Breaking the News
Can videogames save journalism?
"We're sitting with people, reporters, and they're telling us almost with tears in their eyes that if we did celebrity gossip, like a Britney Spears mini-game, that would make money. They would tell us something like, you know, it's very hard for me to sell advertisements on the Middle East. It's very easy for me to sell advertising on gossip, on celebrities."
Last summer, Ian Bogost and I sat down with Asi Burak and Eric Brown of Impact Games to discuss an experiment in interactive journalism called Play the News. Burak and Brown formed their company after graduating from Carnegie Mellon's Masters of Entertainment Technology program. They set out to make entertaining games about current events, where learning doesn't come from hand-feeding information but from boiling an issue down to its stakeholders and their actions.
The first Impact game, 2006's PeaceMaker, presents a multifaceted simulation of the contemporary political situation in Israel and Palestine. Burak was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Force, giving him an intimate knowledge of the issue. But the game isn't skewed to be pro-Israel. Rather, it encompasses all of the significant voices in the conflict. A player takes the role of either the Palestinian or Israeli head of state navigating murky political waters in an attempt to form a peace agreement.
