Using games to tell the news

The Beat Bloggers – a group of US journalists who are experimenting with using social networks in newsgathering – have posted about using games to tell the news.

This might sound a little odd at first but it soon starts to make sense – it’s another way of engaging readers and letting them have their say about what’s going on in the world. The post points to a game that ReadWriteWeb has been running:

You could be a developer, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc, and predict what they would do next and how they would react to future circumstances.

From ReadWriteWeb:

“How it works: in this particular game you can choose to play the role of any of 4 different players: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, a Market Analyst. Then you can either predict what will happen, or voice your opinion about what should happen. Or both. If for example you choose to play as Google, you can predict that Google will open up the languages beyond Python. If you voice an opinion, you are guided by several “advisors” – in this case we have RWW, CNET and Dave Winer. The difference between predicting and voicing an opinion is that you may not necessarily agree with what you predict Google will do, so you can then cast your opinion about what you think Google ought to do!

Now I know what you are thinking, “too techie.” Again: Look past the tech subject matter – this is a method that can be used to cover ANY topic from the environment to your local city government. Turn the news into an educational game.