Perspective: The creation of "Newsgames" as a teaching method-Empirical observations

TL;DR

This paper reports on an empirical teaching experiment where engineering students created newsgames on current events, enhancing their information, reasoning, and debate skills beyond technical design.

Contribution

It demonstrates that creating newsgames as a teaching method fosters critical thinking, information literacy, and debate skills, with empirical evidence from student projects.

Findings

Students produced 17 news-related games on diverse topics.

Designing newsgames promotes information seeking and documentation.

Newsgame creation encourages perspective-taking and debate.

Abstract

This chapter reports an empirical teaching experience integrating newsgame creation-serious games addressing current events and contributing to public debate-into an introductory game design course for engineering students. From 2010 to 2012, around 80 students produced 17 games on diverse news topics (e.g., H1N1 influenza, Megaupload shutdown, Tunisian Revolution, Haiti earthquake), relying on online journalistic sources and using accessible development tools suited to mixed programming backgrounds (RPG Maker, The Games Factory 2, Flash, Java). The authors argue that designing newsgames fosters learning outcomes beyond technical design skills: (1) thorough information seeking and documentation of real-world issues, (2) exchange and confrontation of viewpoints through contrasting game interpretations of the same event, and (3) classroom debates about the legitimacy and limits of video games as an expressive medium for sensitive topics. The paper concludes that newsgame design can support the development of reasoning skills (evidence-based argumentation and perspective-taking) and suggests extending the approach to other serious game types to further explore its educational potential.