Anyone want to trade Mugabe for UN food riots?
I covered Play the News at another blog I’m currently contributing to for the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. It’s self-described as “fantasy sports meets the evening news” and encourages news readers to jump in as event forecasters.
Some of the reviewers have been underwhelmed by the site or critical of what kind of game it isn’t. However, the game is an interesting step in applying some game mechanics to a news follower community. Even if it’s not the Holy Grail, I’m all for encouraging more of this kind of experimentation.
In it’s favor, the delivery is clean and polished. Though, I think the level polish could be a slow down on consistent coverage. In my other post, I talk about how crowd sourcing could be a boon here if an effective way to do it can be figured out. Quoting myself is obviously obnoxious, but here’s a clip:
Over time, crowd sourcing could be an effective way to diffuse the unavoidable agenda setting nature of Play the News. While Play the News offers a great variety of stories already, their method of delivery limits their choices in the news they deliver. The site doesn’t tell the player what to think, but it does tell the player what to think about. Creating a system that allowed the crowd to assist in creating the content could greatly increase the number of stories offered.
Post Revisions:
- 27 February, 2009 @ 19:05 [Current Revision] by Josh
- 5 May, 2008 @ 7:37 by Josh
Josh, thanks for reviewing our site (full disclosure: I am the co-founder of ImpactGames, the creator of “Play the News”). Firstly, I’d be interested to read your other post, could you please provide a link?
As for the questions you raise, I believe that some were answered by my partner Eric on broken toys: http://tinyurl.com/4fov42
Mainly- unlike a traditional published “title”, PtN is a live and dynamic platform that was just born. Our business model and future focus is around our content creation tool. Right now, it allows us and our media partners to publish polished experiences on a daily basis. By adding partners as we go, ideally from diverse areas of expertise, we can enrich PtN with content and multiple perspectives. And as we establish this fresh media format, we definitely plan to open it up even more for civic journalism and crowd sourcing. So, more to come, and I am glad that you see the potential of this new way to follow and interact with the news.
Thanks for the insight, Asi. I’m definitely interested in hearing more on your content creation tools. Contact me if you’re interested in doing an interview for newsplay.org.
Also, I edited the post to include the link to the other blog post at StartupMedia.org.