Newsgames Embrace Hard Complexity, not Easy Fun

A response to Paul Carr and Chris O'Brien

Cross-posted from PBS Idea Lab Earlier this month a group of journalists, game designers, and academics gathered at the University of Minnesota for a workshop on newsgames. I was there, as was fellow Knight News Challenge winner and San Jose Mercury News tech business writer Chris O’Brien. After the event, Chris wrote a a recap of the meeting. In turn,… read more

Newsgames on Kindle

Just a quick note to let you know that our book Newsgames: Journalism at Play is now available on Kindle. The price is $9.99. Its been interesting to see the increase in demand for my books on Kindle. I’ve had a fair number of relatively anxious requests about when this one would be available digitally. Something readers might not know:… read more

The Newsgames Blog

Are you reading it?

Now that you’ve ordered your copy of Newsgames: Journalism at Play (you did that, right?) I’d like to remind you that the Newsgames blog is full to the brim with new content. You can find it at newsgames.gatech.edu/blog. Here are some of the latest posts: Pac-Man’s Political Cartoon Games Representation and Meaning: Comparing Mansion Impossible to Property Savvy The Museum… read more

Newsgames is Now Shipping

I’ve had a very busy week with both GDC Online and Indiecade, following right on the heels of two other conferences back home. There’s much to report, and I’ll be doing so in the coming days. For now, I want to note that Newsgames is now shipping, and you can get it from Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller.

Newsgames Excerpted

in The Atlantic online

Our book Newsgames: Journalism at Play should be hitting the streets in a couple weeks. If you’re eager to get your hands on some of the material in advance, you’ll be happy to learn that The Atlantic just published an excerpt from the first chapter, which you can read here.

Newsgames

Journalism at Play

This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon Newsgames offers a broad and comprehensive look at the past, present, and future uses of videogames in journalism. Co-authored with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer. Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. But most online journalism just translates existing practices to the Web: stories are… read more

Preorder Newsgames

You can now preorder Newsgames from Amazon.com. As I post this, the price is $16.47, which is pretty good for a hardcover. It’s possible the price will change, but it’s only likely to get cheaper if it does. Oh, and the October 2010 date is a books in print date. It should hit the streets by late summer, but I… read more

Newsgames Described

Cover, blurb, price, etc.

MIT Press has put up the informational webpage for Newsgames, and the book should be appearing in the catalog and in books in print (and therefore at Amazon et al) soon enough. You can read the description on the MIT Press site, and I’ve also pasted it below. The list price is $24.95, which I’d guess will translate into a… read more

Newsgames Book Jacket

Extra! Extra!

Behold the book jacket for Newsgames: Journalism at Play, to be published this summer.

Steroid Slugger

An unpublished 2007 New York Times newsgame

In 2007, my studio Persuasive Games embarked on a series of newsgames published by the New York Times. It was Kind Of A Big Deal At The Time, because it was the first real attempt for a major newspaper to publish videogames as news content (rather than as puzzles). We completed two games, Food Import Folly, about the effects of reduced… read more