The “Newsroom”
Misinformation is everywhere. Many of us are familiar with Russia’s efforts to affect the 2016 election on Facebook. Bots on Twitter are definitely a problem, even if we can’t agree on the scale of that problem. But if misinformation is everywhere, it only makes sense that anything that could inoculate us from that threat would need to be everywhere. Enter Tilt.
Disinformation-stomping developer Tilt has created a series of quick games that use research-based methods to expose how misinformation works. These are browser-based games, so you can play them on your PC, phone, iPad, even through Edge on your XBox (absolute torture). This is my experience with two of these games.
Bad News (2018)
In February 2018, Tilt released Bad News, a game that teaches players media literacy through inoculation theory. The idea is that by seeing how this all works and teaching people how they, too, could become a misinformation tycoon they will be better armed to spot and call out out fake news in the future.
The game is broken into 6 levels (Impersonation, Emotion, Polarization, Conspiracy, Discrediting, and Trolling), each representing a skill you must master in order to be a true disinformation star. This sets a clear expectation for how long this experience will likely take.
To start, the player is instructed to post something nasty on Twitter (in-game). A generic criticism of the government works for a while, but you’ll need to crank up the absurdity if you want to get some traction. You eventually create a Twitter account for JOE BIDEÑ, announcing a plan to annex Canada and rename it North North Dakota. I should stress that this game is pretty funny, too. #YouGotAnnexed
Periodically, you’ll check in with your followers to see what they’re saying about your “news site.” I went with the name Honest Truth Online because it was just dripping with the self-importance of some of my favorite disinformation peddlers.
Level-by-level, you’ll learn about each technique by giving orders to use a bot army or create memes, even prompting the player to use ad hominem attacks against fact checkers. This hand-holding experience keeps this game on the rails and prevents players from exploring just how depraved they might get if they could really run a misinformation empire.
Breaking Harmony Square
At first glance, Breaking Harmony Square appears to be Bad News… again. And it kind of is. The gameplay is incredibly similar, the goals seem the same, and it even includes the same in-game surveys (for further research by Tilt). There are however two key differences:
1.) You get to name yourself Carmen Sanfrancisco
2) It’s local.
When I say the gameplay is similar, I mean it’s almost entirely the same game. Aesthetically, it’s a bit more advanced, with a wider color palette and cartoonish style, but playing through the first few levels felt like déjà vu. I didn’t quite understand why they would make a second game that seemed to do exactly the same thing as the first.
It took a while for me to really grasp what was going on here. Where Bad News was a text-based tycoon style game illustrating how one might use a “news site” and social media to manipulate public opinion and incite unrest on a national scale, Harmony Square brings that same concept to your city council meeting. There are local problems, local reporters, and local reactions. You’re using the same techniques, but it’s all happening in a small town.
The Verdict
The problem of misinformation is not one that can be solved with one tool. Just as misinformation moguls push content through multiple social media, blog, and even television channels, so too must any who aim to fight misinformation be armed. These games offer a very quick and easy way to wrap your head around how misinformation starts, what its aims are, and most importantly, how to spot it.
Tilt states that the aim of these games (of which there are others, by the way) is to act as vaccines against misinformation. Lisa Poot, senior project manager at Tilt, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz said “People’s minds can be inoculated, just like their bodies” and I really think that’s it. If we can train people how to misinform, we may have a chance to beat it.