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Censorship, Corruption, and Bias: A Video Game About Newspaper Journalism

'The Westport Independent' makes you a newspaper editor trying to do journalism in the face of a corrupt government.

Screencap from The Westport Independent

Swedish independent game developers Pontus Lundén and Kristian Brodal are stoking a conversation about ethics in journalism—and (thankfully) it has nothing to do with Gamergate. The pair created The Westport Independent, "a game about censorship, corruption, and newspapers," where you play a newspaper editor confronted with difficult choices: How do you produce a paper in the face of a corrupt government? Do you tinker with stories in order to keep them at bay? Do you run headlines that please the rebels rising up against the regime? Or do you say fuck it, print the truth, and hope you don't get shot in the head by government goons or nutso anarchists?

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It's a game that forces your hand, and proves a point about the media: There is no such thing as true objectivity. There are always choices about what gets printed, what gets left out, and how stories get edited based off who you're trying to please.

After learning about Westport Independent last month from PAX Prime, Seattle's gaming convention, I tested out the beta version (the full version will be available by the end of the year). I decided that no story should be edited and the truth would prevail. Soon enough, my writers were in jail and my paper was shut down.

Having failed to keep my imaginary newspaper afloat, I got on the phone with Lundén to talk about the game, journalistic objectivity, media cynicism, and why I will never, ever get far very far in Westport Independent.

VICE: Why create a game about media bias?
Pontus Lundén: There is a game called Papers Please. It's a game where you play a border control guard, basically. The tagline is a "dystopian document thriller." It's a very depressing story, but a really, really good game. What it showed was in games you can have very boring and mundane tasks that become interesting because of the context. So even though all you're doing is just checking papers, because you're in this really oppressive state, for the guys that come to the border patrol you control their lives. You basically decide the fate of their lives and it becomes a really, really heavy story.

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We liked that concept. There is something that's called a game jam—it's a thing that basically you develop a game on a limited amount of time. We were doing this game jam where we had 72 hours to make a game. We tried to make a game about hiding information, and that's what ended up being our game.

I saw in an interview with PC Gamer where you said that "the loyalist government is a problem that the rebels are not a good solution to." Why create something with such a heavy undertone where you kind of can't win?
[Laughs] I suppose it has something to do with that we're pretentious douchebags?

Obviously I feel that censorship, the way you twist the news, or the way that journalism still today works—it's very much driven by an agenda. I think that's something everyone has experienced. It's really easy to say, 'Oh, it only happens in these dictatorship countries.' But, no, it happens here as well. Like I just need to send people to Fox News to get an extreme example of that. It's a very interesting subject and that's not really something that's been handled in a game before.

Is this something you're seeing in Sweden? This agenda-driven news?
It's really inspired by British and American society. It's here as well. I get this question a lot: People sort of think because we make a game like this, that it's a big thing in Sweden. But it's like, no, it's a big thing everywhere. It's a thing in Sweden also. You can see very easily that the press is driven by an agenda and most of all that they have a political opinion. And I think that's OK, because I don't think you can be completely objective anyways.

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"In games you can have very boring and mundane tasks that become interesting because of the context." - Pontus Lundén

I had an editor once who I remember saying that there's no such thing as objective journalism.
No, there's really not.

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When I saw that there was a game about journalism ethics, I wasn't sure if that was great or really scary. Why is this something that we really need right now? A game to teach us how to be ethical?
There has been stuff like this before. We usually say with our game, 'You can't lie, you can only not tell the entire truth.' Which is a point we're trying to make sure is there. It's very rare for media to out and out lie. That mostly never happens. It's just that you only report on one side and you only show one context, which of course gives it a very strong angle. That's the critical thinking we want people to understand. We do not only want to make sure that people understand the power that media has, but also the pressure they have on them, and ask why do media write what they write?

What do you think the strongest pressures are?
I think it depends on what paper you're working on. I think most papers have, if nothing else, they have some sort of image. So for example, here in Sweden, we have plenty of papers that have editorials. And of course these editorials are political usually. Editorials are quite subjective. That's the point of them.

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In Sweden, most of the newspapers are decently open with what political angle they have. They say if they are right-wing or left-wing. So, of course, the news that are reported there are angled in that sort of way.

"You don't really want it to be the news that people read, but that sells." - Pontus Lundén

You're a journalist. Journalism is a business. Let's face it: It means journalists need money. I'm going to sound super anti-capitalist, but no matter how you see it there will always be something giving you some sort of pressure. If it's like, 'I need to write an article this way so it's popular enough so my paper sells enough.' That will be a pressure and it will make you write populist articles.

Right, but I want to believe media isn't all like that.
Here's the deal: I don't think it's a problem that people are not objective. I think it's good that people are subjective and very open with their subjectiveness. Always disclosing is not always possible either. I think the thing that I hope people understand with our game is that because there are so many things called "news," you shouldn't really rely on one source.

I was showing your game to some of my journalist friends that work for different papers, and we really were laughing about how much you guys really believe in the power of newspapers. Maybe more than we do! As journalists, we do wonder, Are people reading the thoughtful journalism that people put out, or are they only reading clickbait and watching Fox news?
Well, if you look at how the game is made, the articles that are the most clickbait-y are the ones that have the most effect.

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I did notice that. I was terrible at your game because I couldn't edit these articles to please either side. Everyone at my paper got arrested.
Yeah, that'll happen. It's a game. You need to do some things that make it more of a representation than real life.

That's actually a good point, though, that you can just print everything. If you print everything, you'll either get taken away or you can actually end up ending in the same situation that you started.

Right, and when I put celebrity stuff in, my paper did amazing.
Yup, that's what i mean with the pressures. You don't really want it to be the news that people read, but that sells. It's a very cynical look at things.

I was surprised that you could lay out the paper and edit the articles and choose where it was distributed, but that advertising didn't come into play.
We did do some thinking about it. It's a thing with limited time and money to develop the game. Gameplay-wise, it became very similar anyways: Different articles catered to different districts. You would have to write your articles in a certain way to please advertising firms. Which is real life, unfortunately.

Yeah. In real life, I haven't come up against an oppressive governmental regimes, but I have pissed off advertisers.
You have different districts, so you still have to choose what articles to print so you sell [papers].

Have you guys ever worked in media?
No.

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Have you created games in the past that aim to do a public service?
We do like to make games that force people into uncomfortable situations. Not all of them are socio-political, but we do like to work with that when we can.

We have done two more games—they are both games about where people are forced to do things that are not so nice. We have one game where you're playing a field surgeon. The concept is you're at war and you get new soldiers sent to you all the time, but you need to send soldiers back to the front lines, otherwise your camp will be taken over as well.

Whoa. That's heavy.
You have to balance healing people as fast as possible … As the game progresses, you get patients faster and faster so you need to do all this stressful stuff faster.

And then we made a game about starvation in a post-apocalypse. You basically have been elected the chief of a camp in the post-apocalypse through the democratic process that you had a rifle. What you're trying to do is make sure that rations are enough for everyone and that people scavenge for more food. But of course there is not enough food and people get angry and in order to maintain order you are forced to do not-nice things to people who are about to do not-nice things.

So you make games about people making horrible choices.
There's no good choice, but you're forced to make one. I think it's more interesting when you pressure people actually to do them—to make the choice. If they're under pressure, people will find out interesting things about themselves.

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