{"id":87,"date":"2008-05-19T23:26:38","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T23:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/jtm-sv-wednesday-gaming\/"},"modified":"2019-10-02T06:29:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T06:29:00","slug":"jtm-sv-wednesday-gaming","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/jtm-sv-wednesday-gaming\/","title":{"rendered":"Jtm-sv-wednesday-gaming"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n“NewsTools2008: A concept\/design mashup for journalists, technologists and entrepreneurs”<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

“Arizona State University student blogger Josh Constine reports on the “10 disruptive technologies” after-dinner discussion on Wed., April 30, 2008 at NewsTools2008 \/ Sunnyvale.”<\/p>\n

\n

Our group on social and civic engagement and gaming saw a number of
\nbright minds floating ideas about how to tempt an audience into
\nsustained interaction with a news source. The problem raised was that
\nas people move to the internet for their news, there are a multitude of
\neasily accessible free sources. <\/p>\n

Therefore, keeping the user engaged to
\na single source is the goal. The leader of the group explained that
\npeople enjoy being rewarded through point and other systems for their
\ninteraction and completion of tasks. World of Warcraft, a massively
\nmultiplayer online role playing game known for the huge tracts of time
\nplayers spend in the game world, gives points to players for
\naccomplishments or even just for spending time in game. <\/p>\n

A representative from the company Social Chord was in attendance and he
\nexplained his company’s attempt at using gaming to engage a small
\ncommunity. The company is trying to find a way to engage the community
\nof New Brunswick, N.J., hoping to pull together educational, social,
\nreligious, and other organizations to address the issue of
\ngentrification. <\/p>\n

The rep explained that New Brunswick is being divided. Moving the city in a direction of higher priced housing and less
\nauthentic culture are Rutgers University, hosting primarily middle to
\nupper socioeconomic class students, and Johnson and Johnson bringing in
\nmostly white middle to upper class employees from other locations. The
\ntraditional community, primarily the families connected to the public
\nschool system, many of which are of African or Latino decent, are
\nattempting to rally against this change, which is eroding existing small
\nbusinesses and driving families to the outskirts of the city through
\nincreased home prices. <\/p>\n

To encourage involvement in civil planning
\ndecisions and discussion on the issue, the company has created a game
\nwhere participants are rewarded with points for attending PTA and town
\nplanning meetings and conducting interviews with citizens and posting
\nthem to a central site. Local high-school students are focused on to do
\nthe legwork and primary reporting. College students from Rutgers are
\nthen asked to edit the work of the high school students before a final
\nreview by editors employed by Social Chord. <\/p>\n

In theory, this game
\nshould raise awareness and involvement in the community, while being fun
\nto participate in for the students. Other members of our group were
\nimpressed with this idea, but had lot of questions about how the game
\nwould actually be scored to make it enjoyable as well as a natural
\nextension of civic involvement. <\/p>\n

I thought the basic method was sound,
\nbut that it needed more incentives to get players involved, such as a
\nprize of a journalism internship or a feature article in a local paper. Otherwise, I imagined there would be too few players to make the game
\nand the goals viable. <\/p>\n

The problem of luring users could also be solved
\nwhen the model is tried in a different market, possibly with an issue
\nmore attractive or dynamic than gentrification at the center of the
\ngame. <\/p>\n

Overall, I thought the group spent too much of our limited time
\ndiscussing both general questions, and very specific inquiries into the
\nmethods of a certain engagement gaming method. I instead would have
\nliked to see time spent looking at possible solutions and the stumbling
\nblocks certain models have circumvented or overcame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“NewsTools2008: A concept\/design mashup for journalists, technologists and entrepreneurs” “Arizona State University student blogger Josh Constine reports on the “10 disruptive technologies” after-dinner discussion on Wed., April 30, 2008 at NewsTools2008 \/ Sunnyvale.” Our group on social and civic engagement and gaming saw a number of bright minds floating ideas about how to tempt an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-87","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalismthatmatters.org\/silicon-valley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}