The Cartoonist and the Whaler: Two Tales of Journalism's Future

Thursday, Dec. 8, 2:00 p.m. Wilson 235
Speaker: Ian Bogost, Georgia Tech.
A "newsgame" is a videogame that does journalism. Drawing from five years of commercial development and academic research on this new approach, this talk summarizes the principles of newsgames and then offers two related but conflicting perspectives on its role in the future of newsmaking.

Dr. Ian Bogost is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (where he is also Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media) and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers videogames as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on political games and artgames. Bogost is author or co-author of many books, including Unit Operations, Persuasive Games, Racing the Beam, Newsgames, How To Do Things with Videogames and the forthcoming Alien Phenomenology. Bogost's videogames cover topics as varied as airport security, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally. His most recent game, A Slow Year, a collection of game poems for Atari, won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the 2010 Indiecade Festival.