• Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

#146 – Games bring play, engagement to complex stories

May 8, 2015 by ItsAllJournalism
http://podone.noxsolutions.com/launchpod/ItsAllJournalism/mp3/IAJ-2015-05-08-167.mp3
Journalists can learn a lot from game designers about storytelling and keeping an audience engaged.
“I think the real opportunity in news is to understand the way we approach problems in games and how we look to solve them,” said Lindsay Grace, associate professor at American University and director of AU’s Game Lab and Studio.
Among Grace’s many achievements is founding Miami University’s Persuasive Play Lab, a research group that examined how games could be used to alter people’s opinions and interest. He also helped launch AU’s new Master of Arts in Game Design program.
Lindsay Grace is an associate professor at American University and director of AU's Game Lab and Studio. (Photo by Michael O'Connell)

Lindsay Grace is an associate professor at American University and director of AU’s Game Lab and Studio. (Photo by Michael O’Connell)

For Grace, journalism and game design intersect in the space between editorial games and persuasive play.
“The idea is to try and engage people with current topics by framing some of those challenges, affecting people’s perspectives by offering them a game experience,” he said.
Grace described several ways in which journalists could use games to inform the stories they are writing.
“I think one of the things that’s most sort of promising these days is using games as kind of an inroads to the complexity of a particular story,” he said. “We know from years and years of making digital games in particular is that they’re really good at changing people’s perspectives, for giving them an opportunity to sort of put themselves in someone else’s shoes.”
Despite all the bells and whistles that digital technology adds to gaming, the idea of using a game to persuade people is not a new concept. The Monopoly board game, for example, was designed as a persuasive game.
“It was designed to help people understand a theory called Georgist economics and how landlording can actually create sort of an impoverished situation,” Grace said. “And we’ve had that tradition. What people have begun to realize is that we can really produce some really compelling entries into`complex topics through games.”

Games help break down complex stories

During a presentation at the recent South By Southwest conference, Grace mentioned a number of current games that are trying to help people understand how government works.
“There are about three or four games these days that all afford people the ability to balance the federal budget,” he said. “The idea is to make it a play experience, but at the same time give people an understanding of how complex that task is, and that’s sort of the rhetoric of those games.”
Designer Molleindustria, for example, uses  games to break down complex stories. “He makes games about the politics behind mobile phones, producing for IOS devices and also games around large corporations and how they operate and giving people that perspective,” Grace said.
Beyond helping to break down a complex story, a good game can draw a reader deeper into that story, so that they want to learn more.
“The science of game design is really about engagement and understanding how to compel people to want to play more,” Grace said. “And so, we’ve got a nice, strong tradition in engagement design. That’s a lot of what I teach. It’s not sort of the standards of game design, but it’s about how to attract and audience, keep an audience and keep them compelled to want to stay in the world that you’ve created for them.”
In this week’s podcast, It’s All Journalism hosts Michael O’Connell and Nicole Ogrysko talk to Lindsay Grace, game designer and associate professor at American University’s Game Lab and Studio. Grace talks about the intersection of news and games design, and how journalists can use games to engage readers and tell stories. He also talks about American University’s new Master of Arts in Game Design program.
— Michael O’Connell

Similar Podcasts:

 #124 – Oculus Rift and immersive journalism

#122 – Geeks, GamerGate and games journalism with Aram Zucker-Scharff

#36 – Washington Post’s Kat Downs talks graphics reporting, breaking news visually

Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post

Rob King at SNDDC
#145 – Rob King: No B Teams at ESPN

Next Post


#147 – A newsroom filled with designers

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • It's All Journalism producers Nicole Ogrysko and Michael O'Connell (Photo by Steve Johnson)#230 – That timed we killed a beauty pageant …
  • Dana Coester#335 It’s time to design newsrooms people want to work in
  • Jared Easley, left, and Dan Franks are the co-founders of Podcast Movement.#282 — If you build it, podcasters will attend
  • #316 — How much greater could your Facebook reach be?

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Take a Survey, Earn Some Swag

If you haven’t heard, we created a five-question online survey to help us assemble a toolbox for journalists that we’ll share on our podcast and website. Please take a few minutes to share the tools that help make your job easier.

We’ve also just launched a new survey on how to improve our podcast. Let us know how we could do better.

To those people who complete one of our the surveys, we’ll be sending out a limited number of It’s All Journalism coffee mugs while supplies last. Show your support for good journalism by taking the survey and get a reward in return.

Help Support Our Podcast

Promoting good journalism is essential in a democracy. By donating to the It’s All Journalism Patreon page, you will help ensure that we continue producing the weekly podcast that focuses on good journalism. You’ll also help to boost us to the next level with live events and exclusive content. Donate here.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Latest Posts

  • 444. How Documented uses WhatsApp to reach its audience
  • Better News: Use Slack to host cultural conversations in your newsroom
  • 443. Tucson newspaper proves to be a vital source for the Latinx community
  • Top 10 podcast episodes of 2020
  • 442. 2020 Lookback: America from Canada’s perspective

Copyright © 2021 · Pintercast Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in