I’m sitting in the J-Lab news games pre-session for ONA08, which the LR faithful know is a topic near and dear to my heart. There is a lot more out there since we first started talking about serious games and the news, but so far, most of what I am seeing is developed in Flash and based on quiz or calculators. There was more innovation going on at the Silverdocs games session earlier this summer, but one of the challenges mentioned here is the long development time and high cost. Documentary subjects may just fit deeper game experiences better than straight news and even features or enterprise efforts.
You can follow my tweets @DarthCheeta and follow all the ONA tweets by looking for the tag #ONA08 or @ONA08. You can’t be in two places at once, but a lot of great content is happening today. Chet Rhodes, AME for video at the Washington Post, is leading a packed room. The hardcore are in a sold out soup-to-nuts session on Ruby on Rails (djangocon just wrapped up elsewhere, so ROR is the order of the day here). Later, there is a great session planned on Entrepreneurship in J-Schools. Check all the sessions, podcasts, forums and more at journalists.org.
Feel free to DM me if you are here and want to meet up. LR blogger emeritus, Steve Safran is also here and is speaking on Saturday. No word on what nickname the Secret Service has given him yet.