MSNBC Launches Interactive Game

MSNBC Launches Interactive Game July 3, 2007

In a link post a few days back, I briefly mentioned MSNBC’s new interactive news game, Newsbreaker. The game was given a positive review by the excellent Influential Marketing Blog. In the link post, I called it pointless and left it at that. I wanted to expand a little and offer two additional thoughts:

(1) Any promotion you launch should be consistent with your brand. As a serious news organization, I’m not sure this game really projects the image MSNBC wants to project. By presenting your news in this way, it seems to me that you kind of trivialize the stories you write. You cheapen the news a little bit.

I also think the time spent developing this game could have been better spent building other, more community oriented features.

(2) Even if you think doing a game is a great idea, for these things to work the game has to be really fun if it is going to get passed around. This one isn’t, in my opinion. And I’m not afraid to waste a little time on a Flash game either.

What do you think? Am I off base?

4 comment(s)

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Comments

Mike Orren - July 3rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm

Utterly pointless and illustrative of the fact that most news orgs have not realized that their headlines, when presented out of context, are ridiculous to the point of annoyance.
Rohit - July 4th, 2007 at 8:58 am

Hi Todd,

Thanks for expanding this out – both your arguments are good ones (as usual). On your first point, I can see how it might trivialize the news – but I would argue that the “game” MSNBC is playing is already trivialized by all the frivolous headlines and trend towards news as entertainment. In my opinion, Newsbreaker is another way of playing a game they are already playing. This may not make it right, but it doesn’t seem out of place or make me think less of them. When I want “serious” news, I am unlikely to go to MSNBC or any of their competitors and more likely to turn to CurrentTV or another source I consider more real. Maybe that’s just me. On the second point, it’s not the game itself I found most engaging, but the way it and the screensaver application start to take the user in the direction of consuming written news in a visual manner. The game itself may not be enough to get me to return more than once, but so far I do like the screensaver (which I now have installed) as a way to get headlines pushed to me in a way that is not interruptive and highly visual. Of course, I have always been a big fan of using screensavers for marketing (old school, I know). Make a good and useful screensaver, and you have an easy branded opportunity which most marketing teams forget about because it feels so “1.0″ …
Mary Specht - July 9th, 2007 at 8:50 am

I don’t really think the game is that fun, regardless of whether it involves headlines or not. Isn’t the first rule of games that they be fun? I’d rather play Brickbreaker on my Blackberry, where moving the bar is less awkward.

The screensaver for headlines is sort of a weird idea, since when the screensaver is on you’re by definition not at your computer.

These aren’t great products in and of themselves, so they can’t be great products for engaging users with news.
nusra - October 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 am

good for children

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