Extra Credit - "Get Bad News"

After playing the game “Get Bad News,” I realized how easy it is to actually manipulate a story in order to gain followers and viewers. Right off the bat the game simulates an interaction asking if you want to be a writer or a viewer. After you play the game basically makes you a writer that gets followers from good news stories. It starts off by asking you to post an angry tweet about the government to gain followers. It asks you to impersonate someone important or create a fake twitter. One of the people you can impersonate is President Donald Trump, which immediately allows you to tweet disinformation about the war with North Korea. After you follow a couple of the steps, the game allows you to earn different achievements like “Impersonation.” After this the game asks you to create your own type of news, either a blog or website. I chose website and decided to be the editor-in chief. You have the option to write about serious or emotional stuff and whichever one you pick it allows you to follow a news story that “you created.” After you create this news story you gain followers but the story isn’t always completely accurate. There is a twist on the headlines in order to gain more followers. During the game this goes bad and you start to lose followers so it wants you to either apologize to your fans or lie to them more with information to back it up but it not true. Of course, you never want to apologize to the game makes you lie more and Photoshop fake evidence about whatever your story is. My story happened to be a suspicious plane crash so it had me Photoshop evidence together of a plane it in order to backup my story. After doing this, my followers increased again and I became better at what I was doing. This game is not different than what actual news sites will do in order to gain more people to read their stories. In a nutshell, this game shows how simple it is to become a writer of disinformation. All it takes are followers and a well-written story to obtain the support from people that follow you.