April 2009 Archives

A few months ago I attended a couple of Journalism related conferences: The Society of News Design conference in Las Vegas and the Online News Association in Washington D.C. One of my goals attending these conferences was to assess the current understanding of new storytelling resources inside the online media industry, mainly interactive infographics and games, and how the newsrooms where adapting to the new challenges. It was good to see that many outlets were thinking and doing things about these topics. However, I believe their approaches are still too shy... and probably still unsuited for game development in a news environment.

For many years the word "convergence" has been present inside the media industry, but not many experiments became as successful as expected. Some companies blended their broadcast, print, and online newsrooms, others created collaboration teams between them, and many other combinations. In many cases the companies underestimated the culture clashes, technological challenges, and other issues that they would face. Others made deeper changes that seem to be going into the right direction. Even media companies where convergence was not an issue years ago are streamlining their operations and integrating as much as they can with their web counterparts.

Garry's Mod, a modification and customization tool based on Valve's Source Engine (used for Half-Life 2) has become a way for players to create three-dimensional environments that take advantage of the physics and object handling engine as well as existing (and new) assets. In Fall 2008, a Berlin Wall "mod" was released to the public by an independent creator. The creators of the map describe it as:

"This is the Berlin Wall singleplayer map for Half-Life 2: Episode Two. After a huge anticipation for almost 2 months, the little sketch by Stene was soon made real by a group of talented modders. As the story goes, you are a citizen of the East Berlin, and tired of the evil communist government. You dream of living at the West Germany, and you are about to find a way there somehow. There are many routes you can find and take, maybe you want to roam through dirty tunnel, or have a little gunfight with the guards. The buildings on the map are based on those of real-life, such as Checkpoint Charlie and the death strip."

As a proponent of the potential of three-dimension game spaces as informative experiential sources, the Berlin Wall mod caught my attention. In a landscape mostly void of what we have termed "documentary games," the Berlin Wall mod seemed a welcome addition. This kind of game represents an historical issue through exploration, the conglomeration of factual sources, and a presentation style akin to our common notions of the documentary in film and television. I downloaded it, gave it a go, and was severely disappointed. Though it has a documentary quality in its presentation it doesn't make much of an attempt to tell a story. Though it may have modeled some of the physical landscape, the mod lacked any of the qualities that would have represented the social and political tensions of the era.

The Newsgames Project was begun by identifying a number of areas of inquiry that seemed to address the big picture issues. You can see these in practice through the main categories of the website. One of these, discourse, was identified through Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's book The Elements of Journalism. News is social because it affects groups of people and results in a desire for new facts, ideas, and opinions. Kovach and Rosenstiel feel that discourse not only promotes informative dialogue between citizens, but also acts as a way for people to talk to the newsmakers about their news.

When we think of discourse in this context, we are prompted to think about socially based discussions. Newspapers allow readers to write letters to the editor in which they voice their opinions on a story. Of course, this forum isn't as democratizing as we might hope. It's been often cited that online news outlets counter this by providing easier methods of feedback and unlimited space for participation, though a quick glance at the comments section of any news story prompts questions of the quality of this feedback. News radio often allows listeners to call in to argue (or perhaps more commonly, agree) with the host. The University of Virginia's David Golumbia finds this "revelation" suspect, however.

While the Internet has been lauded for giving power to the people--providing outlets for feedback or turning consumers into creators by providing a distribution channel for various forms of citizen-created media--Golumbia wrote that we most commonly end up replicating existing structures rather than creating new forms of discourse. It is not about our newly found ability to talk back that makes digital media powerful--after all, we've had feedback outlets long before the Internet. Instead, we should look to digital media for new forms of discourse that do not have their place in the current structure. So how do we handle discourse within games?

What makes chart porn so appealing to us? There's certainly the admiration for fine craftsmanship, extensive data tables, and flashy aesthetics. I'd like to suggest that another reason we like it is the same "awareness instinct" written of by Rosenstiel & Kovach in The Elements of Journalism.

Rosenstiel & Kovach use the idea of the awareness instinct to explain why we read the news. One purpose of the news is to influence public opinion in such a way that the force of the people's opinion can be brought to bear on matters of policy; however, not all reportage seeks this end. And we don't read the news just so we know what our government is doing. One way to explain the popularity of investigative reporting and seemingly unimportant news such a tech and beauty columns is this awareness instinct. It implies a basic human desire for any and all information. Certainly the idea is that we hope to synthesize some of this information and use it in our daily lives, but this doesn't explain why people are so glued to celebrity gossip and the latest specs on Sony televisions. To put it crudely: we want to know about stuff.

In looking for proof-of-concepts for the success and creation of documentary and editorial games, I came across a historical movement in country music that I think bears exploration. Country music became popular music in the United States after World War II, because so many training camps were located in the South. Soldiers from around the country were introduced to the genre then, and they brought it home with them when they returned from war. An accompanying reason for the meteoric rise of country music was the "saga song" - a prominent sub-genre in the 40's and 50's that openly explored tragedies such as war and murder.