Idea Lab

Balance the Budget: Gotham Gazette Game 3

by Amanda Hickman
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

After a series of false starts on an energy consumption game we decided to skip ahead to a timely game of balancing the budget . The game is actually a reprise of a popular budget balancing game we created in 2003 -- we're regularly asked for the source code for that game, and while we do have it, it is a bear of a maze of a mess that no self-respecting programmer would want to try to wade through in search of numbers and texts to change. For this game, we did use Flash, which made it significantly easier to...

• February 12, 2009
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The Long Shelf Life for News Games

by Gail Robinson
2009 Knight News Challenge Winner

People who run news sites can be resistant to encouraging the developing games and other interactive feature. Perhaps it's that "game" sounds too playful, although given that most newspaper feature comics, crosswords and Sudoko, to say nothing of the latest celebrity photos and gossip, it's hard to see why. The interactivity may make some editors nervous as well as pairing a light approach -- a game -- with a serious issue such as the deaths in Darfur, hurricanes or legislative redistricting. The amount of staff time and resources -- technical experts, designers, writers, editors-- that go into a game can...

• April 8, 2008
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