Telling a story versus playing it. Can journalism benefit from practicing games?
“Superficial, sudden, unsifted, too fast for the truth”. This is how The New York Times described the telegraph in 1858 (Lafrance, 2014). However, despite sufficient doses of skepticism in the beginning, new forms of storytelling (subsequently, journalism) have continued to evolve. In the autumn of 2017, The Financial Times, the newspaper with business-oriented audience (According to FT Global Survey 2017, 61% of the FT readers are business decision makers; 30% are working as top senior executives) released… An interactive game (watch an excerpt below).
The Shift Inside The Newsroom: Journalists As Game Creators?
“The Uber Game was a personal passion project that took a year to make with zero budget”, says Robin Kwong, the Head of the FT Digital Delivery and one of the The Uber Game creators when we meet in the skyscraper in Southwark where FT office is located. Later he adds: “One of the most surprising things is that it has been very well received internally. I have got a message from the chief, CEO talking about… their scores basically. I also had a lot of conversations last month with people wanting to do similar things for other subjects. It is definitely shifting media perspective a little bit.“
Serious games is a whole branch in the games industry. Fake it To Make It, Fibber, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday — those are just a few examples of games that do not fit only under entertainment label. When playing a simulation-style game Fake it To Make It by Amanda Warner, users can learn about creation and distribution of the fake news; Fibber by Seek Change enables critical self-analysis of one‘s ability to perceive statements from the figures in power and promotes fact checking while 1979 Revolution: Black Friday is based on the first hand testimonies of witnesses telling a story of Iranian revolution in 1979 (Games For Change, 2018).
The examples mentioned above have been created by professional game developers or dedicated organisations; however a number of different games released by the news outlets might be considered as a signal that games are expanding their territory. Many journalists and game designers are working together to create efficient tools for audience engagement while placing users inside their stories. Their production varies in form and complexity with some games being almost as long as documentary films (for instance, The Pirate Fishing by Juliana Ruhfus from Al Jazeera) and others staying in the limits of a feature article (Syrian Journey by the BBC) or even shorter (You Draw It by the New York Times, Will robots take my job? by Financial Times, The Lone Climate Change Denier by The Guardian).
Different approaches fulfill different purposes and target different audiences, yet the bigger question is if the newsrooms really have to consider incorporating games into their storytelling practice? Or maybe it is just a short-living trend that does not have any capacity to enhance journalistic stories? In order to find possible answers to imposed questions, I played the Uber Game and talked to one of its creators Robin Kwong.
When Storytelling Becomes Storyplaying: Analysing The Structure of The Uber Game
Originally, the Uber Game has been designed as a supplement to FT Story “Uber: The uncomfortable view from the driving seat” by Leslie Hook. Therefore, its performance is based on unsophisticated mechanics and text whereas the game is free to play. The main player‘s goal is to earn enough money to feed his kids and pay $1,000 mortgage payment. His journey is based on “choose-your-own adventure” principle and formed through answering questions (choosing one of two-three options suggested by the creators of the game). The progression along storyline depends on a player‘s ability to select the right option that sometimes includes testing different skills (such as situation analysis, rational thinking) and making moral choices (as illustrated below).
Due to the limited choice opportunities and fixed storyline, the agency of the Uber Game players is very low; however, according to Robin Kwong, this decision reflects their editorial intention to show “the monotony of driving Uber every single day” as it is “very easy to just keep clicking”. “We didn‘t want you to feel bad for the drivers, we wanted you to get the sense of what it was like to be in that situation“, says Robin Kwong.
Unlike many other creators of interactive games, the authors of The Uber Game did not put a lot of effort trying to make an immersive experience. The interface of the game is clean and modern; however there is no audio whereas the whole experience relies on abstract illustrations instead of showing real pictures or videos of the Uber drivers. The reasons for this decision are not only financial, as, according to Robin Kwong, abstraction enables putting users in the hero’s shoes (watch the video below).
But what is the purpose of using all these features? Is the Uber Game different from“Uber: The uncomfortable view from the driving seat” article by Leslie Hook? The short answer is: yes, it is.
Game Against Article: What is better for the story?
To begin with, the Uber Game provides less context than the article by Leslie Hook. Players of the game, as opposed to readers of the article, never hear personal stories told by the Uber drivers or see them sleeping in their cars. Leslie Hook recreates the situation thoroughly describing casual details of the Uber drivers’ lives while the players of the Uber game navigate through the game with an abstract interface. Due to this, in this particular case I find the written linear article more immersive than the interactive game.
Secondly, in the world of the news journalists and game creators do not have the same creative freedom. According to the industry practitioners, turning a tragic story into a game is potentially dangerous and open to ‘accusations of tastelessness and trivialisation’ (Online Journalism Blog, 2014).
“I probably would not want to do a game around terrorism. Even some previous games about the migrants received similar criticism, so I think we are not really quite there yet in terms of people’s expectations and of what acceptable and what is not“, says Robin Kwong. In her interview for Online Journalism Blog, Al Jazeera‘s Juliana Ruhfus expressed the same concern: “No journalist would take a sex trafficking story and gamify that, because that would be a bit tasteless”.
As a result, unlike Leslie Hook, the creators of the Uber Game are more likely to adhere to safe decisions that are not necessarily the most efficient.
However, according to Janet Murray, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology who created the first university course in interactive narrative, which was also one of the earliest courses to take games seriously as a genre of representation, “stories and games are also both distanced from the real world” (Murray, 2004). “A story is also different from a report of an event, though we are increasingly aware of how much about an event is invented or constructed by the teller, even when the intention is to be purely factual.“ Therefore, popular non-fiction games accusations of still being a fiction due to their genre, is just another twist in continuing debates about objectivity in journalism whereas claiming that games cannot exist in factual environment is almost the same as believing that feature articles cannot be considered as a serious piece of journalism.
Furthermore, playing the narrative, as opposed to reading, hearing or watching it, has a number of advantages. According to former head of the National Film Board of Canada Tom Perlmutter, “audiences are no longer receivers; they are role players. Our audiences may at any time be co-creators, citizens, activists, teachers, learners, collaborators, fans and so on” (Perlmutter, 2014). Robin Kwong says that games excel at treating audience as proactive players, who might not have been interested in the lives of the Uber drivers before playing the game, but who are probably going to pose a lot of questions after experiencing it (watch the video of Robin below).
Another important argument of using games in journalism is unlocking potential to reach new audiences. According to Robin Kwong, the average age of the FT readers is fifty five years; however creating a game that is not included in the FT paywall resulted in receiving an attention from younger users as most of the people who played the Uber Game were not the FT subscribers.
Finally, the story played by the user does not happen to someone else. The Uber Game players, unlike the readers of the article, cannot be detached observers judging situation from a safe distance. Even if it is just a game, youwill be the one deciding whether to spend your evening with your son helping him to complete with homework or continue driving to be able to pay for the bills.
To conclude, incorporating games into journalistic storytelling is not an ultimate solution for every story but it certainly might serve expanding existing traditions. The Uber Game is not better than “Uber: The uncomfortable view from the driving seat” article or vice versa as they are competing in different categories and are efficient at working hand in hand. What I find more important, is fulfilling the potential of using games in journalism in order to engage with new audiences and encourage users to reconsider their relationship with posed problems by positioning them inside the story.
