What do you do when you’re the mayor of a Chinese city and you’re faced with a sluggish economy and an air pollution crisis? That’s the idea behind “Think Like a Mayor,” a news game developed by Caixin VisLab — the data visualization laboratory of the financial publication company Caixin Media.

Players are offered a few different choices, from deciding on whether to upgrade factories, to limiting the number of vehicles on the road. The player’s final score is awarded based on air quality, tax revenue, and overall happiness of citizens.

On June 17 this data journalism version of “Sim City” won Caixin VisLab a tied third place among 12 teams in the Global Editors Network (GEN) Summit 2016 in Vienna, Austria, where three-man teams had to create a news game in the 48-hour Editors Lab Final.

GEN, the organizer of the competition, described Caixin VisLab’s entry as “showcasing the economic, social, and political complexities that underlie China’s pollution crisis.” Wei Chunyuan, a developer on the team, told Sixth Tone they wanted to make players realize that pollution is a complex issue with many variables.

To Caixin VisLab’s director Huang Zhimin, the benefit of news games is that they make players spend more time on a topic, which allows them to better understand it. “They entice you to spend more time than you would on a photo or an article,” he told Sixth Tone.

Huang started Caixin VisLab in August 2013 to produce data visualization news products. The lab has published over 50 digital journalism products, including several news games.

In 2014, Caixin VisLab produced a game about Beijing’s car license plate lottery, which the city uses to limit the amount of cars on its congested roads. Based on real probabilities of success in the lottery, the game rapidly gained popularity on messaging app WeChat, where users shared their results.

In other games produced by Caixin VisLab, players could identify officials under investigation during China’s anti-corruption campaign, test their qualifications to become Beijing residents, or take an online trip into China’s stock market.

Other media outlets have also developed games, all with their own angles. During the meetings in March of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, and consultative body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, party newspaper People’s Daily published an interactive news game “You Have a Special Express From China’s Prime Minister” on WeChat. The game showed different social groups — students, businessmen, migrant workers, among others — which new policies would benefit them. Another news game, produced by state-run news agency Xinhua, simulated a conversation with officials on the then newly introduced two-child policy.

In 2012, party newspaper Global Times published a patriotic game called “Taking Back the Diaoyu Islands,” referring to the group of islands in the East China Sea claimed by both China and Japan. In the game, players commanded a warship and had to defeat rounds of Japanese attacks in order to take control of the islands. As the game ended, players could click “latest news” to read related news stories on a website called “Focusing on Diaoyu Islands.”

“As a developer, I would say news games are just a tool to deepen the audience’s understanding of news stories and social issues,” said Wei.

Shen Hao, an associate professor specializing in data journalism at the Communication University of China, told Sixth Tone that he foresees a future where new techniques, such as virtual reality, could be applied to news games. But, he said, the data behind such games remains key. “Without data it is just appearance.”

(Header image: Caixin VisLab’s team poses for a photo after receiving their award at the Global Editors Network Summit 2016, Vienna, Austria, June 17, 2016. Ning Hui for Sixth Tone)