If you work in or around newsrooms and make news-games or would like to make newsgames, this is the meetup for you. Not sure what a newsgame is? Head here.
This edition of our newsgames meetup is going to be a special on Syria. We have Mamdouh Akbiek and Marc Perkins from the BBC talking about Syrian Journey, Harriet Grant from the Guardian talking about Fortress Europe, and Dr Tomas Rawlings from GameTheNews (an initiative of Auroch Digital) talking about Endgame:Syria. Get a ticket.
Monday October 19th, 6pm to 8.30pm
101 St. Martins Lane (3rd Floor), London, WC2N 4AZ
MozSpace can be found in the heart of London just round the corner from Leicester square and Covent Garden.
Need help getting to the venue? Check out this video from Christian Heilmann on how to get to MozSpace London from Leicester Square tube station (2 min 17 sec).
Get your ticket on Eventbrite
All attendees are expected to follow the Code of Conduct. In addition attendees are expected to clean up after themselves (like litter from snacks provided).
Our definition of newsgame is a game that tells a news-story in some way. Newspapers have being doing games for over a century, like crosswords, but these are not really telling a news-story. One of my favourite news-games of all time is Wired’s Cutthroat Capitalism, in which you are a pirate, and have to capture ships off the Somali coast and then negotiate ransoms to get a payout, which you then share with your crew and tribe. A popular newsgame format is the humble choose-your-own-adventure. Some examples of this is BBC’s Syrian Journey and Buzzfeed’s Can you survive a week as Jeremy Corbyn?
The power of games lie in their ability to not just describe but demonstrate how something work. Take vaccinations for example. In the game vax! you play against a pandemic, and soon learn the key to beating it is having more vaccinations at your disposal. Before playing Cutthroat Capitalism I assumed pirates would always try to get the biggest Maersk ship with the most value cargo, but after playing it for a while I discovered that since all human life is worth something, attacking a lot of small ships and getting loads of small ransoms is much more profitable. It was then much easier for me to understand the rise in piracy in the accompanying news article.
Please get in touch with Linda on twitter or email
Please get in touch with Linda on twitter or email
Holly Gramazio talked about her newsgame "Pornography for beginners" about the changing UK pornography laws, Paul Rissen talked about learning paths and games, Andrew Sheerin from Terror Bull Games talked about radical/political games.