I just ordered Ian Bogost’s new book off of Amazon. It came out a few weeks ago and is entitled Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games.
Ian describes his book this way:
The book is about how videogames make arguments. I offer a theory of rhetoric for games, then I discuss a great many examples from commercial and non-commercial games, focusing on the areas of politics, advertising and learning. The book should be of interest and use for academics, designers, policy makers, marketers, educators, and general readers interested in the culture of videogames.
The book is carrying 5 stars on Amazon at the moment, but those are coming from one reviewer. I’m expecting more of the same though and for the reason this reviewer offers:
Ian Bogost really practices what he preaches. The way he builds and reconfigures ideas and concepts, he effectively illustrates how procedural rhetoric can be done textually as well as through games. This book (along with his earlier _Unit Operations_) shows Bogost doing some of the most substantive thinking in the game studies field.
I tend to agree. The fact that Ian’s thinking is not just theoretical, but is being applied to games getting noticed and hosted by the New York Times is encouraging. I have a few weeks before classes start up again, so I hope to have this read and reviewed by then.
Madrid is an interesting contrast to September 12. Also made by newsgaming.com, the game (or simulation) is similar to September 12 in that it deals with terrorism, but it comes at the subject from a completely different angle.
Madrid was created as a reaction to the terrorist bombings in Spain in 2004. The concept is simple and incredibly elegant. The player’s goal is to keep alive the candles of an illustrated vigil. When a flame is clicked it grows brighter, but it dims over time. Keeping all the candles bright is a relentless task, which seems to be the point. In all, the game’s simple reverence becomes something really beautiful in respect to the story it is inspired by.
In respect to newsgames, it is encouraging to see a game show up with such a quick turn around time. According to the developers, it was created in a day and published a couple days after the bombings. Knowing that something simple and effective can be produced within a relevant time frame is quite encouraging. It also shows that complexity in design isn’t a prerequisite for making a complex editorial point.
I think Flash is a really good option for the journalist who is interested in making newsgames, but isn’t a trained programmer. It’s very visual and the user can see the results of their project on the fly. The initial learning curve can be a bit steep, but I’ve found some educational options that smooth out the process.
Lynda.com offers video tutorials on Flash as well as a wide range of other creativity software. These are the videos I used when first learning. I had tried books and written tutorials I had grabbed online, but it was very slow going. It may depend on your learning style, but I learn so much faster when I can watch someone and listen to their thoughts as they show how something works. The thing I like about Lynda’s teachers is that they feel like they actually have experience teaching. They communicate well and tend to do a good job of predicting newbie questions.
I recently discovered CartoonSmart.com and I’m really excited about these tutorials as they focus primarily on animating and creating games in Flash. The Lynda tutorials operate at a very button down, professional level, while the CartoonSmart tutorials focus on the fun things you’d like to do with the program. Behind CartoonSmart is a kid named Justin that I’ve grown to like a lot through the tutorials I’ve sampled. He operates at a very authentic level. He’ll test and make corrections on the fly and the learner gets a lot of insight on how to freestyle in Flash when you aren’t following a perfectly scripted plan. His tutorials are also super affordable, which is nice.
In the end, I would say that Lynda.com’s videos are ideal for the complete newbie, especially one who isn’t the most tech savvy. CartoonSmart’s videos work well for the learner who’s been inducted into Flash, but is restless to start making something fun with it (the end goal for the newsgame developer).
While the number of newsgames out there is still rather manageable, I want to start using the weekends to catalog past creations.
To kick things off, I’m gonna cover September 12 by newsgaming.com. It’s the first newsgame that I stumbled upon and according to the developer’s FAQ, it’s the first newsgame ever, as they coined the term. I haven’t found this fact disputed anywhere and the games lead designer is Ludology’s Gonzalo Frasca.
September 12, opens by saying, “This is not a game.” It probably is more of an interactive toy than a game as there is no challenge to overcome and the piece operates as more of a sandbox to explore.
The game’s setting is an illustrated Middle Eastern city. Small citizens wander through the city’s streets and markets. Some of these citizens are terrorists. The game leaves the choice of how to interact with the terrorists up to the player. The player’s choices are severely limited and out of this arises the editorial point of the game. It’s a quick and clever way to deliver the creator’s point and it works very well. I don’t really want to give that point away as it’s best delivered through the game itself. Open it in another window now and play it before finishing the article.
Spoilers follow, so you’ve been warned:
It’s fitting that the first newsgame plays on a traditional gaming flaw: the only way to interact with something is to shoot it. While this simplicity can make for more fun in a classic like Asteroids, it becomes a frustration in September 12. No doubt, part of the idea is to create a desire to look/wish for other options.
One thing in the game stuck out to me and I’m really not sure if it’s a weakness or not. If the player doesn’t ever shoot, the terrorists continually wander, but don’t do anything that makes the player antsy to get rid of them. According to the developer’s FAQ, the game intentionally leaves out terrorist acts and focuses on civilian costs. However, I wonder if the emotional complexity could be greater if the player had some interest in actually eliminating the terrorists. As is, the player can only be motivated by personal notions that terrorists need to be killed and these notions would have to be developed outside of the game. Of course, newsgames grow more interesting if they can accommodate biases that players bring to the table. I’m just not sure that September 12 does that.
When it comes to bias, the development team is open about their view on bias within news. In response to the question “Are your games biased?” they say in their FAQ:
Of course they are. We do not believe in objective journalism. We prefer games that encourage critical thinking, even if the player disagrees with our games’ ideas.
This works well within the concept of newsgames as editorial cartoons. However, I tend to believe that there are also opportunities for games that inform in a more objective way. I feel like Points of Entry takes a step in this direction as it allows the player to interact with technical details in real legislation. Also, games could offer a powerful way for the player to interact with a complex issue from more than one side. We’ll see. I hope to explore the idea more throughout this blog.
One of my hopes with this blog is to help journalists with an interest in newsgames better understand good game design. Thanks to German game collective Pixelate Environment, gaining some of the foundational concepts is going to be easy (and fun).
Understanding Games is a four-part series of flash creations that are part presentation and part game. The student is briefed on a game concept by an 8-bit mentor and allowed to play within that concept. Lessons cover concepts such as rules, interactivity, and simulation.
In their description of Points of Entry, Persuasive Games offers this criticism in their commentary:
During debate about the 380-page bill, neither legislators nor the popular press brought its details to the public. One official congressional brief offered two examples. If the Internet fails to cash out the promise of increased citizen participation in policy making, games might allow citizens to experience the implications of legislation more directly. Points of Entry offers one example of such a practice.
As the Senate narrowly revives the immigration legislation this game is based on, this LA Times article continues to prove their point. It gives a nod to the point system, but this is all that is said:
And businesses are upset about a point system, which could end their ability to bring in specific employees with the needed skills.
So, the article summarizes the details of some rather large legislation, but the devil is in the details, right? Several minutes with Points of Entry illuminates the player to the fact that more than just businesses could be affected or bothered by the point system.
Persuasive Games’ Points of Entry went up on New York Times Select this week. The game is well done and clever. It’s especially informative and after several minutes, the player should have a good idea how a recently proposed immigrant point system (Merit-Based Evaluation System) would work.
The game puts the player in the shoes of a US immigration officer who must adjust the attributes of citizenship-seeking individuals that show up on their side of the screen. The player is competing against another officer controlled by the computer and the goal is to make one’s immigrant more immigrate-able than the computer’s. The player can gain points for their current immigrant by changing things like education level and occupation.
As the points are based on points proposed in real-life legislation, game players quickly master real-life criteria that congress wants to use to filter potential citizens. One of the gameplay mechanics rewards the player for beating the computer with as few points as possible. So, rather than always barrelling over the competition by making one’s immigrant a super model (worth 20 points), one may just give their immigrant a job offer (worth 6 points) if that’s all they need to win. Because of this, the becomes aware of even the obscurest criteria as those may be the highest payoff.
In the end, I would pay money to see a face off between Points of Entry players and legislators voting on the point system the game is based on. My guess is the former may know it better in the end.
Welcome to newsPlay. After seeing NYT give the greenlight to Persuasive Games to start creating editorial games for their Times Select readers, I got excited to start covering the phenomenon. Several serious gaming blogs and game design blogs have covered the concept well thus far and they can be found in my blogroll. However, newsPlay’s niche will be to narrow the focus to just newsgames. With that, I hope to provide a resource for journalists that are curious about this form of new media. I’m sure this will all develop over time. We’ll see how it goes.
