Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - California Budget Challenge

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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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California Budget Challenge

by Ian Bogost May 9, 2005

categories: Political Games , Public Policy Games

A nonpartisan California organization called Next Ten has created the California Budget Challenge, a sort of interactive application that lets the user make highly structured decisions about the California budget. It's not really a game, but another example of an interactive representation of the tradeoffs of budgeting.

(thanks to Bridget)

Comments (1)

Glad to see the California Budget Challenge got mentioned here. Our company, Red Hill Studios, developed the site for Next Ten. The policy options, decisions, and impacts, are based on the work of Steve Levy, director of the Continuing Study of the California Economy. The budget figures are the same ones being tossed about in Sacramento by the governor, legislators, lobbyists, and policy wonks.

One of the main challenges was trying to find the correct balance between depth and usability.

If anyone is interested in more details on the site, its development, and our current plans to expand the simulation, please feel free to email me or respond this post here or on Serious Games.

Bob Hone on June 2, 2005 8:04 AM