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.
Browsing Business Games archives. View all categories
by Ian Bogost December 15, 2008
Free Market Capitalism: The Game
Business Games, Political Games
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has announced a new Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund, which has created quite a stir at the institution. Its supporters see it as a place to study "Western civilization and free market economics," while some faculty have accused the project of imposing ...
by Ian Bogost October 20, 2008
Interstellar Pizza Express
Advergames, Business Games
VISI, Minnesota's largest managed hosting provider, has released an advergame to clarify the benefits of their service offerings to small businesses. In the game, called Interstellar Pizza Express, the player runs a pizza delivery store offering online orders via their website. Each round, the player must make hosting and infrastructure ...
by Ian Bogost September 8, 2008
Audiopuzzler
Business Games, Casual Games
Here's an interesting example of what I've recently called a performative game: Audiopuzzler, created by Georgia Tech PhD student Nick Diakopoulos. The idea is this: the game offers puzzles comprised of audio content from videos taken from YouTube or news feeds. The player has to listen to these snippets, transform ...
by Ian Bogost July 15, 2008
Kiwi Training Games
Business Games
Down under in New Zealand, there's a serious games studio called Straylight. They've got some pretty snazzy and sophisticated-looking corporate training games, including a business training sim called The Sports Store Ltd and a forthcoming simulation of the life of a professional chef called The Kitchen. Unlike the Gordon Ramsay ...
by Ian Bogost May 28, 2008
Sun's Identity Hero
Advergames, Business Games
It's been a while since I've seen a thoughtful online advergame. Here's one that surprises on a number of levels. Sun has a new game called Identity Hero, an arcade-action game that features features from the company's Identity Management Solutions, which is apparently some suite of IT management tools for ...
by Ian Bogost May 7, 2008
iTunes App Store can reject you for any reason
Business Games, Console & PC Games
Following my occasional series of gripes about Apple openness (1, 2, 3, 4), I thought I'd share a part of the agreement iPhone application developers must accept in order to be able to publish to the forthcoming iTunes App Store: 6.2 Selection by Apple for DistributionYou understand and agree that ...
by Ian Bogost October 24, 2006
Ohmigod, I'm like totally going to the virtual mall
Advergames, Business Games, Console & PC Games
Paul Hemp points us to a Harvard Business Review article on the future of e-tailing in virtual worlds. The article claims that e-commerce is going to shift from web transactions to online simulations of shopping, via virtual malls in 3d worlds. The usual references to American Apparel's store in Second ...
by Ian Bogost September 7, 2006
Disaffected! Universal Binary for Intel Macs
Advergames, Business Games
One of the nice things about getting mentioned in the NY Times Magazine is that a lot of people then email you about how they can't run your game. Intel Mac users: a Universal Binary is now available. Please be gentle with our bandwidth; if you have a PPC Mac, ...
by Ian Bogost August 1, 2006
Review of Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins
Advergames, Business Games, General
I read Henry Jenkins's new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide this weekend. The book is a short, smart, buttery read on a hot topic, and it is sure to draw both popular and academic interest. Jenkins is a multifaceted media scholar, a critic of vaudeville, fan ...
by Ian Bogost July 4, 2006
Top 10 Disaffections
Advergames, Business Games, Political Games, Social Games
Since we launched Disaffected! back in January, we've enjoyed a continuous stream of feedback, some good, some bad, all interesting. I've shared portions of it in private presentations, but when I showed the game at the Games for Change Exhibition last week in New York, I reminded myself to write ...
by Ian Bogost June 9, 2006
Conference organizers unknowingly set stage for McDonald's Interactive hoax
Business Games, Political Games
Stephen Totillo of MTV News has written a great story on the McDonald's Interactive hoax we covered a couple days ago. Here's what the real McDonald's had to say: Reached for comment Friday (June 9), McDonald's spokesperson Julie Pottebaum said, "This is an outright hoax and a complete misrepresentation of ...
by Ian Bogost June 7, 2006
McDonald's Interactive Sticks it to McDo... or do they?
Business Games, Political Games, Social Games
This post has been updated, please see below. This story has also been updated, please read here According to their website, McDonald's Interactive was founded to help the parent company strategize about future markets. Yesterday, they announced their "intention to split from McDonalds." Why? Said co-director Andrew Shimery-Wolf: "We can ...
by Gonzalo Frasca May 4, 2006
Serious Games and the Japanese Toilet
Business Games
Serious Games Source, Gamasutra's new sister site, is a welcomed addition to set of online resources for people interested in games with an agenda. I just published an article for the site, called Serious Games and the Japanese Toilet. It mainly deals with training games not just as training tools ...
by Ian Bogost January 17, 2006
Persuasive Games launches Disaffected!
Activism Games, Advergames, Business Games, Casual Games, Console & PC Games
I'm happy to announce that my studio Persuasive Games has released Disaffected!, a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. The game puts the player in the role employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetences common to a Kinko’s store. It gives the player the chance to step ...
by Ian Bogost June 15, 2005
Japanese Finance Games
Advergames, Business Games, Educational Games
Thanks to Serious Games Japan maven Toru Fujimoto for tipping us off to My Dream and Bank, a Japanese Flash-based advergame intended to teach high school students about the basics of finance and starting a business. The game was produced by the Japanese Bankers Association, and according to Toru 100,000 ...
by Gonzalo Frasca April 25, 2005
Yet another Monopoly
Business Games
I doubted about posting this, since there are so many flavors of Monopoly out there. Guess what? There is a new one now, the Warren Buffett Monopoly. So, in case you are interested, there it is. Certainly, the history behind Monopoly is far more interesting. Since I am talking about ...
by Ian Bogost October 25, 2004
Corporate Responsibility Game
Business Games
BT (formerly the more descriptive British Telecom, for us KFC folks) has released Better Business Game, a game about managing social and environmental issues in a business. This is interesting in light of our recent collaboration with The Corporation, which also takes up the issue of social responsibility in business. ...
by Ian Bogost October 18, 2004
Live from the Serious Games Summit DC
Activism Games, Business Games, Educational Games, Public Policy Games
I am back from our London show opening (pictures soon) and here in DC for the Serious Games Summit. The conference has a very "official" feel, thanks to CMP, which is an important step. Oddly, no badge lanyards tho, only pins. Aren't lanyards the sign of officialness? Anyway, I'll do ...
by Ian Bogost June 12, 2004
Visualization is the new eBusiness
Business Games, Game Design
I was in New York most of the week, first on a panel at the Serious Issues, Serious Games conference -- which I'll write about soon -- and then hanging out with my friend Britt Blaser, the Dean campaign technology adviser who was instrumental in making the Howard Dean for ...
by Ian Bogost June 1, 2004
IT Manager Game, now featuring Women!
Advergames, Business Games, Educational Games
Well, the ruckus about Intel's failure to include women in their first go at the IT Management game seems to have inspired them to correct the problem! The new version of the game features female IT managers, staff, and other employees. Welcome to the 20th century. Since I finally got ...
by Gonzalo Frasca April 23, 2004
Does Intel play with women?
Business Games, Women and Games
Here's the thing. It seems that Intel launch an IT Manager Game for training IT people. The fact is that the game is now offline (there is a message on their site:" Your Interest in the IT Manager game is appreciated. Intel is currently making revisions to the game, please ...
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