The Game Show Network has released a few newsgames, which we've discussed before here (1, 2, 3). Their latest, The Prison Life: Paris, came out yesterday, in time with the start of Paris Hilton's 45 day jail sentence. The gameplay involves helping Paris press vanity license plates.

Over at Gameology, Zach Whalen makes a compelling argument about these games. He calls them Tabloid Games, suggesting that the GSN games are actually trying to do something different from, say, September 12 or the recent newsgames I've been working on. Quoth Zach:

I find this line of thinking convincing, although I'd argue that the examples of good newsgames we have seen thusfar editorialize more than they report. I'm sure there are many more tabloid games out there on the web, probably more than their are newsgames of the editorial sort. That in mind, here's a question: is something like the Zidane Head Butt Game more a newsgame or more a tabloid game?