Playing Along with News Stories

[Tom Johnson]

 


Comments

News simulations in the news.
  _____  


Posted, July 16, 2007
Playing Along with News Stories

By Anthony Wojtkowiak
<http://www.poynter.org/profile/profile.asp?user=463809>  ( more by
author
<http://www.poynter.org/search/results_article.asp?cdl_userID=463809&btn
_submit=true> )

       

       
 <http://www.poynter.org/profile/profile.asp?user=463809>  
inms <http://inms.umn.edu>
inms.umn.edu
Playing the News is a new project from UMN's Institute for New Media
Studies.
Earlier this year the Institute for New Media Studies at the University
of Minn. won a $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant
<http://www.newschallenge.org/winners/paul>  to create Playing the News.
This news simulation environment will let online visitors "play through"
a complex, evolving, interactive news story.

Guest contributor Anthony Wojtkowiak recently interviewed INMS director
Nora Paul about this project.

Wojtkowiak: Tell me about your project. I hear it's like a video game.

Paul: We're seeing whether creating a simulation environment would be an
interesting way to tell stories incrementally over time. Instead of
creating background story links on news sites, we'd create a simulation
world in which the information would be revealed in ongoing coverage.

RECENTLY IN NEWS CHALLENGE SERIES

VillageSoup: From Community News to Community Host
<http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=126344>  

ASU: New Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship

Oakland: Video Game Aims to Revive Community

<http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=124025>
COMPLETE SERIES INDEX

We're working with a virtual reality company on this. This project
should let the public engage with stakeholders in news and interact with
them in a controlled and scripted environment.

Wojtkowiak: Will this project lead to one giant game with multiple
scenarios -- like Grand Theft Auto <http://www.rockstargames.com/IV>
for news? Or will the project lead to multiple, unique games?

Paul: It will likely be individual games for individual types of
stories. Your idea is interesting, to have an explorable "news town,"
with this story over here and that story over there. But initially it
will be multiple games.

Wojtkowiak: I've heard that the prototype will include a "scenario
builder" and "dialog builder." Care to elaborate?

Paul: The scenario builder will make it easy to create simulations based
on actual news events. In any town, there is at least one big story.
Usually that story is made of a lot of little stories happening over a
long time -- 3M chemicals cropping up in the ground water of some St.
Paul suburbs could be an example.

With our simulation, you could build an application that will make it
easy to create a scenario or environment that will focus on a specific
aspect of a particular topic. The simulation could be used to get
someone up to speed on a topic in a way that should be more interesting
than just reading about it. The scenario could even be presented from
someone's point of view -- maybe that of a homeowner or a 3M employee.

The dialog builder will allow users to pull out relevant bits from a
news story and build it into a character in a news scenario.

Wojtkowiak: You've been calling this a "simulation environment." How is
that different from a game?

Paul: I'd say our project is more of a "sim" than a game. But this is
interesting, "gameologists" get into this. For them, competition between
you and the environment makes a game. A game also implies questing and
success that lets you go to the next level.

Do we really want to build in these gaming aspects? Were that the case,
you would go to in-game characters and get info, but you couldn't
continue on until you'd completed your "news quest." Also, when
interacting with characters in most games, you have menu-driven choices
with branched responses based on what you've asked.

I'd rather see a news "bot" that has intelligence behind its data
design. It would allow you to ask free-text questions and return
appropriate answers.

Wojtkowiak: How would you create a bot that answers free-form questions?

Paul: Artificial intelligence stuff is mostly just retrieval of data. It
would be nice to have two people do a long thread of questions and
answers and build those questions and answers into the environment. Then
a user couldn't type in a question that hadn't been anticipated. I'm
just not sure how feasible this is right now.

Wojtkowiak: Why did you decide to make a simulation?

Paul: Well, I'm just hoping that this might be an opportunity to move
beyond providing information based on old media. The preponderance of
news and information online is still constrained by old media,
specifically print. There are still columns and lists of links.

It would be interesting to compare how fast people can get up to speed
on an issue by reading old news stories as compared to playing games.
Who will understand the issue the best? Who is the most engaged? We'd be
testing to see if this is a practical and effective way to present
certain stories.

It's disappointing to me that news sites are not doing good job of
collecting community intelligence -- like on comments, for example. This
game will offer new ways to aggregate info in useful ways.

That's why I am so excited that the Knight News Challenge program is
sponsoring news research and development. It was so much fun to see the
real variety of what got picked. I'm glad to see support for blogs and
citizen reporting, and I'm glad to see Adrian Holovaty
<http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=124304>  win to continue his
innovative thinking.

With Knight running this contest, you know it's "non-denominational."
Washington Post, for example, might monetize or guard these projects if
they were running it -- but Knight will make them available to the
industry.

Wojtkowiak: Why do you think your project won a News Challenge grant?

Paul: I think what worked for us is that gaming is a hot topic. I like
to think that I have credibility in the industry, and if I thought
making a sim was a good idea and could be done, then, well, it was a
good idea and could be done!

Wojtkowiak: Do you have anything to say to or ask of the journalism
community?

Paul: Be excited! I went through a lot of the early days of
computer-assisted reporting, and trust me, there was division in the
camps. Some journalists saw the spreadsheet in databases and said, "I
can use these to do good reporting!" Others looked at it and went, "Oh,
great, now they want me to do spreadsheets."

Really, it's the same thing now. There are many more ways to craft and
tell stories, and the people who have glommed onto this are having
exciting time. Be on the excited side.

Wojtkowiak: Ten years from now, will we be anticipating the release of
Playing the News 3 on PlayStation 5?

Paul: Oh no, it's not a console release. It's really for news sites.

Wojtkowiak: But you can get the news on game consoles, like the Nintendo
Wii, for example.

Paul: Oh, well, when you put it that way, that might be something to
explore in the future.

Related interview: Nora Paul was also interviewed for the July 9 episode
of American Public Media's Future Tense
<http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2007/07/09.shtml> .


Guest contributor Anthony Wojtkowiak is a journalism intern for John S.
and James L. Knight Foundation. In late August he will begin his senior
year in the School of Communication at University of Miami.


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[Prof David West]

Those of you who have been talking about the Iraq war lately might find
this to be of some interest.

davew

*************
Technology in Wartime Conference - CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Sponsored by: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
Date: January 26, 2008
Location: Stanford University

CPSR seeks proposals for a winter 2008 conference called Technology in
Wartime. This conference will explore how computer technology is used
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rights workers documenting conditions in war-torn countries and help
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will
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Ultimately we want to engage a pressing question of our time: What
should
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Technology in Wartime will not be pro-war or anti-war, right-wing or
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About submitting a proposal:
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***********