Cutthroat Capitalism.
News games are a very interesting way to look at certain news events and problems that are happening in the world. On the one hand it allows you to simplify a situation and to create, sometimes, a much better understanding of such situations for some people; like pirating in Somalia. But then on the other hand you have to problem of simplifying it too much and taking away the reality of the problem so that it could become trivialised. Then there is the chance that people may not take it seriously. And the situations that could suit being turned into a game like Cutthroat Capitalism, are not things to be taken lightly. But for me, although this game was quite entertaining and fun (and I am not going to lie, I was getting quite good at being a fake pirate), I could still see the serious implications that the game was trying to portray.
On a whole, the concept of turning these subjects into game type situations is a very interesting new media and could be a very effective way to communicating an understanding of certain events.
This topic of games as a medium of telling or helping to explain news events lead me to a website http://www.playthenewsgame.com/portal/home.action. This website allows you to explore and make desicions about certain news events and it explalins how and what your actions have affected and why in much the same way as Cutthroat Capitalism. In my oppinion Cutthroat Capitalism is a much more effective game but both websites show that there can be much development in this area and to some success. Who knows, in quite a few years this could be the dominate medium for news...
No comments:
Post a Comment