NEWSGAMES OR SHALL WE TALK ABOUT VIRTUALPOLITIK

Ian Bogost (who amongst other things wrote a book on newsgames) recently published a tweet including sreenshots of what seemed to be three printed pages of an article: "I´ve started doing some writing that reflects – with honesty, I hope – on my work in persuasive games..."

I was especially thrilled because of the word

It seems to perfectly reflect my own experience with newsgames. I have given numerous interviews about the topic. I may have given more interviews about the topic than the number of people who have played an actual newsgame i was involved in making (for ZDF Heute Show, Arte, NDR, Deutsche Welle). 

Talking about the idea of a game about poverty or politics or whatever sounded like a great idea as evidence of a type of creativity.

Or maybe we just got it wrong sitting at a desk in the ivory tower. Overthinking it while the others were just having fun.

"We often think the internet enables you to do new things. But people just want to do the same things they´ve always done. Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time...identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps." Ev Williams, CEO of Twitter. This quote has been circling around Twitter for the last couple of days. 

Most people obviously prefer shooting digital cucumbers into a virtual bowl whilst slouching instead of applauding finely engraved procedural rhetorics in a digital highbrow experience.

No real news here. Just slight melancholic sadness and this undeniable disappointment. Yet again. 

On another planet german academics discuss the topic here. And there is a bootcamp too. Alles macht weiter. Schießen Sie selbst. Not yet sure if this is the way to make the headlines.