The Game Man Games designer Tony Manninen from Oulu believes that within ten years games will be one way of offering news. The Game Man challenges news media to use creative solutions when trying to reach young readers. Janne Nyyssönen janne.nyyssonen@kaleva.fi ■ One
probably should not be surprised to see a shelf of candy by the aquarium in the office break room. That is effectiveness in a games company style. “You save time if people don’t have to go to shops. The candy lasts much longer now than it did in the beginning”, laughs Tony Manninen, the chief designer and CEO of Ludocraft, an Oulu-based games studio. The guest is shown to a room decorated in the style of a French café -- this is Tony Manninen’s milieu. Manninen has been invited to share his wisdom with us, news design professionals. Why should we care? “I see games as a media like any of the traditional ones. People don’t just watch, listen or even OFFICE CEO and just read head designer Tony them, Manninen gives the interview they do in a “French café”. The journalist things forgot his traditional Nokia rubwith ber boots in the Picture. them. Photo: Pekka Ala-aho
The City of Games SNDSMagazine 2009|1
■ Oulu is Finland’s second most important
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gaming town after Helsinki. ■ There are some 60 game companies in
Finland, ten of which operate in Northern Finland. The sector employs approximately one thousand people. ■ The best known Finnish games are Habbo Hotel by Sulake and Max Payne by Remedy. Remedy had designers from Oulu in its team.
Young people are no longer within the reach of mainstream media. 99 per cent of them are somewhere else. Where? Quite a few are playing games.” ”What if even a webzine cannot reach the young? Will you settle for the readers you are able to get, or, will you think of creative solutions to achieve a wider circulation?” Manninen asks. Ludocraft has already been designing a game based on news. The challenges and the drama of the game would engage the reader or the player in an environment made up of topical news items. ”Would it be possible to build a constantly changing news landscape for a newspaper’s website where the player could bustle around and at the same time absorb what is happening in the world”, Manninen wonders. Active playing is a more effective way of committing the readers than the traditional browsing of a newspaper, Manninen thinks, though it might take some effort to find a particular piece of news. Playing might go down well with young people and make them friends of