Corollaries in Journalism

This diverse set of business models may seem alien to the practices of journalists, but corollaries do exist. AAA games have sustained similar challenges in terms of cost and infrastructure as they’ve adjusted to digital platforms. While the game industry radically reimagines its distribution systems every few years, adapting them to popular technology and demand, it’s not always with absolute success.

Online advertising is the most obvious correlation between the gaming and journalism industries. Game developers incessantly pursue new means of embedding advertising into their content based on extremely detailed analysis of user response. And while embedded advertising may be most prominently showcased in the mobile game market, it is embraced throughout the game industry. AAA game designers have embedded advertising for years—subtly promoting products in the billboards and backgrounds of sports games, for instance. These efforts may provide important revenue streams for high-end newsgames, which need significant capital investment prior to release, and—similar to video games—can be graphically rich. Likewise, traditional embedded ads on media websites ranging from Kinja to The Des Moines Register are continuously modified. Sponsored stories and lists on a site like BuzzFeed highlight new avenues for inserting advertising into content. And the move to freemium content by game makers, as opposed to monthly pay-to-play models, is analogous to the increasingly ubiquitous practice of “leaky paywalls”—which allot readers free access to a limited number of articles monthly—by subscription-based news services like The New York Times.

Part of the continued success of the game industry is its careful consideration of the platforms that distribute games. The rise of casual games, played intermittently at home, in transit, or at work—and particularly the success of games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, and Dots—is that they were designed specifically for mobile devices and not made in the same manner as games for the computer or video game console. The news industry is beginning to assume similar endeavors, with apps like NYT Now, The Economist’s Espresso, and even NPR One being designed with not just the web, but specifically mobile devices in mind. Furthermore, both the game industry and news industry seem to be aware of, if not concerned about, increasingly cross-platform experiences. Games like Candy Crush Saga need to be played on both smartphones and tablets just as BuzzFeed’s content needs to be compatible with mobile devices, computers, and tablets alike. Different are the nuances between the business models in the news and games industries, but not the exigency of evolution.