You’ve got an idea, you understand your topic, but do we have to make something new? What kinds of disinformation games already exist? Perhaps they can help us design.
If you want to make a game about disinfo, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Before I continue the design process from last post, let's consider what is already out there. What might they do well? Poorly? Or suggest we keep in mind? Lucky for you, some of us researchers have begun trying to gather a list of games and analyze them. So today, let's rapid fire cover what's going on.
Fake News Games
I’ll start with the concept of Fake News. In 2021, I gathered and played around 22 Fake news game and found:
First, many of these games fell into two domains. They were narrative games or they were quiz games. Why? My hypothesis is that those mediums are quick and easy to make while also being direct - so they feel like they are teaching.
Second, these games offered little to no meaningful choices for their players. Designs had repetitive game loops, where player actions and decisions did not really matter.
Third, fake news was sometimes used more as a buzzword to get engagement rather than actually being taught. When they did talk about it, the conversation was superficial, presenting it as something we could fact-check away. Unfortunately, research suggests that doesn't work as well as we think.
Fourth, the games focused heavily on fact-checking skills and individual action. While not necessarily bad, they fail to consider larger regulatory responses that could be done.
You’re welcome to look at the data yourself, though be warned, some of the games aren't available anymore.
This work was meant to start a discussion. It built off research on newsgames (discussed next), and other scholars have made similar claims. The consensus is that these games struggle to actually engage with the conceptual dimensions of fake news. Others argued that they do not actually do anything to help us discern in real life. There is value in these tools, but there is a lot of room for improvement in their design. In short, they might be fun and flashy, but we need to consider how they help us reach our goals.
Newsgames
There is a team of scholars at the University of Miami who have been working to study and archive newsgames. For the unfamiliar, a newsgame unlike games about fake news, is a game that attempts to present newsworthy topics. It is complimentary to news stories and a form of journalist and activist practice.
Dr. Lindsay Grace and Katy Huang published a report in 2020 that summarized many of the available games. A guiding study to my work on fake news above, their report showed that many newsgames were:
First, playable in under a few minutes.
Second, the majority of the games were editorial games that had clear spin or bias in how they presented issues.
Third, choose your own adventure games were by far the most popular format.
Fourth, the sample was for digital games, with the majority using 2D graphics and art.
This project has since evolved into a robust collection and study of Journalism Games which you can find and access. I suggest you play a few and reflect on their report, to see how simplistic and direct these models are. Perhaps, ask yourself how these games come to be, the styles used, and ask how they are framing critical issues. Newsgames are an interesting space, and while they have struggled, they can be powerful tools for explaining ongoing events.
Media Literacy Games
A work in progress for my dissertation research, I expanded on the above scholarship to specifically study media literacy games. Given that media literacy is broad, I focused my definition around disinformation (which isn’t that much narrower), and collected games that attempted to teach core skills or knowledge around this issue. As Grace and Huang’s work above attests, media literacy games are a subset of newsgames, but with perhaps stricter educational goals.
I collected and played over 50 board and videogames, but can share some of my early findings now as I clean up the rest of the data set. The image below is based on 28 of these (digital) games and very quickly we can see some glaring problems:
First, like above, there are lots of quizzes and narrative adventures.
Second, despite so many calling for critical thinking, the term was poorly defined or barely discussed in these games. Rather they have inferred meanings like, “Think for yourself” or “ask why”. We have to be careful with some claims, as research on conspiracy show just how parallel that thinking can become to actual fact checking.
Third, they position disinformation as something nefarious that can manipulate audiences on a broad scale. While the moral panic of misinformation paints it that way, such claims are overblown. Don't get me wrong. Manipulating information for power or money or whatever - that is bad. However, people are more resilient than we sometimes them credit, and a game focused on media literacy skills should consider that.
This is comparable to arguments by other scholars who discuss that concepts like misinformation are poorly discussed in these games where conversations of secondary issues like bias are completely missing. Clearly, design is struggling to balance what we mean by media literacy, disinformation, and critical thinking. So if you are a budding game maker or teacher, or someone that just cares, maybe consider what these terms mean to you before translating them into a game. For example, consider this critique on media literacy from Cynthia Peters in 1998,
"The people who preach media literacy hail from all over the political spectrum. Their funding sources are everything from the Catholic Church to Disney Corporation and MTV. They use media literacy as a tool to counter whatever media messages they find particularly abhorrent or as a neutral form of "education." Peters, 1998.
So where are we with Disinformation Games?
Perhaps this is where we can reflect on what games actually offer in this space. Clearly people are trying. While we have more than enough critique, there are good examples for the right audience. I’ve mentioned Cat Park before, I discussed Fake It to Make It, even stuff like Newsfeed Defenders holds value. It depends on the audience, learning goals, and how we implement the game. The challenge seems to be in how we are collectively conceptualizing and teaching these ideas.
Disinformation is actually really hard to understand. Yes, we can define it as intentionally false information meant to cause harm. We can use terms like misinformation to delineate between goals of intent but scholars are still figuring out the specifics of disinformation. We see tactics like those used during cold war Russia focused on dismissing, distorting, distracting, and dismaying the public and we have entire industries that people can hire to spread false content. We have legacies of information manipulation that date back to Roman times and probably even older.
Games are still seemingly presenting these issues as if they are new. It makes sense, social media still has some of that shiny new-tech glisten, but the issues we are discussing are longstanding. Think about that when you make your game. Maybe we don’t need another quiz or another story, maybe boardgames offer immense potential, or perhaps there are games out there that are already doing the job.
I’ve become fascinated in the idea of information as a game, where the spreading and manipulating of audiences actually aligns heavily with many game mechanics. I’m going to write more on that next, because it might be helpful in thinking through our design process. But in all of this, I urge you to be creative in what you make. Creative in the type of game, but also in how you think about the concept you are teaching.
Disinformation isn't new and isn't going away. Games are one of many tools for understanding information systems, so don't pigeon hole yourself into one repetitive design space. Make the game that works for your needs.
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