Gameology 2.0

When I first blogged about a Game Show Network web game (the Mel Gibson one) I found it to be an interesting and surprisingly critical take on the controversy. GSN has continued to release news-oriented games, but most (with the possible exception of the Mark Foley game) have been mediocre or failed to interest or impress me for various reasons. If anything, they've just been dull or even mean-spirited. Today's release, The Prison Life: Paris made me realize why I have mixed feelings about these games and why we may need to rethink how they fit into our definitions of newsgames.

The game in question is about Paris Hilton's going to jail for whatever reason. I haven't been following it, so I actually don't know what she's in for, but I understand that she checked in today. The game itself is simple enough, and its deliverable is pretty straightforward: Paris Hilton is privileged and slutty; therefore she deserves to be mocked. Game play involves stamping license plates with various customized messages -- including "CAGEGRL," "SMPLIFE," ABUVLAW," "SXVIDEO," etc. -- while avoiding her dog which is hanging out on the conveyor belt for some reason.

Failure results in a "LYTS OUT" license plate and an animation which GSN's press release describes as follows: "Too many rejected plates, or if you happen to squish Clinkerbell, the lights will go out and then with green night-vision players get a glimpse of what could happen in jail after dark!" The not-so-subtle association they're going for here is, of course, the infamous sex video, in this case with the "matronly guard" as partner. This is all suggested through a gesture and a wink, but there's little ambiguity about what's being implied.

I'm not sure if that's offensive or just dumb (probably the latter -- hasn't even Jay Leno stopped making Paris Hilton sex jokes? Oh right; probably not), but I'm more interested in how the game takes an arguably news-worthy event and presents it by appealing to the lowest common denominator. GSN's goal isn't to offend or be provocative, however, or even to educate us about what happened. Rather, this game is news in the way that Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood is news -- something did actually happen, but the angle for covering it is fluffy with a hint of derision. And even though these games share their jokes with late-night TV, I think GSN's games should still be considered news games, but perhaps its appropriate to think of them as a subset thereof. Let's call it "tabloid gaming."

Not only do most of these GSN games rely on celebrities and sex, but like tabloid news, they also revolve around a hook or punchline and are more concerned with framing a reaction to something having happened rather than reporting what actually did happen. In other words, when I call these tabloid gaming, I mean that not only in terms of their content but also their form. These are designed to grab your attention amidst a swirling, debris-filled solar system of casual games on the web. If they succeed in doing so, it's through the audacity or relevance of their hook, not the quality of their production (which is relatively high, incidentally).

So even though these games aren't all individually impressive or interesting, I think if we take them as the same kind of rhetoric that tabloid journalism produces, we can agree that they are generally rhetorically effective. I guess I've had mixed feelings about them, though, because when I think of newsgaming, I want it to be on important topics that I care about. I want to play a game and then feel informed, persuaded, or even motivated. I want newsgames to be Frontline, not Inside Edition.

That's my opinion, though, which is informed by September 12th

being my first exposure to the genre, and what I'm realizing is that tabloid gaming really does play an important role in demonstrating the persuasive potential for games. Maybe we just need to think of them in slightly different terms. What do you think?