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Journalism Games: Playing with Government Budgets
Posted by Hsing Wei on 06-11-08As the stock market dips and presidential campaigning comes full swing, folks may be interested in some recently released games that stimulate conversation and understanding around government budget issues.
American Public Media released Budget Hero in May. Receiving a good deal of blogosphere buzz, the game had close to 70,000 plays in its first two weeks. In Budget Hero, players momentarily control where tax dollars go. Various areas of the federal budget (like defense, schools, infrastructure, housing, healthcare, etc) are represented by cartoon buildings that hopefully do not crash through the game screen ceiling. To nudge the buildings up or downward and balance the overall deficit, players choose policy cards. Increasing the budget’s solvency, or earning badges that represent value-based budgetary goals, wins the game. (Sadly, my policies still left the U.S. in debt.) Adding a social component to the single-player game, at the end you can compare your actions with how others played their cards.
Similarly, a few years ago, Gotham Gazette released The Budget Game, focused on NYC’s deficit. Players cut city costs or raise city revenues to close the budget gap by adjusting sliders on number bars. Clicking on links next to the number bars yield detailed pop-up text describing the pros and cons of changing those budget items. Last month, Gotham Gazette released a new, more narrative game. Understanding the funding process to support Youth Programs, Libraries, and Renters Tax Credits takes a fun spin embedded in the familiar play of mazes. In the Budget Maze as players navigate the maze they must also “choose the correct key” to move forward (chose the correct strategy to impact the budget making process). Moreso than their first game, details about the policy process are revealed by gameplay rather than by reading text.
At one level these games aim to enable citizens to understand federal and city budget issues and dynamics. At a second level, these games were produced by news organizations and also have journalistic goals. The Budget Maze is placed within the online news pages and links to articles about the city budget. As Joellen Easton of American Public Media describes: “... the journalism created by such games isn’t only the game itself—it’s the conversations it sparks, and the insights gathered by reporters at the producing organization (and any other journalists observing) from the conversations that then lead to new reporting directions….ideally, previously unexplored directions.”