Gamification and Newsgames as Narrative Innovations in Journalism

Abstract

This chapter explores how innovative narratives, supported by a combination of playful approaches and technological convergence, provide a reconfiguration of digital news storytelling. Newsgames integrate two opposing logics: the culture of journalism, based on truthfulness and credibility, and the culture of games, characterized by the creation of imaginary worlds, persuasion and mechanics. We analyse The Ocean Game (2019) and The Amazon Race (2019), which use different procedural strategies. We examine the development of gamification in journalistic storytelling, which uses game elements to enhance the user experience. The relationship that gamified news products establish with the audience illuminates changes in the rhetorical and structural dynamics between the news organization, the media workers, and the users. Thus, innovation in journalistic narrative through gamification and newsgames might translate into effective ways of producing content that combines rigour in substance with attractiveness in form, while preserving journalistic quality and incorporating the playful elements of games.