[Image Via: Andre Deak]
The largest problem facing mainstream media outlets today is audience fragmentation. Major publishers once had a monopoly on their audience, but long gone are the days when a single local newspaper, or a triumvirate of national broadcasters could be confident that everyone was tuning in to their message. The reality today is that competition for eyeballs takes the form of 24-hour news networks, niche cable channels, such as the Food Network, or ESPN, as well as Internet-only newspapers, blogs and video games. Competition today is also global.
Next week I head to Brazil to embark on the first leg of TechTrotter and today I’m starting to search the blogosphere for the best Brazilian technology writers. I was very intrigued when I found this post (translated from Portuguese) about a series of news-based video games that fuse fun with factfinding. Andre Deak, whose article I found, mentions three different types of video games a politician matching quiz, a Pacman-like game and a 1st person role player. By far the most interesting was the roleplaying game called “Global Conflicts: Latin America,” where the main character is a scrappy investigative reporter on the trail of corrupt officials and narco gangs in Mexico. I watched the trailer, but was unable to get the demo to load in my browser.
Based solely on what I saw in the trailer, however, it appears that the objective is to guide your character through a labyrinth of conflicts of interests, violence and suffering in order to emerge with the story. Sounds a lot like the investigative work of my classmates at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. Alright, I may be kidding about that, but I find it fascinating that a video game publisher is paying tribute to the role of journalists in our society and the risks that can be involved in breaking a major story. According to The Committee to Protect Journalists, 15 journalists have been killed in Mexico in since they began keeping records in 1992. Since the start of 2009 two more Mexican reporters have been killed, according to CPJ.
At the graduation ceremony for the Columbia Journalism School, the keynote speaker was Alejandro Junco de la Vega, Mexico’s largest newspaper publisher, who was the first non-American to be honored with the Columbia Journalism Award. While in his speech he downplayed the risks he and his family face, de la Vega relocated his family to the U.S. out of safety concerns, according to the Knight Center for Journalism at his University of Texas, his alma mater.
De la Vegas fearless pursuit of the truth in Mexico’s drug war is commendable and his efforts are crucial to a free and open society. Whether the act of journalism itself can generate blockbuster video game sales is debatable, however, it’s certainly an interesting turn or events. In the future, I would be happy to see old media types investing into these sorts of innovations. We’ve come along way since newspapers simply duplicated their print version online, but there is a still a long way to go for mainstream outlets to go before they once again captivate a young, tech savvy audience. Perhaps they should use their resources to jump into video game production whole hog. Anyway, it’s just a thought.
