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. _____ http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=126812
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