Why game-y infographics?

By MONICA ULMANU

There is no coincidence that Powering A Nation is working on three major interactive pieces this year and all include game elements. I have recently come across to one of the first research papers that study the application of formal elements of game-based information graphics and it suggests that these types of interactives generate increased exploration of the data space by users as compared to the regular version of the graphic. The Evolution of An Energy Bill, the interactive I am producing, is composed of two parts:

1. A step-by-step process that leads the user through the history of The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, from the day it was first introduced in the House to the day it was signed into law by President Bush, and

2. A pass-your-own-bill game, in which the user gets to be a senator and is forced to make compromises in order to pass his own energy bill.

The three-dimensional model of the US Capitol built for The Evolution of An Energy interactive; by Monica Ulmanu

Reasons for choosing the game-y approach

First of all, games can be seen as an alternative method of structuring a story, less bound by linear narrative. In the inception phase, our thinking evolved from the premise that the way a story is presented to a user and the types of interactions afforded have a big impact on the exploration of the data set.

We decided that the graphic is the main frame and all the game elements serve the graphic and not vice versa.The mechanics of the game involve successfully passing a bill, under real-life constraints such as lobbying influences and procedures used in the House or in the Senate. The user needs to go through several steps in the process of trying to pass the bill and this provides a certain structure to the interaction with the graphic, while in the same time allowing the journalists to focus attention on the main elements of the graphic.

In this context, if we were to draw an axis of interactivity and place different formats of infographics along, it would look more or less like this:

Videographics (or motion graphics) are narrated walk-throughs of some infographics. The paper mentioned above refers to this mode of storytelling as the landmark narrative since the user is guided between some pre-selected set of landmarks in the data set. Flexible narratives are those stories in which particular landmarks are selected and the user is transitioned between them in a way that allows him to stop and explore the data set at points in between landmarks. The Evolution of An Energy Bill stands at the other end of the axis, where there are undirected information visualizations; they allow the users to explore the data space with greater flexibility, according to whatever is of most interest to them.

This type of graphics also has another advantage in addition to allowing users to engage more efficiently with the data. The game is fully dynamically programmed, so different data sources can be plugged in easily.

Game elements

There are several elements that can be incorporated into infographics: rules, goals, competition, advancement and the notion of "winning." From a storytelling perspective, selecting the goals, rules and criteria for passing the bill form the editorial core for building an effective information graphic game.

There is also a certain environment that needs to be created and, in the case of our politics game, we preferred to build a simulated reality (with a three-dimensional model of the US Capitol) rather than an abstract one.

Further research

After all is programmed and published, there are still questions that need answers. How will the game elements of the graphic influence the users' perception? Will they have a different understanding of the graphic if presented as a game?