Mama might have said "Don't play with your food." But she never said anything about playing with your news.

No, we're not talking about those newspaper sailor hats, though we're fans of those (fans enough to don them in a picture like that poor cow over there if this post gets at least 100 retweets). We're talking about online games like FarmVille, but, you know, less annoying.

Last week Norwegian blog The Refinement Club outlined its concept for The Newsgame, which rewards users with points and prizes for reading meatier* articles. (*We didn't set out to write a cow pun here, but we aren't gonna fight it.) There are also badges. What's a game these days without some stinkin' badges?

To make it more fun, you can earn different badges e.g Expert on different topics (like The Middle East, The Financial Crisis, Hollywood Gossip etc). In addition you can reach different levels and work for a spot on the Highscore list. All of this is of course shareable on Facebook, Twitter, your blog whatever, so you can brag about your intellectuality or current events addiction.

The authors go on to explain how their hypothetical game could serve as a Last.fm for news. Check it out. (Thanks to Smashing Magazine for flagging this intriguing idea.)

There are plenty of online news games already out there. Mark Luckie did a nice roundup a couple years ago on ones less social than The Newsgame. (Is there anything this guy hasn't done a nice roundup on? Seriously. Give the rest of us a chance here. Maybe that can be a game: Mark Luckie sits out a turn.) As smart phone apps proliferate, we're sure to see more news games, and location-aware, multiplayer ones at that.

All this got us thinking. What if some of our favorite childhood games were given a news twist?

• Connect Four — You're a legacy media mogul (black checkers), your opponent, the trends converging to sink your industry (red checkers). Can you adapt before losses pile too high?

• The Oregon (or insert your state here) Campaign Trail — The journey is long and arduous. With political campaigns starting earlier and more sources covering them than ever, can you and the rest of your news consuming party make it through the entire election cycle without drowning in the river of information or succumbing to mental exhaustion?

• Candyland — Can you reach or pass the final article before your competitors? Don't let sugar-coated infotainement masquearding as news slow you down!

• Shoots and Latters — Thanks to some poor copy editing, instead of the familar slides and steps, the classic board game is populated by plants and a host of seemingly random objects that happen to be the second of two things mentioned in a preceeding sentence. (That confused panda from Lynne Truss's celebrated punctuation book is there, too, pistol in paw. So, be careful!) Help the shrinking copy desk keep pace with the accelerating news cycle and get things back to the way they should be. Catch an error and move up the board. Miss one and fall back down it.

Share your own news game ideas — silly or serious — or alert us to cool existing games in the comments.

Creative Commons mashup photos by Flickr users law_keven and quinn.anya.