The initial approach of my dissertation project is to look at the dynamic between the media manager/editor and his or her audience as a game  comprising manager and reader-spectator in the roles of two “players”. The idea is to dismantle this relationship to its core pieces and try to rebuild it as something with a “play factor”. To this end, I will examine what is the crucial content and what are the physical and conceptual tools that will make this relationship work.

The book The Art of Game Design, written by Jesse Schell and published in August 2008, came to my attention in a review in the website of the magazine Edge. The review is titled The Best Book on Game Design Ever (published on 4 of August, 2008). Edge is not only a video-game magazine, but also discusses the culture around games, the origins of the best creations, and the history of the industry. A favourable review from them is a good indicator of the quality of any book. The second example of positive reference about this book came from Amazon.

Editors of magazines, as well as the managers of the magazines’ brands, have to develop relevant guides, websites and books. They face the mission of putting a “play factor” inside the products to build communities and make the audience talk about (and interact with) their brands. Most of the times, the products sell journalism, but the managers also have to be aware of how marketing and entertainment are involved in a media product. They need tools that respond to the special needs of a new kind of audience.

In the last decade, with the technological development of personal computers and video-game consoles, games evolved considerably as a media form in terms of themes and storytelling possibilities. With the creation of products as The Sims, which is single-player and doesn’t even look like a regular game, and the massive multiplayer games, which consist of collective worlds that exist and evolve even when the player is not there, the experience of gaming has changed and started to influence other media. At the same time, some of the tools, or logical structures, of these games started to appear in the form of user interfaces in other areas of the internet. Internet banking and social network websites look more and more like games, where the player is managing some kind of resource (be it money or just fame).

Game designers – most specifically multiplayer game designers – and social network managers seem to have some of the crucial knowledge to develop the tools that our media products need; the ability to build communities using engaging and interesting ways to gather and maintain audience interest. The success of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, with its communities, social networks and iPhone apps, is a good example of the possibilities of these techniques (David Carr, How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power).

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