Ian Bogost, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Literature, Communication, discusses bringing video games to the newsroom in an article for "Editor & Publisher". Bogost says, "It's only natural that video games become an integral part of how people understand current events and how reporters deliver the news." Bogost and Michael Mateas, Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are funded by a grant to create a system for local news organizations to implement current event games into their reporting duties, adding them to their stories like they would a chart, video, or interactive map. "What a game does that a news story can't is simulate how something works," said Bogost, who wrote Newsgames: Journalism at Play, which explores how video games enhance news. "A player can interact with it and ...get a network of causes and effects, which can help dig under the surface of the issues we face today."

This article appeared in Editor & Publisher - December 17, 2010