Challenges to Play

With their networked technologies, physicality, and innovative distribution platforms, games represent some of the major shifting innovations in current media. Many are worthy of journalistic consideration; yet news practitioners and institutions are reluctant to adopt them. What causes such skepticism?

This chapter investigates the challenges of integrating games into news practices and instilling more playful design orientation into journalistic environments. Beginning with how the rhetoric of games and play conflicts with the work-oriented ethos of journalism, it delves deeper into the practical difficulties that arise when the two meet head on.