A Case Study in Newsgame Creation: Why Game Designers and Journalists are Still Learning to Work Together

• In Event: On the Technical Side of Digital Games

Abstract

As early as 2001, digital newsgames offered a noteworthy opportunity to engage audiences and provide a new news consumption experience. Nearly 5 years later newsgames have not clearly delivered on their potential. With such promise, why didn’t news presses give way to newsgame studios?
This paper provides a simple case study in newsgame production, providing a set of lessons learned from an academic studio working with (anonymized), one of the largest United States based daily newspapers. It does so to examine the contemporary opportunities and challenges in producing games for news organizations.
The paper describes how the increased reliability of low cost, simple game-making software has afforded for the production of just-in-time newsgames. Such opportunity may facilitate a second wave of newsgames as lowered cost of production, increased distribution channels and growing ludic literacy of the general population facilitates their success. However three challenges remain obstacles to their growth: the pace of news; a misunderstanding of the rhetorical properties of games media, and an evolving ludoliteracy shaped by social currency and politics.

Author

• Lindsay Grace, American University