From June 28 – 30,
2018, Games for Change has celebrated the 15th annual G4C Festival in New York
City.
In the Games for
Learning Summit conference track, Lindsay Grace, the Director of American
University Game Lab, provided an inside look at how the creation of Factitious leveraged the
talents of game designers and journalists.
Developed at JoLT, a collaboration between AU
Game Lab and School of Communication tasked with exploring the intersection of
journalism and game design, Factitious is an engaging news game that
challenges players to detect fake stories from a set of real and fake online
articles.
The
database-supported smartphone app was released in early July 2017 and quickly
racked up impressive traffic with more than 540,000 players judging more than 5
million articles in the first 3 weeks!
In Factitious,
players read abbreviated news stories and have to swipe right if they think
they are real or swipe left if they think they are fake. Once players make
their choice, the game tells them if they were right or wrong. Players also have
the option to see the source of the story, which can be a big hint.
The idea was to
create a game that could explore the “fake news” phenomenon while also helping
to educate about media literacy.
The developers hope
to create a Classroom Edition of the game which would have longer rounds and
include categories.
Game Background
At a time when the
reading public daily grapples with the question of fake news, the American
University Game Lab/JOLT has created an accessible, easy-to-play game that
helps players sort fake news from real.
The brainchild of
former AU JOLT Fellow Maggie Farley and designed by AU game professor Bob Hone,
Factitious is a quick game that can be played on any platform.
The Factitious team
also included AU Game Lab director Lindsay Grace, who oversaw the project, and
AU Game Design MA alumni and former JoLT fellows Cherisse Datu and Kelli Dunlap
on the design team, and Joyce Rice on art and illustrations. Chas Brown was the
game developer.
"Factitious
is a playful way of exploring the fake news conundrum," Grace said.
"This game is a good way to remind players about what they know and don't
know about news."
For purposes of the
game, "fake news" is defined as stories fabricated for fun, influence
or profit, as well as satire, opinion and spin.
"Fake news is
impossible to stop, so we wanted to playfully teach people how to recognize
it," said Farley. "But the game is fun to play in itself."
Developed under a
Knight Foundation grant, the game engine in the next phase should also be
available to newsrooms, schools, or groups that want to adapt a version for
their own use. Grace said the game "also demonstrates playful ways for
newsrooms to gather data about how players perceive their content."