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Play The News
Game URL: www.playthenewsgame.com
Developer: ImpactGames
Non-Profit:
Release Date: 4/3/08
Project Lead: Eric Brown and Asi Burak
Funding Sources: Angel Investment
Sponsors/In-kind donations:
Budget:
Overall: 750,000
Secured: 250,000
Brief Description
An engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports meets the evening news. Play the News is a web-based platform that changes the paradigm of news consumption from passive reading to active engagement.
Full Description
An engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports meets the evening news. Play the News is a web-based platform that brings interactive gaming elements to the online news media industry changing the paradigm of news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. ImpactGames is actively looking for partners for content, syndication, sponsorship, and many other exciting possibilities. Please contact us to find out how we can work with you.
Target Audience: News readers (media sites, blogs) on multiple verticals (World, US, Tech, Business, Entertainment and more).
Social Issues Addressed: news,
Purpose:
Metrics:
How? TBD
What outcomes have been measured? TBD
Press Coverage:
Pittsburgh Business Times: http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2008/03/03/story16.html
Press Release URL: TBD
Public Contact Information
Name: Asi Burak
Email: asiburak@impactgames.com
Press Contact Name: Asi Burak
Press Contact Email: asiburak@impactgames.com
Game Tags: play, news, interactive, entertainment, social network, web 2.0, play the news
Where you can play this game: The Web site is free and open to the public (www.playthenewsgame.com). Our flash games can be embedded on any partner's site, similarly to YouTube videos.
Play the News
Game URL: http://playthenewsgame.com/
Developer: ImpactGames LLC
Non-Profit:
Release Date: 3/31/08
Project Lead: Asi Burak
Funding Sources: Innovation Works, Angel Investors
Sponsors/In-kind donations:
Budget:
Overall: 750000
Secured: 500000
Brief Description
"Play the News" is an engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports meets the evening news. The platform’s goal is to drive “Interactive News” mini games that change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. The platform is flexible enough to address a range of global and local content.
Full Description
“Play the News” is a web-based platform to bring interactive gaming elements to the online news media industry, and current event based classroom. Impact Games has created an engine to drive “Interactive News” mini games and community features that change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. This ability to create a more compelling online news experience presents an opportunity to increase engagement metrics on many dimensions. The Platform is composed of three major components: a web based publishing tool, the interactive game modules, and a community gaming and commenting structure. While still a relatively short and casual experience the games allow for an experience that affects a deeper understanding of issues beyond the headlines. Building on the internationally acclaimed PeaceMaker interface the games integrate broader contextual background information, multiple perspectives, and allow users to role-play critical players in the news. The games are unique and easy for users to share and embed (like a youtube video). The platform’s publishing tools allow quick, easy, and economical repackaging of existing content into an interactive layer in order to address breaking issues in real-time. The community profile and gaming elements promote tracking stories over time, broader content consumption, and engageusers in the building of their own social political profile in relation to current events. ImpactGames created content on a near daily basis from April to October 2008 in a “newsroom 2.0” format. Through this period the company was able to track usage statistics that validated the engagement and value proposition.
Target Audience:
Social Issues Addressed: environment, global conflict, news, public policy,
Purpose:
Increasingly news consumption is becoming about skimming RSS feeds and headlines. Lost in this process is the ability to gain a deeper understanding of the different perspectives of a story and the broader cause and effect relationships that a singular event might be a part of. “Play the News” aims to harness the power of the video game vocabulary and interface to integrate this type of learning into the daily news conversation. PeaceMaker showed that people with this kind of context could understand and relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2-4 hours better than from months and even years of consuming the daily headlines. Play the News leverages this notion further while addressing a breadth of subjects and issues and responding to new events as they happen. Through reward systems and social interactions the community gaming component can drive different player motivations and get people to play and learn about issues they may never have engaged with before. The role-playing aspect of the games takes advantage of the idea that people once empowered to make a decision as a leader are then able to engage more effectively in dialogue about the issues. Ultimately this type of consumption will make people more engaged in the events that shape the world around them and hopefully empower them to translate their opinions and actions in the game to real world action. ImpactGames plans to continue to build upon our platform to more effectively activate the community, promote dialogue between players, and extend the reach of the games through new and exciting distribution methods. We also hope that our easy to use publishing tool will empower media organizations, journalists, and community groups to embrace interactive methodology as a way to better engage their audiences without need of programming or game design expertise.
Metrics:
How? We currently track a lot of quantitative data on the user such as time of engagement, return rates to view results and continue to follow stories, and users that engage all new content. We would love to expand our metrics to include more qualitative information such as retention, formulation of viewpoints, comprehension of underlying issues in comparison to other news sources.
What outcomes have been measured? Our engagement metrics have been very positive. One cross section of our data showed an average play duration at 16.6 minutes, with 86% of users engaging all roles available, 15% of users directly responding to email notifications of new content on all subject matter, and 50% responding directly to email notifications of updates on content they had previously engaged.
Press Coverage:
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=158642 http://www.courant.com/entertainment/hc-video-games-cramer.artmar17,0,898358.story http://www.ecrans.fr/L-actualite-comme-terrain-de-jeu,5054.html
Press Release URL:
Public Contact Information
Name: Eric Brown
Email: ericbrown@impactgames.com
Press Contact Name: Eric Brown
Press Contact Email: ericbrown@impactgames.com
Game Tags: news, play the news, newsgaming, current events, interactive, web 2.0, community
Where you can play this game: We are not at present actively publishing new content on our site. We have temporarily closed our newsroom, but aim to begin creating fresh content again in the very near future. You can view the 127 games we created during our initial launch of the platform at PlayTheNewsGame.com. While most of the games have closed due to the story being resolved you are able to review any of the content by clicking review game after you begin.
Play the News
Game URL: http://playthenewsgame.com/
Developer: ImpactGames LLC
Non-Profit:
Release Date: 3/31/08
Project Lead: Asi Burak
Funding Sources: Innovation Works, Angel Investors
Sponsors/In-kind donations:
Budget:
Overall: 750000
Secured: 500000
Brief Description
"Play the News" is an engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports meets the evening news. The platform’s goal is to drive “Interactive News” mini games that change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. The platform is flexible enough to address a range of global and local content.
Full Description
“Play the News” is a web-based platform to bring interactive gaming elements to the online news media industry, and current event based classroom. Impact Games has created an engine to drive “Interactive News” mini games and community features that change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. This ability to create a more compelling online news experience presents an opportunity to increase engagement metrics on many dimensions. The Platform is composed of three major components: a web based publishing tool, the interactive game modules, and a community gaming and commenting structure. While still a relatively short and casual experience the games allow for an experience that affects a deeper understanding of issues beyond the headlines. Building on the internationally acclaimed PeaceMaker interface the games integrate broader contextual background information, multiple perspectives, and allow users to role-play critical players in the news. The games are unique and easy for users to share and embed (like a youtube video). The platform’s publishing tools allow quick, easy, and economical repackaging of existing content into an interactive layer in order to address breaking issues in real-time. The community profile and gaming elements promote tracking stories over time, broader content consumption, and engageusers in the building of their own social political profile in relation to current events. ImpactGames created content on a near daily basis from April to October 2008 in a “newsroom 2.0” format. Through this period the company was able to track usage statistics that validated the engagement and value proposition.
Target Audience:
Social Issues Addressed: environment, global conflict, news, public policy,
Purpose:
Increasingly news consumption is becoming about skimming RSS feeds and headlines. Lost in this process is the ability to gain a deeper understanding of the different perspectives of a story and the broader cause and effect relationships that a singular event might be a part of. “Play the News” aims to harness the power of the video game vocabulary and interface to integrate this type of learning into the daily news conversation. PeaceMaker showed that people with this kind of context could understand and relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2-4 hours better than from months and even years of consuming the daily headlines. Play the News leverages this notion further while addressing a breadth of subjects and issues and responding to new events as they happen. Through reward systems and social interactions the community gaming component can drive different player motivations and get people to play and learn about issues they may never have engaged with before. The role-playing aspect of the games takes advantage of the idea that people once empowered to make a decision as a leader are then able to engage more effectively in dialogue about the issues. Ultimately this type of consumption will make people more engaged in the events that shape the world around them and hopefully empower them to translate their opinions and actions in the game to real world action. ImpactGames plans to continue to build upon our platform to more effectively activate the community, promote dialogue between players, and extend the reach of the games through new and exciting distribution methods. We also hope that our easy to use publishing tool will empower media organizations, journalists, and community groups to embrace interactive methodology as a way to better engage their audiences without need of programming or game design expertise.
Metrics:
How? We currently track a lot of quantitative data on the user such as time of engagement, return rates to view results and continue to follow stories, and users that engage all new content. We would love to expand our metrics to include more qualitative information such as retention, formulation of viewpoints, comprehension of underlying issues in comparison to other news sources.
What outcomes have been measured? Our engagement metrics have been very positive. One cross section of our data showed an average play duration at 16.6 minutes, with 86% of users engaging all roles available, 15% of users directly responding to email notifications of new content on all subject matter, and 50% responding directly to email notifications of updates on content they had previously engaged.
Press Coverage:
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=158642 http://www.courant.com/entertainment/hc-video-games-cramer.artmar17,0,898358.story http://www.ecrans.fr/L-actualite-comme-terrain-de-jeu,5054.html
Press Release URL:
Public Contact Information
Name: Eric Brown
Email: ericbrown@impactgames.com
Press Contact Name: Eric Brown
Press Contact Email: ericbrown@impactgames.com
Game Tags: news, play the news, newsgaming, current events, interactive, web 2.0, community
Where you can play this game: The platform is not currently being used to publish new content, or lock and close existing games. We have temporarily closed our newsroom, but aim to begin creating fresh content again in the very near future. You can view the 127 games we created during our initial launch of the platform at PlayTheNewsGame.com. While most of the games have closed due to the story being resolved you are able to review any of the content by clicking review game after you begin.
