A new book, Newsgames: Journalism at Play, considers gaming as journalism and how video games can be used to spread news, according to The Atlantic.

One of the authors of the book is Ian Bogost, a winner of the 2010 Knight News Challenge. Bogost has proposed using the Knight grant to create a tool that would enable news producers to turn breaking events into video games "on the fly." For updates about the project and other information about journalism and gaming, see the research team's blog, Newsgames.

The concept of combining news and video games is not unheard of.

In 2003, a former CNNenEspanol.com journalist, Gonzalo Frasca, lead a team of Uruguayan game developers to create a newsgame called September 12th, which included information about current events.

In 2009, Wired magazine's report on the Somalian pirate raids, "Cutthroat Capitalism," offered readers the chance to play an online video game. The object of the game: "You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom."

And now, the USC Annenberg School for Communication has launched a project called Immersive Journalism, wherein games are used to help readers better understand the news, according to the World Editors Forum blog.

Immersive Journalism offers such games as "Darfur is Dying" and "Kuma Wars."