May 2009 Archives

Pictures for Truth is a newsgame funded by Amnesty International, produced using Microsoft's XNA software development kit. You play an American journalist in China just prior to the Beijing Olympics. You have a date to meet with a Chinese journalist covering poor living conditions at a toxic electronics dump. When you arrive at your hotel, you receive a call informing you that your friend has been detained by authorities at the dump.

A police officer at the dump confiscates your camera and hauls your friend off to jail. You must find a new camera, interview people at the dump and outside a jail, and take pictures to accompany the "stories" generated by the interviews. You write three stories: about the health issues surrounding the dump, the working conditions of those living near the dump, and about China's municipal system in regards to the death penalty (this story is unlocked by completing the first two).

In the course of our research we have examined how games or game-like interactive applications have been incorporated into some news outlets. But how do all these experimentations from the media industry relate to the training of future journalists and the research being done at Journalism schools?  Is there a space for videogames in J-school academia?

Traditionally, journalism schools, at least in the United States, have been separated into broadcast and print departments. This division of teaching has been present for decades as these platforms were completely different worlds: different skill sets, different media companies, and so forth. Today, with the efforts in the industry to converge and the growing space of the web as a blender of the traditional media, the separated platform training has been challenged.

Another focus that can be seen in Journalism Schools is a more theoretical one where it is possible to find more media, culture and communication research. Around this perspective we can see videogames taken as a cultural and societal phenomenon. For example, schools would observe how the entertainment industry is creating brands that are deployed across different platforms, including videogames, or they would assess how games affect people and society.

In both cases it is difficult to see videogames more than as an observable phenomenon, and far beyond from the idea that videogames could be something that journalists could create as news-related product. However, if I would predict how games will knock on the door of the Journalism schools, I could see that news-gaming might be introduced in the same way as multimedia and online journalism was done some years ago.