I laud your steadfast position on Beyond Good & Evil, which is forcing me to slowly recognize my own pig-headedness on the issue Thank you for stopping by and contributing, my friend!

I did find this though. It seems pretty decent:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1962028

Also, RE:5 is a crazy game. There’s something to be said about a game that has a sort of decent message about Africa that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. I’ve been wanting to write something on games taking themselves too seriously vs not seriously at all. I think the RE series and probably Gears of War would probably be a good contrast.

Anyhow, what Nick says is largely true of the situation. Objectivity isn’t an end goal but a discipline for journalists. They know they can’t rid themselves completely of bias, and they know they can’t get every fact of a situation, but they’re trained to try. When a major news event breaks, facts trickle in. This doesn’t keep people from reporting on incomplete data–there’s a working method there that we can extrapolate for what I’m calling a “proper newsgame” (we think we got a name worked out for that for next post).

An editorial usually waits until a certain amount of information is present before commenting with an opinionated viewpoint that the writer attempts to make as transparent as possible. If you look at the difference in quality between a New York Times editorial and an editorial written by a local political celebrity (in Atlanta you see a number by conservative politicians, for instance) you’ll basically see a level of restraint and tact that marks the difference between Bogost’s games and the kind of tabloid crap I’ve covered so far.

So you’re both right–objectivity isn’t possible to achieve, but admitting that is one of the first steps you need to take in order to even approach an acceptable level of objectivity I try to get into this when I distinguish different ways to close the simulation gap, but that’s going to need a lot more work until it makes sense as a design principle. We just ordered three books on editorial and editorial cartoons, so maybe I’ll know more soon.

Objectivity is impossible to achieve in the way the social sciences (mass com, sociology, etc) need it to be. It is physically and mentally impossible to fully separate yourself from the ways you were trained, raised, and perceive the world. I state this as fact only because it needs to be stated as fact in much the same way as the theorists use objectivity in the above article. This debate will continue for centuries.

You could make the argument that an editorial game and a newsgame are the same thing given that each requires a modicum of interpretation and that certain actions have various outcomes but that is neither beneficial to a situation intended to maintain the categories of the news nor helpful. Labels are helpful and work backing up those definitions creates a nice backing for whatever side we choose.

Reading over this stuff, I would venture to say that there is indeed a difference between the two, however sleight, and it is that difference that makes it worth exploring. I’d love to see what the news theory guys have to say about the differences between an editorial and a news story.