The Cartoonist
To engage readers in the news, this project will create a free tool that produces cartoon-like current event games – the game equivalent of editorial cartoons. The simplified tools will be created with busy journalists and editors in mind, people who have the pulse of their community but don’t have a background in game development. By answering a series of questions about the major actors in a news event, and value judgments about their actions, The Cartoonist will automatically proposes game rules and images. The games aim to help the sites draw readers and inspire them to explore the news.
Ian Bogost, a videogame designer, critic and researcher, is associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founding partner at Persuasive Games. His research and writing considers videogames as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on political games and art games. Bogost is author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, co-author of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and co-author of the forthcoming Newsgames: Journalism at Play. 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.
Michael Mateas is an authority on artificial intelligence for games and interactive entertainment. His research group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, The Expressive Intelligence Studio, is one of the largest technical game research groups in the world. He holds the MacArthur Endowed Chair and helped create the first game design program in the University of California system. With Andrew Stern, he created the award-winning Façade, the first artificial intelligence-based interactive drama.
