Meeting Eleven:

Cutthroat Capitalism, the game vs the print news article

How is Wired different from the New York Times or The Guardian?

Why is Food Import Folly under "Opinion"? Are these really like "editorial cartoons"?

Sicart

Defining news games as "those games that utilize the medium with the intention of participating in the public debate" (27)

A subgenre of "serious games" are "designed to illustrate a specific and concrete aspect of news by means of their procedural rhetoric" (28)

(Procedural rhetoric is the rhetoric of rule-based systems in operation, as opposed to visual or verbal rhetoric. It is a term developed by Ian Bogost.)

Dean for America and September 12th are not newsgames (28)

"Unlike political games, that present a clearly biased argumentation with the intention of shifting or reassuring the audience in their political beliefs, newsgames do not enforce directly instrumental goals." (29)

"open space for discussion" (29)

"Since production cycles are rather brief, newsgames have very basic game mechanics inspired, or directly copied from classic games. Far from being a problem, this is an advantage for newsgame design. For an game, it is fundamental that players understand the principles of play." (31)

Treanor and Mateas

"Political cartoons are illustrations or comic strips that pertain to political or social issues that are mostly found on the editorial pages of newspapers. Over the years, political cartoons have developed a set of stylistic tropes that utilize visual metaphor and caricatures to explain complicated political situations." (1)

Political cartoons vs. social comment cartoons (2)

On the rhetoric of failure in Kabul Kaboom: "This game serves as an example of how newsgames have the potential to communicate and persuade players in ways that political cartoons are unable to do."

The concept of "procedural rhetoric" from Ian Bogost in his book Persuasive Games: "persuading through processes" [5] or "the way that a videogame embodies ideology in its computational structure" [4]. (3)

"Newsgames are created in response to a specific current event, released while the story is still relevant in people's minds. Newsgames also are meant to be played and understood in a short period of time." (4)

On Bacteria Salad: "This game differs from September 12th in how it asserts a much more detailed solution to its issue (agricultural contamination) than September 12th does for its issue (foreign policy regarding terrorism). This requires a much longer play session to interpret through playing." (6)

Design issues with Madrid: "frantic and busy state" and short time-frame very different from memorialization.

"Have newsgames lost their chance at becoming a prominent form of political expression? Fewer and fewer newsgames of any kind are appearing, and even less that can be compared to the sophistication of political cartoons on the same subject. Hopefully, by fleshing out Frasca's original comparison between newsgames and political cartoons, we have provided direction for future expansion of the genre that is informed by, and is potentially even more persuasive than, the political cartoon." (7)