games, online journalism, journalism, interactive multimedia
ISBN: 9780262518079
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2010-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.4

In NewsU’s Be a Reporter, an editor sometimes appears in the top right of the screen to suggest places where key information might be gained. On the map of the city, the Hospital and Valley Elementary School are shown to be points of interest. Along the toolbar below, the player can review notes from previous interviews or file the story.

The University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies has created a similar reporting education tool, called Disaster at Harperville. The game teaches players to conduct interviews and synthesize the information gathered in low-trust environments. In the game’s scenario, a tanker truck accident has caused poison to leak into a downtown neighborhood; the player must cross-reference a number of accounts in order to arrive at a suitable level of objectivity. The game factors in the player’s attitude (through dialogue choices), the reliability and demeanor of the interviewee, and the player’s initiative to double-check and compare claims.

All of the reporter training games just discussed have something in common: they present a single assignment as a paradigm. For the young kids at the Newseum, the resulting concreteness does its job: to explain that “reporter” is a viable career choice and to demonstrate what it involves. But for adults, such an approach is too simplistic. It overlooks the connections between different investigations, the development of journalistic reputation, and the effects of time and experience on the working dynamics of a newsroom.

The Global Conflicts series by Danish developer Serious Games Interactive attempts such a feat, underscoring the processes of reporting rather than its end product. Global Conflicts is a much larger effort than the others, offering 3D-rendered worlds more like Beyond Good & Evil than the basic top-down map of Be a Reporter. It is delivered as a retail game and comes packaged with teaching guides for in-class play and discussion.21 One of these games, Global Conflicts: Latin America, is aimed at middle-schoolers, while the other, Global Conflicts: Palestine, was created with high school students in mind.

Global Conflicts: Palestine focuses primarily on target audience and bias. After choosing a character, the player must choose to write for an Israeli or a Palestinian newspaper. This initial decision affects available choices for the rest of the game. The point is clear: writing a good story is not about revealing a simple, ultimate truth, but instead involves understanding and clarifying contextually relevant information.

During the game’s missions, the player interviews soldiers, detainees, civilians, and politicians via relatively complex dialogue trees (figure 6.5). These statements reveal a spectrum of political opinions, and the player must learn how journalists can alter their attitudes and interactions to get information from their sources. For example, a pro-Palestinian reporter can act as a sympathizer of Israel so that an Israeli official might let his guard down to reveal information. Rather than encouraging manipulation, the game demonstrates the complexities of human interaction and the difficulty of extracting information from uncooperative sources.

Unlike the Newseum titles, Pictures for Truth, and Disaster at

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