From Crafters Inventory’s book section, we are delighted to feature on Day 21, a book titled, Newsgames – Journalism at Play by Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, and Bobby Schweizer.
About the book
Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive but most online journalism just translate 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. 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. And Powerful Robo’s 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 journalism–not just an occasional treat for online readers–newsgames can make a valuable contribution.
