Creating social games is one way news organizations can reach young people and engage them in reading news.
A team at the University of Missouri created a social game last fall that featured challenges centered around the football team's first season in the Southeastern Conference. A news feed with sports stories was posted on the right hand side of the site — the goal was catch the participants’ eyes with headlines as they completed the challenges.
The team learned quite a bit about creating social game sites through the process. They faced some hurdles — the biggest being how to market the game and attract potential players. Look for tips on how to market and create game sites, on the right hand side of this page.
Tips for news organizations
News organizations can use this game platform to create games of various topics like fitness/exercise, the environment, sports, elections or other topics. By engaging young people in news through social game sites, Yadamsuren said she believes news organizations can find new revenue streams.
- Market games early and regularly. Market in the right places, such as social media, college/student organizations etc.
- Throughout the game, promote the game to other players on Pinterest (a content sharing service). 'Pin' images, recipes, activity lists etc. related to your game/challenges.Find a subject area that would be of interest to young adults.
- Make the games/challenges fun, colorful and interactive.
- Be open-minded and creative when creating social game sites. Explore opportunities to create interactive news games.
- Create a site that is engaging so users will want to stay on the site. The longer the user is on the site, the more likely they are to “run into” the news feed.
- Young people often click on a news story if a headline catches their attention. Create compelling and engaging headlines and leads to draw in your readers from the gaming site.
- Change the types of challenges being offered to continue to engage the players throughout the game.
- Asking the players to seek out something in the community can help the players learn more about the community. For example, ask the players to submit photos they’ve taken of the oldest building on campus.
- Integrate the social game in newsroom routine.
- Offer prizes that provide incentive and motivation to play.
- Create an easy login. Asking users to go through a registration process can be time consuming. Allow users to login using their Facebook account.
- Create a referral system and tell users to encourage friends and family to take part in challenges. This will draw more people to your social game site, which could result in more people participating in challenges and/or reading news.
- Have your readers vote on the photo and videos they like best from the game challenges. Post the videos and photos on your website in a visible spot. This will draw more traffic to your website.
- Create virtual discussion place for your players to interact with one another.
- Example: Challenges also asked readers to submit their opinions about how the game went or what was needed to win the game. This allowed players to not only compete, but also interact with one another.
- Get the players’ feedback about the game, the site and any obstacles that may detract other people from participating.
- Be patient. The game may take some time to become established. People need time to learn about the game and then they can begin to expect it each year or season etc.
- For example, if your game is focused on football season, consider continuing the game into other athletic seasons.
Reaching the younger demographic
Young people fit into a group of news consumers called “news encounterers,” — those who find news incidentally while surfing the Internet for different reasons, said Borchuluun Yadamsuren, post doctoral fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Yadamsuren is researching news consumption habits.
If the younger demographic isn’t already reading the print product or website, it doesn’t make sense to market the game there.
Place news articles or links to articles to create incidental exposure on sites such as Facebook or social gaming sites where young people spend much of their time. Social media sites are also a good place to market new games. Market the game to college/young adult groups and organizations.
It’s crucial to reach the younger generation since they’re the future news consumers, said Yadamsuren.
“In order to face crises in media, news organizations need to expand their horizons to engage other groups of potential readers and consumers and not just focus on their loyal readership,” said Yadamsuren.
Social gaming
To test her research, Yadamsuren created a social game to introduce University of Missouri football fans to the new Southeastern Conference (SEC) season — MU Tiger Challenge. The game challenges were fun, interactive, and encouraged team spirit.
Social games can be an opportunity for young people to learn more about a given subject like the SEC conference.
The site included links to sports stories from the Columbia Missourian newspaper and KOMU-TV station in a visible location. Learn more about the game here. The game was designed as a partnership between software company Double Maple, RJI, the Columbia Missourian and KOMU.
During the season, 272 people registered on the site — 109 of those people earned points from completing challenges. Yadamsuren’s next task is analyzing data from the website to explore players’ behavior by looking at how often the stories were clicked on and what stories were clicked on. Yadamsuren has also been interviewing and surveying players to learn more about their news consumption and social gaming behavior.
One player doesn’t read sports news
University of Missouri junior Kayla Peters, who won the $1,000 prize, noticed the news links and headlines on the right hand side of the game website but never clicked on any of the stories.
“I usually just got on, did the challenges and got off,” she said.
Peters said although she enjoys watching Mizzou sports, she doesn’t read much sports news because she doesn’t always understand the statistics.
Peters primarily enjoys reading tabloids like People.com. However, she ‘likes’ Facebook pages including The New York Times and CNN, so occasionally will read a story that pops up in the news feed, if it piques her interest.
Peters completed most of the challenges and referred several friends to the gaming site, which did require some time be spent on the site.
“Just think how much time she spent on the site just by doing the challenges,” said MU Tiger Challenge Project Manager Joe Griffin. “If we would have had tabloid news on there, I’m sure she would have read that.”
People were spending time on the site – there were 343 photos, 31 videos and 430 conversations posted on the site.
Just before the general election in November, the news feed switched from sports stories to election stories. Yadamsuren said several people asked her why the story topics had changed. This was an indicator that players noticed the news feed.
Another player enjoyed reading the news and participating in the challenges
Megan Wilkinson, 32, a University of Missouri employee enjoyed not only completing the challenges, but also reading the news stories that were available in one convenient location.
Wilkinson said although she doesn’t actively go out and seek news, she wants to know what’s going on in the world. She gets most of her news from Yahoo and Facebook and will click on a headline if it piques her interest.
Wilkinson admits that she doesn’t usually watch TV news sources like CNN or Fox News because these sources seem to sway toward only one point of view.
“I like to hear both sides, more down the middle,” she said.
The Tiger Challenge team has learned quite a bit from this experiment and compiled several tips for news organizations that want to create a gaming site. See tips on right-hand side of this page.
The Tiger Challenge team has created a customizable template that other news organizations can personalize to topics that are important in their communities. She also hopes to compile her research to provide news organizations with more insight. Watch RJI’s website for additional information.
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