David Johnson’s “For the People”

Journalism.co.uk tipped me off to a game-like news project/concept by David Johnson. Johnson’s an assistant prof at American University and his idea is called “For the People.” He pitched it to the Knight News Challenge and it goes something like this:

Using Microsoft’s XNA framework, he wants to develop a Sim City-style game based on the politics of Washington DC with avatars of real, elected officials placed inside federal buildings. Topical information, for example from news organisations, could then be streamed into the system.

The article doesn’t dip into what makes it a game (i.e. is there a goal, can it be won or lost, etc.). So, it may be more of a sim or toy (in a non-trivial sense of the word).

Back when Lively and Vivaty Scenes were first launching, I had a similar idea of building a house where users could drop in and attach tips for being more energy efficient to household objects. For example, the dishwasher could bring up a note about turning off the heat drying or windows could be linked to videos about caulking seams. However, the jury is out on the adoption rate of online, 3-D social spaces like this. Lively was shuttered at the end of ’08 and I haven’t heard a lot of chatter about Vivaty (though, I should check that one out again. You should, too).

Anyhow, journalism.co.uk’s article foregoes game detail and plunges back into points that shouldn’t be news. For example: 

With ‘For The People’ he hopes to engage a younger audience in current affairs through gaming and reach out beyond the stereotypical male, computer-lover.

The ESA released statistics a couple years ago that said the average gamer is 33 years old and more women over 18 play games than boys under 17.

CC-licensed on flickr by morganglines

I feel Johnson’s pain here. He can’t just pitch a cool idea. Instead he has to backtrack to defending the validity of a new medium and pander to the fact that it could bring in those non-newspaper-buying young people that newsrooms have been dying (quite literally) to reach. Last year, I worked on a game concept with a news organization and every time we talked about players, they were assumed to be college age or younger. So weird.

Johnson articulates his criticism for a lack of media vision much better here:

“Executives didn’t see that games were immersive storytelling platforms and failed to recognise that, writing them off as fanboy entertainment was akin to leaving film to the keystone cops instead of using it for documentary journalism,” he said.

In the end, producing a solid, recognizable game for the purpose of news lies squarely in the realm of new territory. You better be ready to defend criticism from all angles.