On behalf of ImpactGames we would like to thank you all for your participation in our Beta community.  We have reached a point in the progression of this product where we will be ceasing to produce new content for the site.  We will not be opening, locking, or closing any of the current content.  For now we will be leaving the site frozen in time for demonstration purposes and to support our fundraising, content partner acquisition, and future development needs.

In the last few months we have created 126 games on a wide range of subject matter.  The process has educated us personally, and hopefully those of you in our community, on many issues.  Some of the games we created were on issues we read about every day, while some were on meaningful subjects that are generally buried in the margins of the mainstream press.   The discussions around the games have been very thoughtful and revealing to us as developers and individuals.  We believe that the way we have packaged current events represents a fresh way for people to consume headline news, and provides greater context and engagement on complex issues and even lighter entertainment.  We are confident that the future “new and improved” incarnation of the platform will serve as a real alternative or addition to traditional media.

We are planning to take this time, free from the intense development cycle required to continuously produce new content, to analyze all of your thoughtful feedback in order to create an even better experience. We are opening a new thread in our forum where we welcome you to submit any and all thoughts and ideas about the experience, share user testimonials, and present any leads you think we should explore.

We hope to revive the community in the near future and will preserve all of your user data for integration into our next edition.  We thank you again for taking the time to pioneer a new user experience with us.  Your feedback and ongoing participation has been integral in exploring this new form of communication, game, and community.

Eric and Asi,
Co-Founders - ImpactGames

It is great to see “Play the News” integrated into traditional and respected media sources like Ha’aretz and we hope to announce more partners soon.

But such debates tend to be overly black and white.  I like this story in The Guardian, not only because it highlights us, but because it presents how much it’s not only about “shallow vs. deep” or “violent vs. peaceful,” but about a real passion to diversify the interactive audience and present new models to think about:

“Mainstream videogames may have all but conquered the 18-34 male demographic, and proven extremely pervasive throughout others, but their social stigma persists. One of the most obvious reasons for this - and one of the key points of the Byron Review (dfes.gov.uk/byronreview) - is the vast “generational gap” between gamers and non-gamers. Of course, this argument implies it’s just a matter of time before MP Keith Vaz sits down to a game of Grand Theft Auto VII, but Burak believes that before this can ever be achieved, we need to “dismantle the notion of the ‘gamer’”. “If you think about it,” he says, “you won’t call someone a ‘radio listener’, or ‘TV viewer’ - I mean, you might, but everyone is, right? Everyone is a filmgoer. This idea that people are ‘gamers’ is going to have to change. Everyone should be a gamer!”

As game developers and “gamers” shouldn’t we be happy that more people enjoy our medium?  When guests visit me I love getting the Wii out, creating a Mii for them and letting them wave the remote.  Especially for those who never tried it before - their eyes widen, their jaws drop and suddenly they realize that if they are not careful they could easily end up “gamers” themselves.

First case: a game we published with Read Write Web about Data Portability.  The founder of DP, Chris Saad, who is represented by a role in the game, played it and promised not to spoil the game since he “knows the answers”.

Second case: our recent game about BoingBoing and Violet Blue was posted and hosted by Violet Blue on her blog, open to comments by her audience.

Will we see future feedback loops?  Say Obama looking at our community predictions/opinions for his prospective VP?

Upon adding the application, you can sync your PtN account to enjoy the best of both worlds. We hope you will like playing the news in this unique context, and invite your friends to join the growing community of news players.

Role:
- Design Flash interactions, from brainstorm and conceptual stage to full code implementation.
- Design Web pages and the front-end of our interactive platforms, emphasizing overall look and feel, usability and GUI.
- Drive the branding of the company and its products in online environments, print and marketing materials.
- Support in the creation of art and video assets for ImpactGames’ and media partners’ news games.

Required Skills:
- CSS and HTML
- Flash
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator and/or In-Design
- Video editing software

We offer a competitive salary with health benefits. To apply send your resume, cover letter and portfolio asap to: co-founders (at) impactgames.com

We also enjoyed the satire on The AV Club, according to them PtN “will make you kill puppies”. Broken Toys’ Scott Jennings, however, was highly critical by claiming we “essentially ha[ve] abdicated any responsibility for making a decision”, pointing out that we have created a framework for the community to voice its opinion without advocating our own opinions or assumptions.

Getting feedback is great, and the beauty of the Web is that we can keep expanding and improving the platform based on reviews and comments from players. Josh of the Knight Center phrases it more eloquently by saying: “It’s interesting that [Jennings] refers to this site as a “title,” making it more akin to a static game product that is done at some point than a website that evolves and changes over time”.

Josh argues we should introduce crowd sourcing to PtN as “an effective way to diffuse the unavoidable agenda setting nature of Play the News… Creating a system that allowed the crowd to assist in creating the content could greatly increase the number of stories offered.”

Funny he should mention that… Because hidden behind the front-end of PtN is an easy to use content creation tool. It enables us to publish polished experiences around a breaking story in only a day or two. Our focus now is reaching out to different media partners so they will create their own games using our editor. Aggregating all these “channels” on our site would allow for very interesting comparisons of the the issues illuminated by different content partners, while obviously adding richer and wider content.

We do plan to open PtN up to user-created games. At that point anyone could create whatever advocacy perspective they want through the information and the potential courses of action. We will need to seriously address moderation and copyright issues, but it is definitely a worthwhile expansion. From our perspective, it is a natural step in the evolution of PtN but not an immediate one. First, we would like to establish this new media format. Once the “News Game” format is established, we can support civic journalism and user-generated content. As Eric my partner commented on one of these blogs “for us this platform has just been born.”