Go Verify! – A New Game To Boost Media Literacy and Counter Disinformation
,We’ve finished a new tool for the ongoing fight against mis- and disinformation: a web-based serious game called Go Verify!. Or more precisely: A playable demo version plus the open-source code needed to further develop it.
As you may have already guessed, Go Verify! aims to introduce players to the basics of verification–i.e. the act of scrutinizing a piece of content encountered on the wild, wild web. In most cases, verifying (or rather falsifying) a particular statement, image, or video isn't rocket science. Yet relatively few people know how to go about it properly. For those who want to learn, but don't care too much for long blog posts and tutorials, we've created Go Verify. Our main target audiences are young media users, content creators, and aspiring journalists. But basically everybody is welcome to play and learn.
At its core, Go Verify! is a simulation of a social media platform called Bleeper. As a player, you face a timeline full of strange and intriguing posts begging for interaction. But just as in real life, you better take a closer look at what kind of content you're dealing with before sharing or blocking anything. Luckily, there's an experienced verification companion (named Izzy) and an easy-to-use verification hub you can rely on.
Did we mention the game is set in the future, so that it's all about abstract investigation rather than knowledge of current affairs? Well, you'll find out soon enough!
Before you start playing (and hopefully give us some feedback afterwards), a little more meta information:
The game is not a finished product, but a prototype. You can play for several minutes, start over whenever you like and share the game link with friends. However, not all story arcs, mini games, and features have been implemented yet. And the focus is currently on image verification–which is of course only one aspect of the discipline we'd like to promote.
The game has been open-sourced and made available on GitHub. If you like what you see, feel free to create your own version, add new content, new game mechanics, or a proper backend. The only thing we ask is to let us know when you do so. We're curious to see what's to become of the game and we might also be able to help with a couple of things.
Go Verify! was developed by DW Innovation and partners in the scope of the KID project, funded by the BKM. The project is still ongoing, so more game development on our side is likely to happen.
We hope you enjoy playing Go Verify!–and we'd sure love to get your comments and ideas.
