Al Jazeera has launched a choose-your-own-adventure web game that casts the player in the role of an investigative journalist who has to expose the multi-million dollar illegal fishing trade in West Africa.
The game, Pirate Fishing, has been developed in conjunction with Altera Studio in Italy and is based on a two-part documentary of the same name that was created by journalist Juliana Ruhfus and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.
Players start off as a junior researcher and are required to gather evidence, take notes and fact check to build a case demonstrating how the illegal fishing trade in Sierra Leone is affecting millions of poor people, with the chance of promotion if they perform well. The game includes YouTube videos taken from the documentary created by Ruhfus as part of Al Jazeera’s People and Power series.
“We’re basically gamifying current affairs,” said Ruhfus in a statement. “Investigative journalism can be seen as quite high-brow, whereas ‘gamification’ can open it up to a new generation of digital-savvy journalist.”
The documentary was itself made two years ago, but despite being investigated and uncovered by Ruhfus and her team, the problems caused by pirate fishing in Sierra Leone are still very much ongoing. It has taken that length of time to create the game, and it serves as Al Jazeera’s flagship project in this new form of transmedia current affairs journalism.
The game has been launched to coincide with World Maritime Day and demonstrates a neat way of repackaging content and making it engaging for a new audience. It also gives something of a behind the scenes look at the stumbling blocks and struggles faced by investigative journalists. Producer of the documentary Orlando von Einsiedel said of the investigation: “On a professional level this was a very intense shoot. The only time we stopped moving was to sleep.”
Obviously the investigation is just a game that you can dip in and out of it, but it does give players a real insight into how high-quality and successful investigations are conducted. “The game highlights how news stories are created, and the benchmarks needed to qualify your reporting. We’ve been encouraged by the response so far,” said Ruhfus.
Condé Nast UK 2014