Water Cooler Games

by Ian Bogost January 22, 2009

Jetset: A Game for Airports

Casual Games, Political Games, Social Games

Over at Persuasive Games, we've launched our first iPhone game, Jetset: A Game for Airports. Here's the short blurb: A game for the frazzled globetrotter in all of us. Keep up with the changing rules of airport security on your iPhone or iPod touch. Play in airports to earn ...

by Ian Bogost October 24, 2008

Mad Men Jeopardy

Advergames, Casual Games

I missed it, but apparently popular television gameshow Jeopardy! ran a Mad Men category on one of their shows last week. In conjunction with that promotion, Sony (who owns Jeopardy!), created a Mad Men-themed episode of their ongoing online version of the quiz show. The connection is through the thematic ...

by Ian Bogost October 4, 2008

New Game: Campaign Rush

Casual Games, Political Games

My studio Persuasive Games developed a new game that CNN International has just published. Campaign Rush is a light-hearted game on the theme of politics and the current election. It's a casual click-management game in a campaign office, in which the player helps volunteers respond to the barrage of incoming ...

by Ian Bogost September 15, 2008

Gonzalo's Obama Game

Casual Games, Political Games

Gonzalo Frasca, WCG editor emeritus and collaborator on theDean for Iowa Game, has just released Debate Night, an unofficial game his studio Powerful Robot created in support of the Obama campaign. Gameplay is derived from Zuma-type games; the player chooses a key issue (represented iconographically) and then uses a match-and-move ...

by Ian Bogost September 13, 2008

My New Column: Videogame Snapshots

Casual Games

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the videogame equivalents of snapshots. The Brownie brought photography to the people, but not without some help. The snapshot concept was borrowed from a hunting term for shooting from the hip, but Eastman contextualized the act for the masses. ...

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 August 25, 2008

Gimmickry, or How Exergaming Went Mainstream

Casual Games, Console & PC Games, Educational Games, Health & Medicine Games

I've been thinking about exercise games lately, primarily due to an onslaught of new games, devices, and initiatives. For example, we've got Footgaming, a sort of promotional blog for a student fitness program called Generation Fit. The group hopes to support casual and educational play with a peripheral called FootPOWR. ...

by Ian Bogost August 13, 2008

Attention Hog

Casual Games, Social Games

San Francisco artist Chris Basmajian has created Attention Hog, A casual game about attention-driven social network culture. In Basmajian's words, "the game reflects some of the social and psychological trends present in social-networking communities. Eating its own hog feed, the game also offers extensive (almost 20) automated social network integrations, ...

by Ian Bogost June 30, 2008

HGTV Interior Design Game

Advergames, Casual Games

HGTV has a reality show called Design Star, which is apparently like American Idol or The Apprentice but for interior design. They have an advergame up that's actually, miraculously vaguely related to the theme of the show. It's called Design Star Shuffle, and it's basically a reskinned version of the ...

by Ian Bogost June 23, 2008

Simulating disease is nothing to sneeze at

Casual Games, Health & Medicine Games, Social Games

Liz Losh mentions and critiques a new Facebook app called Patient Zero, from VisualDXHealth. It takes the concept of viral spread literally rather than figuratively, allowing users to create a new virus, "power it up," and spread it to friends. Seems like a decent idea at first blush. The problem, ...

by Ian Bogost June 12, 2008

Boostin' Nuts

Advergames, Casual Games

Jeep has a new advergame on Facebook to promote the new edition of their Liberty small SUV. In the game, called Boostin' Nuts, the player controls a flying squirrel who needs to land on acorns to stay in the air. Some give more points than others, and others take points ...

by Ian Bogost June 2, 2008

Pedometer Pets

Casual Games, Health & Medicine Games

Here's an interesting example of a mobile exergame. Arukotch is a tamagotchi-like virtual pet embedded in a pedometer. The "pet" is a "shy girl waiting for a proposal from a cute boy." The more steps you take, the more "healthy and beautiful" she becomes. Items like cell phones and gifts ...

by Ian Bogost March 26, 2008

We pwn free games

Advergames, Casual Games, Political Games

PC World's new list of "101 Fantastic Freebies" is out in the forthcoming May 2008 print issue, also available online now. There's a category for games, and I'm happy to say that two of the nine on the list are Persuasive Games titles. One is our send-up of the TSA, ...

by Ian Bogost December 23, 2007

My new column: The Holly and the Ivy

Casual Games, Console & PC Games

With Christmas almost here, this month's edition of my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra is about holiday-themed games. It's not an attempt to write a complete history by any means, but I mention a few kinds of such games, although mostly I wonder why our medium doesn't follow packaged goods, ...

by Ian Bogost December 20, 2007

Spurn-A-Bear

Advergames, Casual Games, Console & PC Games

You know Build-A-Bear? It's a retail store that allows kids to construct custom plush toys by choosing different styles, parts, and accessories. I recently learned via Leigh Alexander that the company is about to release a virtual world based on their gimmick. As much as I loathe these kiddie virtual ...

by Ian Bogost October 14, 2007

Library Games at CMU

Casual Games, Educational Games

The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have a couple of library games (yes, i said library games) in their new Library Arcade . The first game is Within Range, and it's an LC call number shelving game. Seriously. The second game is I'll Get It, and it's more complex. The player ...

by Ian Bogost October 10, 2007

My new column: Casual as in Sex, not casual as in Friday

Casual Games

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one about new ways of understanding casual games. I propose an alternative to the tired "easy to learn hard to master" design value for casual games: One reason for this is a lack of imagination about what casual might mean. I ...

by Ian Bogost October 4, 2007

Imagine Game History

Casual Games, Console & PC Games, Women and Games

Brian, Alice, and Leigh all wrote something snarky about Ubisoft's newly announced Imagine line for girls. They are right to point out the explicit, troubling, simplistic gender roles the games endorse. But none of them manage to locate these games historically. Videogame critics, bloggers, players, and journalists have a very ...

by Ian Bogost August 2, 2007

My new column: How I learned to stop worrying about gamers

Casual Games, Game Design

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one a response to Justin Peters' Slate article on educational games (previously discussed here on WCG), and a meditation on who players are, at least the ones I'm interested in. I still have nothing but respect for my more traditional industry ...

by Ian Bogost May 29, 2007

Skype's new casual games portal

Casual Games

Internet telephony service and Ebay company Skype has announced their intentions to create a casual games service for the product. When AOL announced games for AIM, I initially thought the service might provide interesting opportunities to reach a more general audience. But I'm not sure that that promise really came ...

by Ian Bogost May 2, 2007

Break the News, Don't Read It

Casual Games, Newsgames

MSNBC wrote to let us know about Newsbreaker, their Arkanoid clone + news. They call it an "educational online game" -- it takes RSS feeds and drops them into the background, behind the bricks. When you hit certain blocks, the headlines drop down, much like Arkanoid power-ups. The game has ...

by Ian Bogost April 23, 2007

Wristwatch Gaming

Casual Games

I have the Fossil Atari Asteroids watch. I don't wear a watch very often (usually I just check the time on my mobile phone), but I can't help but think one reason I don't wear it more is that the Asteroids feature is non-functional; to quote the product page, "Actual ...

by Ian Bogost March 27, 2007

How to Extract Mii's on your Mac

Casual Games, Console & PC Games

My Mii obsession continues. Here's how to extract Mii's and use them on your computer. This a Mac OS X only thing, sorry PC goons. Go get the Mii Transfer application. Make sure Bluetooth is on before you run it. Load Mii's onto your Wiimote from your console Run Mii ...

by Ian Bogost March 13, 2007

The Tyranny of Casual Games

Casual Games

Hollywood Reporter columnist Paul Hyman offers a welcome view on casual games, arguing that imitations and clones are diluting the market. The article primarily considers the question of developer/publisher rights and IP -- particularly whether gameplay is subject to copyright protection. Hyman also points out that the portals are starting ...

by Ian Bogost February 28, 2007

Finally, a good farting game

Casual Games, Game Design

I know you've all been waiting for it. Check out What a Fart, a farting game with a convincing core mechanic. You play the role of a gassy chap waiting at a bus stop. Gas builds up in your gut that must needs be released, but take care not to ...

by Ian Bogost January 12, 2007

Apple iPhone: Another Closed Platform

Casual Games

If you saw Apple's new iPhone earlier this week, you might have thought, "Wow, it runs OS X and has a 3.5" multitouch screen and an accelerometer... it would be cool to make games for it." Well, too bad for you. Just as Apple previously closed access to games on ...

by Ian Bogost January 10, 2007

Why Vista Sucks for Casual Games

Casual Games

A few weeks ago there was a running thread on the IGDA casual games listserv about problems installing and running games in Windows Vista. Alex St. John, of DirectX and WildTangent fame, has just written an opinion for Gamasutra summarizing the issues, Vista Casts a Pall on PC Gaming. The ...

by Ian Bogost January 1, 2007

Vote for the Best Casual Games of 2006

Casual Games

Over at the excellent Jay Is Games, they're running a "best of" poll for 2006. I'm not sure how much longer it runs (they say they'll start posting results today), but our readers may want to vote for the Simulation category in particular. Nominees there include Molleindustria's The McDonald's Game, ...

by Ian Bogost December 30, 2006

Is there a future for casual games on digital cameras?

Casual Games

Our regular readers will know that I am both interested in and disappointed with current opportunities for independent handheld games -- cf. my previous opinions on mobile phones and iPods. My interest in devices like these revolves around two factors: general mass-market use and openness of platform. Thus far, everything ...

by Ian Bogost December 16, 2006

Raph Koster announces Areae

Casual Games, Social Games

Today Raph finally announced his new company, Areae. Click over to Raph's blog or the corporate site for links to a bunch of news stories. Raph isn't saying much yet, but... this is definitely something our readers will want to keep an eye on... ...

by Ian Bogost December 10, 2006

Playce: games as navigation

Casual Games, Game Design

Steffen Walz has an interesting little project up, which he calls playce. It's essentially a portfolio site, but you can choose to navigate it by playing one of four small arcade style games. I think I enjoyed shooting down the paratroopers to navigate most :). When we talk about non-entertainment ...

by Ian Bogost December 1, 2006

Sonic for School Lunches

Casual Games, Health & Medicine Games

Snack Dash is a Sonic-style side-scroller distributed by the UK's School Food Trust. "Speed is the key as you race to collect as many healthy eating points as you can while avoiding the bad guys and keeping up enough energy to get through the course." Normally I'm a bit cynical ...

by Ian Bogost November 27, 2006

The parvenu life of Casual Games

Casual Games

I'm not sure if this AP article on casual games, Casual computer games go upscale, is encouraging or depressing, but I'm leaning toward the latter. ...

by Ian Bogost November 27, 2006

Call for Games: Computers and Writing Online 2007

Casual Games, Political Games

Computers and Writing Online 2007 has announced a call for games in which they seem to welcome small scale, online political games and newsgames of the sort that interest many readers of this site. The theme of the conference is "Technoculture" and games should address that theme in some way. ...

by Ian Bogost November 7, 2006

Political Games for Election Day

Casual Games, Political Games

We've probably been remiss in not pointing readers to Jay Bibby's excellent site on casual games, CasualGameplay (aka JayIsGames). In observance of Election Day here in the States, the crew over there has been reviewing political games, for the first time I think. Among those reviewed are Newsgaming.com's September 12th, ...

by Ian Bogost September 13, 2006

iTunes Walled Garden Game Store opens

Casual Games

Back in January I mused about the relative inaccessibility of independent development for the handheld market. Today Apple released new iPods along with iTunes 7, which includes the new iTunes Game Store. Unfortunately, developing for iPod remains still a fantasy. Here's why. ...

by Ian Bogost September 3, 2006

Branded Sudoku: Snakes, DaVinci

Advergames, Casual Games

My grasp of the world lessens daily. Today it's curious branded sudoku puzzle books Snakes on a Sudoku and The Sudoku Code. Maybe "branded" isn't the best characterization here -- it's more like sudoku books skinned with pop culture icons. I haven't seen The Sudoku Code, which seems to be ...

by Ian Bogost August 21, 2006

Free Ad-supported Mobile Games

Advergames, Casual Games

One of the ongoing complaints about in-game advertising is the fact that, unlike television, radio, and print, game adverts are not removing or even subsidizing the cost of videogames for consumers. In fact, console videogame prices are rising, even as advertising messages in games are increasing. Who wants to pay ...

by Ian Bogost August 12, 2006

Surgically remove the Bush Administration to win Ice Cream

Casual Games, Political Games

Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's fame)-created TrueMajorityAction has created a cute little web-based political game. Operation: Cure the Cabinet is a reskinning and digitization of the popular board game Operation. Instead of removing body parts, the player extracts key components of the Bush administration, which have been cleverly mapped ...

by Ian Bogost August 10, 2006

Viacom/MTV buys Atom Entertainment

Advergames, Casual Games

Viacom's MTV Networks division has bought Atom Entertainment, who run Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com (which we've linked to recently for a few newsgames), AtomFilms.com, and AddictingClips.com. The acquisition price was a respectable $200 million. This is an interesting acquisition for a few reasons. The rest of the world will probably note that ...

by Ian Bogost July 20, 2006

Roll your own Zidane Headbutt Game

Casual Games, Newsgames

After the World Cup Final, we pointed readers to the Zidane Headbutt game. Since then, Atom Entertainment's Addicting Games site has published a revised version, with more Materazzi's and a scoring system. Another nice feature of the new version is that you are awarded more points for a chestbutt than ...

by Ian Bogost July 10, 2006

A paean to Dogz, at whose heels Nintendogs nips

Casual Games, Console & PC Games, Game Design

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series. Nintendogs, as many of you already know, is a pet puppy simulator. You ...

by Ian Bogost May 16, 2006

Drive Like a Kennedy

Casual Games, Political Games

Frequent WCG ire target Blockdot has just released Drive Like A Kennedy. The game challenges players to avoid guardrails and traffic to reach the Capitol while under the influence. From the press release: A new online political parody pokes fun at Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who took a mysterious spin around ...

by Ian Bogost April 10, 2006

How to make a Casual Game in 1 easy step

Casual Games

At the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Festival earlier this year, James Gwertzman gave an award on behalf of sponsor PopCap Games. In his introduction, he gave the following set of credentials for a casual game: "A casual game should be fun, easy to play, and relatively polished." Alternative definitions abound. Some ...

by Ian Bogost April 3, 2006

Shockwave.com redesign with in-game ads

Advergames, Casual Games

I got word from Atom Entertainment that they have just launched, or are about to launch a redesign of Shockwave.com, which they hope will appeal to a "broader range of online gamers." Apparently they're focusing on three areas now, ad-supported online games, the usual downloadable games, and multiplayer games. They ...

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 January 12, 2006

PopCap for healthy minds

Casual Games, Health & Medicine Games

This just in on the Games for Health front. Casual games heavy PopCap has funded research with G4H on the "Cognitive Health Benefits of Digital Gameplay." Here's the official word from the press release: PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, and The Games for Health Project ...

by Ian Bogost January 7, 2006

The Trouble with Handhelds for Indies

Casual Games, Console & PC Games, Game Design

Gonzalo and I love handhelds. Especially the Nintendo DS and the GameBoy Advance, but the PSP has grown on me too despite its lack of interesting software. I've always been fond of handhelds, from the Mattel eletronic games to Game and Watch. I remember lusting over the NEC Turbo Express, ...

by Ian Bogost December 23, 2005

Agency.com Snowball Fight

Advergames, Casual Games

Another yuletide-themed posting before shuttering our virtual doors for the holiday this weekend. Interactive agency Agency.com has created the Agency.com Snowball Fight, a cute little game in which you throw snowballs at people in a variety of Agency.com-officed locations. The best score come January wins an iPod, but I don't ...

by Ian Bogost December 19, 2005

Grow Ornament

Casual Games

A little Christmas distraction for this week. Those of you who have been puzzled by Grow, Grow RPG, and Grow Cube may like the special edition Happy X-mas miniGrow just released by Eyezmaze. It has two fewer objects than the full versions of Grow, but don't let that make you ...

by Ian Bogost December 3, 2005

Ragdoll Bush

Casual Games, Political Games

Not really a game, but certainly a fun little toy for you to enjoy as the US approaches its third year in Iraq: Ragdoll Bush. ...

by Ian Bogost November 8, 2005

Persuasive Games Announces the Release of the Mobile Game 'Airport Insecurity'

Activism Games, Casual Games, Political Games

I'm very happy to announce that my studio Persuasive Games has just released Airport Insecurity, a mobile game about inconvenience and the tradeoffs between security and rights in American airports. The game is available for purchase for the low, low price of $3.99, and it's currently compatible with Nokia Series ...

by Gonzalo Frasca October 26, 2005

Casuality Europe Conference + Powerful Robot new game

Casual Games

Well, finally a European casual games conference. It will be held in Amsterdam, on February 8th and 9th. I am tempted to stop by even though I have been burned on previous casual game meetings (cult followers waiting for the Messiah: the next Bejewled that would led the mythical 45+ ...

by Ian Bogost May 25, 2005

E3: New casual games: less casual!

Casual Games, Game Design

I know E3 is quickly becoming a faint memory, but it may take me weeks to catch up on everything I saw. Patience, dear readers. Many of you may know that former Warner Bros. chairman Terry Semel has been at the helm of Yahoo! for several years now. One of ...

by Ian Bogost March 15, 2005

Free Developer Tools

Casual Games

A couple of cool announcements about free dev tools specifically for casual games. First, casual games giant Pop Cap has released their developer tools for general use. It's a VC++ framework so be prepared for it, but potentially a great resource; developing on the same framework as Bejeweled and Zuma ...

by Ian Bogost February 27, 2005

Are casual games a salve for film licenses?

Advergames, Casual Games, Emotion in Games, Game Design, Social Games

With the Oscars poised to air tonight, it seems an appropriate time to meditate on the fate of film license games. I've written before on Hollywood's propensity to use games as a film marketing tool, as have I mused on the dangers of games mixing themselves up with film licenses. ...

by Ian Bogost December 6, 2004

Other Playing

Casual Games, Console & PC Games

I'm in Copenhagen for Other Players, which starts today. My talk is on casual multiplayer games, and the paper is available in the online proceedings, here (509k pdf). In addition to general coverage of the interplay between games and the world, the paper covers some of my games, including the ...

by Ian Bogost June 10, 2004

"Bored housewives" play online games

Casual Games, Women and Games

The BBC News reported today on a research study that says "bored housewives" are fueling the growth of online games. The article draws from a new Screen Digest research report about online gaming markets to 2007. From the article: "Amazingly, every single one of the major casual games service providers ...

by Ian Bogost June 7, 2004

Why the mobile carriers are slowing down the mobile game market

Casual Games, Women and Games

Anyone who has shared a room with me for more than five hours total has probably heard me complain about the wireless market. There's a lot to complain about, after all. Until February, I was an AT&T Wireless subscriber, a company whose sole purpose seemed focused on thwarting my wireless ...

by Ian Bogost March 26, 2004

Some Casual Games notes from GDC

Casual Games, Game Design, Women and Games

Mia Consalvo has been blogging from GDC, including this post on the Casual Games Summit. I was surprised by a few points raised at the summit (although I did not attend the entire day). First, even though the conversion rate for casual game purchases remains at direct mail levels -- ...