Introduction: We Have Always Played

Try to recall your earliest memories of a newspaper. What comes to mind? A hard-hitting exposé that shattered your preconceived notions? Reading the sports section? Laughing over comic strips? Conquering the crossword puzzle?

We have always played with our news. By necessity and by invention, news is consumed imaginatively in a wider context than just a tallying of events. This fact is especially evident in a digital environment, where news stories intermingle with disparate forms of communication, from social media networks to massively multiplayer online games. As much as the Internet and digitization have disrupted the business of news in countless ways, the growing multiplicity of information sources, games, play, leisure activities, and entertainment has expanded the daily news experience.

Despite stigmas and fads surrounding play and the news, we can draw vital lessons from their complex relationship. Many of the tools that online newsmakers use are similar to those applied in games. Even the fervor with which we share information on social media can be considered playful. While it might be surprising that British broadcaster Charlie Brooker put Twitter at the top of his list of the twenty-five most significant video games in the world, the notion that it is fun to compete for responses to tweets isn’t astonishing to anyone using the service.

This report describes specific intersections between games, play, and journalism, highlighting strategies, products, and sites of playful activity in the current news landscape with the goal of elucidating this pervasive phenomenon. Projects developed by the likes of The Washington Post and Mother Jones, and playful newsrooms like BuzzFeed, help illustrate some of the techniques journalists use to engage, inform, and educate readers through play.

The report also counsels journalists, developers, and editors about the best ways and means of incorporating games and play into the newsroom. Play, in this context, should be defined as experimenting, persistently “toying” with news products and production, primarily in response to user reaction. I have drawn prescriptions from interviews with journalists, editors, and developers at a wide variety of journalistic institutions, from The Miami Herald to ProPublica. This research also includes commentary from educators in journalistic institutions, who are experimenting with playful design, and a number of developers in the game industry, whose expertise helps bridge the gap between traditional games and the novel forms newsrooms are adapting ⁱ.

Chapter 1: History and Discourses

This chapter scrutinizes the history of play and the news by tracing the origins of crossword puzzles in newspapers and exploring the fluctuations in popularity of those news products based primarily around video game-based elements, such as newsgames in the mid-2000s and gamification in the past five years. These historical vignettes expose some of the key motivations for newsrooms to use games and play—to engage and maintain users, provide support and richness to the news bundle, and modernize traditional news formats.

Chapter 2: Features of Play

The second chapter establishes some of the common attributes of games and play in current digital news products. Initially, it distinguishes between content-driven and situation-specific features—such as the MTV newsgame Darfur is Dying@darfurisdying and The New York Times “Dialect Quiz”@dialectquiz—and the use of stock formats and other elements from games and play to enhance user experience and participation.

Following this discussion is a glossary of existing game and play mechanics in journalism. Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each, the categories discussed are: “Badges, Points, and Prizes,” which have fallen out of favor after their brief stint of popularity at the beginning of the decade; “Quizzes and Questions,” which have seen increased acceptance, particularly due to their positive reception and their ease of production; “Situation-specific Designs and Packages,” which are often used as part of multimedia bundles to present particular content in a novel and engaging fashion; “Newsgames and Gameworlds,” which most closely adhere to traditional video games, but require significant effort in terms of both time and expense to conceive and build, and tend to appeal to specific niche groups.

Chapter 3: Newsroom Culture at Play

Certain digital newsrooms are becoming increasingly playful environments in which news producers and the products they create are both experimental and fun. Rather than snubbing play as merely childish, it inspires a variety of newsroom practices, from bolstering reader loyalty to encouraging improvisation Little is taken for granted in this dynamic news environment, and empathy, fun, and novelty are continuously encouraged.

Using the entertainment and news website BuzzFeed—and specifically its game team—as a case study, this chapter analyzes some of the organization’s playful practices, the relevance of data and metrics, and the role of iteration and experimentation in news creation. It examines how play fits into developers’ digital toolboxes and how the infrastructure and space of the newsroom has changed in order to facilitate this agenda.

Chapter 4: Games and Play as Business Models

As the news industry struggles financially, the video game industry has become one of the most lucrative in the world—a seventy-six billion dollar industry in 2013.¹ Furthermore, there has been a meteoric rise of independent, or “indie,” gaming both online and across game platforms. What economic lessons could digital newsrooms take from the game industry, even as both compete for views and clicks? This section breaks down different business models in the game industry and their applicability to news products. These include the AAA major studio games and freemium mobile game models, such as the trendy Candy Crush Saga.

Chapter 5: Challenges to Play

Even the most fervent newsgame advocates recognize that there are limits for when and how to use games in the newsroom. Certain types of content may not be best represented in game formats. Also, the culture of journalism, from graduate and professional schools to entrenched news organizations, seems to have become resistant to playful environments, which leads to the isolation of playful designers and developers in newsrooms. Furthermore, the use of games and play appears to have both negative and positive effects on the perceived brand of a news organization. Practically, the most significant deterrents in game usage are the skills, time, and financial resources required to create, deploy, and maintain these products.

Chapter 6: Getting Into the Game! Advice andRecommendations for Newsmakers

The last chapter of this report dispenses practical advice and best practices for employing games and play within the newsroom based on the work of not only successful journalists, but also game designers and developers.

This research report advocates for a flexible newsroom, willing to tailor its products and departments to its readership and subject matter. Just as game designers espouse both user testing and continual tinkering in order to cultivate a truly immersive and fun game, similar practices can be instituted inside newsrooms. At the same time, the space in which people make news should be rethought, with fewer rigid departmental boundaries and a more diverse staff. Of course, there is no singular model or method that will work across all newsrooms, and constant adaptation must accompany these innovations.

While there are significant technical challenges to assimilating play into newsrooms, I suggest at the report’s end that journalists take advantage of the skills in which they are already proficient—engaging devoted audiences and making use of written text and other traditional storytelling methods. While offering guidance about specific popular tools for game design, I support the development of open source and open access tools. This will not only allow new playful forms of storytelling to emerge, but also aid in the creation of standards for the further preservation of multimedia and interactive projects.

While games, play, and the news have a long history, we find ourselves at an exciting moment as newsmakers’ strategies and efforts to playfully engage with users are beginning to see benefits. For digital newsrooms already built around much of the same technology and practices of game designers, a playful approach seems particularly attractive.