Tech
This Journalism Sim Is A Hilarious Satire With Shades Of Mass Effect
A video game about being a journalist might hit a little close to home for me, a journalist whose job is to write about video games. And yet, I cannot get enough of Times & Galaxy’s news shenanigans.
The comedic journalism adventure game from developer Copychaser Games and publisher Fellow Traveller is a delightful summer release to add to your rotation. It’s endlessly charming thanks to a great cast of characters and interesting missions, pulled together and kept interesting by engaging writing. It’s a tough task making a video game about journalism compelling, and perhaps even harder to be funny while doing it. Yet Times & Galaxy pulls off both with ease. Even if it’s releasing on the same day as the exponentially more high-profile Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring, I’m hopeful Times & Galaxy will carve out a niche for itself as one of the year’s most unique offerings.
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Times & Galaxy begins as so many careers in journalism do: with an internship that’s probably unpaid. You are the first robot, or “robo” reporter aboard the Times & Galaxy, and in a fun bit of customization, you can create your robo reporter from three body type presets and a wide-ranging color palette (I named my custom robo Kotaku Staff, obviously). Once aboard you’ll meet the staff of eccentric investigative reporters, sports journalists, art critics, and opinion writers. Before long, you are sent out on assignment
Assignments are the central gameplay loop of Times & Galaxy. These are short adventures out on planets during which you must interview and investigate an area in hopes of writing the best story possible. When chatting with potential witnesses or sources you are offered dialogue options. Choose carefully, because you won’t always be able to ask every question, and whatever the interview subject says in response is all you have to work with. Assignments span all types of potential articles—the tutorial assignment is about a vehicle crash that may be hiding a corporate cover-up, but later assignments introduce you to court reporting, reviewing a restaurant, covering a cat show, and more. There are both exciting and boring assignments—as is the case in real journalism—but Times & Galaxy’s sharp writing makes all of them fun thanks to a never-ending parade of weirdos to encounter.
There is a satisfying challenge to each assignment as well: turn a boring story into a hit. That’s where the build-a-story feature comes in. As a robo reporter, your special software lets you piece together sections of an article based on the information you’ve gathered. Depending on how thoroughly you explored and interviewed, you will have more options available to you. At the end of an assignment, you get to choose the hed, lede, nutgraf, key quote, and any detail that may add to the story.
If you don’t know what these things mean, don’t worry—as a new robo reporter, Times & Galaxy will give you a crash course in journalism basics—no silly master’s degree that costs way too much money required! Each option also has a point rating based on how it will raise or lower readership and reputation. With that information, you can boost the paper’s standing, or ruin it.
Office space
When not out on assignment, you get to relax on the Scanner, the paper’s home base/spaceship. Time aboard the Scanner serves as a chance to get to know your coworkers. While they all have their own beat, each writer isn’t defined by their coverage. Learning about every hobby and interoffice spat makes talking to every person worth it. The continuous fighting between opinion writer Richard Gravity and Copybot (the robo copy editor) is one of my favorite side stories in the game. Though as much of an annoyance as Richard Gravity is, I cannot in good conscience side with the em-dash hating Copybot. Learning about and building relationships with—you can romance almost anyone on the Scanner—earns complimentary comparisons to time spent chatting with the beloved cast of the Mass Effect series while aboard the Normandy. That isn’t by accident: studio founder Ben Gelinas is an ex-Bioware writer who worked on Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda.
As with Times & Galaxy’s assignments, talking to everyone and exploring every corner of the Scanner is rewarded. While on assignment you are rewarded with better story options, aboard the Scanner you are rewarded with plain old character-building!
Writing dialogue and in-game text is where the developers at Copychaser Games flex their muscles the most, especially when it comes to satire. Jokes about newsrooms being short-staffed, not getting paid, em-dash arguments, endless PR emails, and more are so funny because they are so true to life. I might be biased since I am exactly this game’s audience but my fiancee—who ignores me as much as possible when I talk about my job—also loved the game’s comedic tone. That’s likely because in casting you as an intern Times & Galaxy can teach you about journalism—even in a basic form—so that you can then laugh at the in-jokes.
This is fine (laughs nervously)
There’s so much fun to be had in Times & Galaxy’s comedic sci-fi journalism world that it’s easy to just take it at face value. That wouldn’t be bad, it’s a fun and funny game! As you play, you’ll learn a bit about journalism along the way and enjoy the wonderfully written characters. But I can’t help but see something a little more sinister under the surface.
It’s not that the robo reporter is a thinly veiled metaphor for the influx of AI into journalism. I don’t think that is the case (Kotaku Staff would never take my job, right?), but rather the build-a-story structure encourages a mindset that equates good stories with readership going up. That might mean writing bad, sensational, or even outright false articles that twist the information you gained from sources can get you more eyes. Each hed, lede, and nutgraf option can be reduced to a number—as can an entire story. If it boosts numbers, it will keep a paper alive (hopefully). It’s a striking commentary on the state of modern media.
If this year’s satiric but more aggressive New York Times Simulator is a less subtle game about the risks, responsibilities, and struggles of modern-day journalism, then Times & Galaxy takes the spoonful of sugar approach with sharp and funny writing that makes it endlessly entertaining—even if it stings a bit.
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