Game-based News Simulation (Ideation Process)

Overview:

The project offers an innovative new way of covering news events through game-based simulation, whereby users will be encouraged to experience the event indirectly by means of gaming technologies and ‘on-site’ re-enactment of events, bringing them into what is happening.

Objectives:

• Provide an experience without end; give users opportunities to totally immerse themselves in a ‘gameified’ news event.

• Enhance Interaction and Managerial Understanding: Increase the accessibility of complex events by making it simple to understand how such events could unfold.

• Amplify Engagement: Broaden the reach and active engagement with news content by providing a unique experience.

Project Components:

• Event Simulation with Game Elements This step involves duplicating the geographical site of the events by utilising 3D gaming technologies to generate an immersive atmosphere to make viewers feel they are actually present.

• Character Control: Digitally controlled character that can move and interact with elements of the event freely and in the same way as in a third-person shooter game.

• Interactive Temporal Events: The user observes the development of events, which are unfolded in time, identifying their sequence and cross-references.

• Interactive Information Points: The virtual environment has rich content and can interact with information points of each element of events to query for details.

• Additional realistic effects: Include effects such as sounds and pictures that intensify realism and sensation.

Benefits:

• Improved Knowledge and Learning: Present a novel educational tool to better understand the news through a more tactile and in-depth experience.

• Higher Interaction for Media: Users can only experience multimedia news reports with higher interactivity.

• In-depth Event Analysis: Incidents and events can be examined from different perspectives with detailed granularity, which can be of utility to analysts and journalists in providing analysis of news.

Potential Applications:

• Media Outlets: Innovative event coverage by offering game-like interactive news experiences.

• Education and Training: These worksheets are designed for you so that students can learn about historical events and current affairs through simulations.

• Documentation and Investigations: Simulations can be used for documenting and investigating events. Think of the journalist or academic who needs to corral and make sense of information.

Example of How the Project Works:

• Setting up the event environment: Based on satellite images and the use of 3D maps, you create a detailed virtual model of the event location.

• Enrich interaction: Provide details such as demonstrators, police forces, fighter jets and military vehicles, so that users can visualize the interaction of these elements in the context of the event.

• Temporal Experience: Choose the first day of the event, and then let the viewer play the subsequent days with explanation at the beginning of each day.

• Wider information: Interactive information points can be clicked for more information about ongoing events, key figures, and statistics.