Dan Terdiman has an article on the rapid proliferation of “news games,” which were an unusual and even controversial genre a few years ago when Ian Bogost and others started pushing them. Today, they are all over the place, thanks to the huge Flash community: tiny games that serve as a replacement for editorial cartoons (editorial cartooning, btw, is a business that is apparently in trouble).

When we talked five to ten years ago about how games were going to be the dominant medium of this century, I don’t think most people were thinking in terms of this sort of tiny minigame, mostly made by amateurs. And yet, I think that is kind of where we’re going.

It makes me ponder, what other areas of media will have little games slip in and replace the old way of doing things? We could maybe walk through the newspaper and see: how about classifieds? Obituaries? The social column? The letters column? Anyone got a Flash game to replace the Arts page?

Some choice quotes:

Doherty’s Fubra bought Sock and Awe from its original creator on eBay for more than $8,000, but said ads on the game earned the money back in just 48 hours. And Tocci said his creations earn money from royalties paid by the casual games sites that host the titles.

That leads to staggering numbers like the 14.5 million viruses tackled in Swinefighter and the 93.5 million shoes tossed at Bush in Sock and Awe alone. Tocci’s Double Bird Strike has been played more than 400,000 times.

“It’s a shame the innovation (of providing CDC advice about swine flu in Swinefighters) was left to two entrepreneurs,” said Doherty. “It would have been great if the World Health Organization had realized they could use a game to raise awareness about preventing swine flu.”

— ‘News games’ put public in charge of hot topics | Geek Gestalt – CNET News.