Playing the News is a news simulation environment which lets citizens play through a complex, evolving news story through interaction with the newsmakers.

Goals: “We hope to imagine a new way to compile and display the development of complex news events.”

Nora Paul and the Institute for New Media Studies will provide a game prototype that uses community-based “scenario builder” and “dialog builder” tools that will allow community leaders, game makers and journalists to develop games using real community issues. Paul will create guidelines and documentation so that others can more quickly develop issues scenarios for games about their communities. She will blog about the game platform project and will write a final report explaining the process. Specifically, Paul will produce a script for the platform, a functional version of the simulation, a news-scenario-building procedures manual, a technical design document, technology documentation, a website for product building and testing and a user-friendly toolset that allows individuals to easily build news scenarios on the game platform. In addition, she will provide a demonstration version of a game based on the platform. The scenario builder and dialog builder software developed will be free and open source.