What if your news were delivered in the form of a game? For the most part, this would be a good thing. Anything, from times tables to learning how to play an instrument, is better when played in game format. The traditional news industry is seeking out new ways to encourage media consumption, and games are becoming central to this particular strategy. And MSNBC has just released a handful of new games and other applications to do just this.
Designed to be aligned with the rapid nature of online news consumption, one of the games is called NewsBlaster. It's where Snood meets Memory. Match headlines with floating orbs and knock them all off the screen. MSNBC has even gone so far as to turn the games into Facebook apps so you can compete against friends and get your name on a leaderboard.
Aside from making news into semi-fun, easily played games, there is a good amount of market research and advertising that's present as buried potential in these games. In seeing how users interact with news in game format, and how news is shared with others as a result, there is some semblance of attention data that can go into this.
It's a bit more tricky with MSNBC's NewsBlaster game in particular, but other news game formats that have more involved levels of interaction can get a better grasp on such market research. I think some would even fit into services like Jacked. That's not to say that other apps, one of which is similar to Digg Lab's screensaver offering, in MSN's new series can't do this.