If Albert Einstein could say “Life is just like a game”, who am I to say we shouldn’t treat the news like a game, too?
Traditionalists will say the news is no game. It is a serious matter of fact gathering, verification, and presentation that is not be treated lightly.
However, two pieces I read last week gave me pause for thought: Does gaming have a significant role to play in the future of journalism?
The first piece was an interview that Liam Dann conducted with Dame Wendy Pye for the New Zealand Herald. In it the highly successful educational book publisher said: “I’m really interested in the power of the gaming industry. [Gaming] seems to be occupying a lot of children so what my dream is to have really good educational games … not just something about a giraffe running around with the letter G on the screen or something. Imagine if we can use gaming’s magic and we can marry that with solid education.” She is working with a large Chinese company to develop her idea. If education, I thought, why not journalism?
The second piece was a research report by NZ on Air on Māori audiences. It found that rangitahi (which it characterised as 15 to 24-year-olds), like their Pakeha counterparts, are less likely to engage with television, radio or newspapers and express little interest in traditional news content.They are more likely to consume global online media than New Zealand content. They are arguably harder to reach than other sections of the wider community so present the toughest challenge. However, the same report notes that a third of Māori game online and spend an average of two hours a day doing so. Rangitahi are unsurprisingly the largest gaming group among Māori. That, I thought, could be the key to exposing them to the news.
Non-gamers probably see the gaming industry as a combination of demons and first-person shooters that allow young males to play out their violence fantasies with a bit of pornography on the side. The reality is very different. Yes, those violent fantasies are still catered for, but the industry has become diverse and sophisticated. Its evolution is not lost on news organisations – and vice versa. The owner of the Los Angeles Times, a remarkable South African/American businessman (and transplant surgeon) named Patrick Soon-Shiong is also a major gaming investor. He described video gaming as “the most evolved engagement engine” that fostered a different form of social networking because it added the element of storytelling. Isn’t storytelling what journalism is all about?
The use of gaming techniques by news media to reach hard-to-connect audiences is nothing new. Buzzfeed began using quizzes and interactive graphics as early as 2008 in a bid to engage with younger audiences. We see similar techniques in quizzes and interactive infographics on news websites like Stuff and nzherald.co.nz. The fact-checking organisation Politifact had a mobile game called PolitTruth in which players had to guess where a story sat on a spectrum between true and false.
David Dowling, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa, has charted the progress of gaming in journalism and is the author of a book on the subject with the off-putting title of The Gamification of Digital Journalism. He shows how it has grown from the use of relatively simple digital gaming techniques to the development of immersive virtual reality news-based games, particularly for advocacy journalism and news documentaries.
In an article published in the 2024 edition of the journal Questions de Communication Dowling wrote: “As both stand-alone products and a supplement to traditional news, newsgames offer the context and analysis to probe beneath headlines. The persuasive intimacy of the gaming experience is often enabled through an avatar based on a real person, rather than fictional subjects, that carries social and psychological implications, especially through a heightened sense of empathy that can be a catalyst for political change.”
Two phrases in that paragraph caught my eye – “persuasive intimacy” and “catalyst for political change”. The former offers real opportunities to attract younger audiences, particularly those who want a sense of engagement with the information they receive. The latter, however, serves as a warning that gaming should not be seen as a tool without potential risks.
Both phrases, however, suggest to me that – with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence – we may on the cusp of a significant move in the evolution of journalism. Dowling and others see “convincing evidence” that games canfunction as meaningful manifestations of journalism and that being mindful of journalistic boundaries protects against the misuse of what can be a persuasive medium.
The technologies that are employed in gaming are now in widespread use and, with the addition of AI, may be applied on an industrial scale to generational targeting of potential news audiences. In other words, it will not be a replacement for traditional approaches to journalism in the short to medium term but an evolutionary augmentation that may in time replace tradition. First, it could provide a primary entry point to the news for GenZ. I’m not talking here about a clever addition to a website. I mean a purpose-built news portal for a new generation of news consumers.
The World Association of News Producers (WAN) sees the potential. Two years ago, it established NewsArcade as a development hub looking at ways of engaging Generation Z in digital journalism. Newsgaming has been an important part of that development. So, too, has the process of finding out why GenZ is among the largest groups of news avoiders and what it will take to lure them back.
In May, it gathered 70 international students in Copenhagen to talk about the news values that were important to them. The result was The Copenhagen Criteria, which sets out seven new qualities that GenZ wanted in the news. The criteria are:
- Educational – show us news that helps us learn and understand more about relevant topics
- Empowering – show us news that encourages us and provides tools to take action based on informed decisions
- G-local – show us how global events impact us locally and vice versa
- Human – show us diverse representation through personal experiences, that evoke empathy, compassion and inspiration
- Impactful – show us events that affect numerous people and influence us or those involved
- Objective – show us fact-based news, unbiased and from different perspectives
- Timely – show us current news and prioritize ongoing events
While these may be seen as traditional news values, perhaps expressed in a new way, several point to opportunities for a gaming approach to presentation. GenZ see contextualising and humanising of the news as important, as is the learning experience. Another word for education is exploration, and context is another component of the same journey. Empathy, compassion and inspiration are elements built into appealing characterisations. I can see these values being part of newsgame engagement.
However, I concede some will have an aversion to presenting the news as ‘a game’. When WAN asked editors and journalists how they felt about such an approach almost half were sceptical. However, when asked about using interactive formats, almost the same number were enthusiastic. Gaming is interactivity in a different guise, one that can still conform to ethical tenets and preserve the integrity of journalism. The survey was, in effect, asking the same question two different ways. Perhaps all it will take to hasten its use will be to call it something other than ‘gaming’.
Whatever it is called, it has the potential to capture audiences at an age that will make them the same lifetime consumers of news as the generations that have preceded them. If it means creating new platforms on which to play newsgames – with experience-enhancing capabilities like 360-degree virtual reality – then so be it. It will pay off if the games are imaginative and engaging.
The approaches that can be taken in newsgames are as varied and as sophisticated as the imagination of game developers and journalists. The association’s NewsArcade project has an approach that is designed to provide game players with information while setting them a challenge. It employs a template based format and flow, with the typical article structure (intro, background, conflict, outcome), that can be used in many different topics, for many different stories. Journalist can then easily write or paste content to create an interactive article in less than 2 hours. Have a try. Here’s the link https://newsarcade.in-two.com/stories
It may be the start of a new way for you to absorb the news.