Editors’ Lab: Newsgaming Ideas

The latest hack event in the Editors’ Lab series kicked off yesterday at the Times building. Eleven media teams got right to work and generated some ideas on the theme of “newsgaming.” Project ideas are subject to change, but here’s a summary of the brain waves thus far:

The Associated Press Team 1: AP Headline Masher
Users take existing AP headlines and create new ones, magnetic-poetry style; new headlines are shared on Facebook and Twitter, driving traffic to the original stories.

The Associated Press Team 2: NewsEgg
Hatch a healthy newsbeast by keeping your "NewsEgg" fed with a steady flow of AP stories. The more you read, the faster your egg will grow.

Boston Globe: 26.2: Boston Is Running
An app that tracks, celebrates and supports Boston's progress as it prepares for the 2014 Boston marathon.

Boston Globe: My Marathon
Runkeeper meets Farmville. After the marathon bombing, many people said they will run next year in honor of the dead. Our game would help them track their progress and compare it to others’ performance.

Chicago Tribune: Game Center
Mini-games around news stories. Play along as you read. See your scores, compete with your friends and find other games in the Chicago Tribune Game Center.

Digital First Media: The Waffler
We ask players to take on the role of a political candidate and take a stance on a barrage of policy questions. Can you stay true to your values and still garner the public support you need to win an election?

NPR: Drumfill
Listen to historical stories and test your knowledge, against the clock and against friends.

ProPublica: The Heart Saver
The Heart Saver illustrates access to emergency care in New York through a simulation game: the player's goal is to save as many heart attack patients in New York as possible by transporting them to the nearest available hospitals within the set amount of time. The game shows players how many lives they’ve saved (relative to peer players), given each hospital's performance metrics and their own speed.

RevSquare: Google Glass app
Stay tuned!

Texas Tribune: Slap (working title)
A fast-paced photo-matching game, Slap leverages a news organization's photo archives to help users discover current events in a casual, shareable way.

The Wall St. Journal: Helicopter Ben
It's 2007, the economy is out of control and you're Ben Bernanke. Hang on to your hat as you ride the Dow and use all the tools at the Fed's disposal to save American workers from losing their jobs.

WNYC: Changing New York
On a New York map, note a time and place where you’ve noticed significant change. Then navigate across everyone else's stories by neighborhood, year, gender, ethnicity, "New York age" and sentiment about the change.

Good luck, everyone! Check #editorslab on Twitter for updates throughout the day.