Deadline: First Thoughts

I just got back from a very cool event called NewsTools2008, which consisted of 3.5 days of geeks and journalists figuring out how technology can make the news better for people. While there, I had a chance to talk to two guys who helped make a cool newsgame app for facebook.

I posted some first thoughts on StartupMedia.org and I’m cross-posting them below:

Deadline is a fun game. It’s actually really fun, and at the same time, it’s about the news. Well, it’s not just about the news, it is the news. It’s just delivered differently.

Deadline is a game played through facebook that tests the player’s knowledge of the news. The first time I encountered it, I was knee deep in school work. Yet, this facebook app managed to steal over an hour of my time. It was a fair trade though as I found myself thoroughly caught up on recent events when I finally managed to quit.

At NewsTools2008 yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tony Kuttner of NewzWag.com. He’s on the team that created Deadline and shared his thoughts on

Here are the highlights:

-Other news quiz applications have relied on the player knowing trivia (what was the general’s name that…) rather than knowing about the story. Someone who just quotes trivia when talking makes for a dull conversationalist. Delivering more of the story and what’s interesting about that story makes for better conversations and therefore a better game.

-Regular, new content is key. They aim to get 15-20 new stories up every weekday and 10 each day on weekends.

-Aesthetics were important to the team. It had to look good. It’s hard to test exactly how much of an effect this has on whether people play, but it seems important. (Anecdotaly, I think the design makes me more prone to stick around.)

-Including interesting, sometimes offbeat, stories and making it easy to share with your friends is important to the community aspect.

-The application was created as part of a team that included 3 developers. None were game developers, but some members of the team were avid gamers. (Avid gaming seems important as they get a lot of little things right).