Over a year ago, we covered a series of Game Show Network newsgames, mostly small games about celebrity mishaps. Back then, I mentioned Zach Whalen's discussion of these titles, which he gave the apt name "tabloid games."

Well, it seems John P. Roberts, the guy behind these games at GSN, has jumped ship from the network and embraced the tabloid games moniker. Roberts and casual games creator Splashworks.com, who had created games like Paris Hilton: The Prison Life for GSN, have launched TabloidGames.com, a sort of mini-portal for this subgenre of newsgames.

There's a new title too, Palinisms: Ask Sarah Anything, cast from the same mold as the various Palin generators we mentioned a few weeks ago.

I'm not sure that these tabloid games are doing much journalism nor social satire, nor even tabloid rumormongering. I'll admit a certain kind of disappointment welled up in me when I read Roberts' statement in the press release I received by email, given the way he seems content to coopt the ideas of others and claim them as his own:

There's probably a marketplace of sorts for tabloid games. I do wonder, however, if we'll see more games based on rumor, even false rumor, rather than on known fact. Isn't that what tabloids do with print, after all?