Playing the News – A Means to Get Your Sources Engaged

I often point to ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and Mashable as
examples of beat blogging – and the latest experiment from RWW is a
perfect example why.

Using Impact Games they created four
characters who could play out recent tech news. You could be a
developer, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc, and predict what they would do
next and how they would react to future circumstances.

From ReadWriteWeb:

"How
it works: in this particular game you can choose to play the role of
any of 4 different players: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, a Market
Analyst. Then you can either predict what will happen, or voice your opinion about what should
happen. Or both. If for example you choose to play as Google, you can
predict that Google will open up the languages beyond Python. If you
voice an opinion, you are guided by several "advisors" – in this case
we have RWW, CNET and Dave Winer.
The difference between predicting and voicing an opinion is that you
may not necessarily agree with what you predict Google will do, so you
can then cast your opinion about what you think Google ought to do!

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This
is the first in a series of games that we’ll run over the next few
months on ReadWriteWeb. If you have ideas for other games, please let
us know in the comments below."

Now I know what you are thinking, "too techie." Again: Look past the tech subject matter – this is a method that can be used to cover ANY topic from the environment to your local city government. Turn the news into an educational game.

Imagine
a situation where these ‘news scenario games’ are as quick and easy to create as blog
posts. Why not build a special one for your sources? Get them to
comment on current events and feel like they are playing a game at the
same time.

So much of beat blogging is finding a way to engage
your sources – give them a reason to stay involved, perhaps creating
game-like sourcing is a means to do that.