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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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Dave Perry working on Dance MMO

by Ian Bogost October 17, 2006

categories: Console & PC Games , Health & Medicine Games

According to 1up, former Shiny chief Dave Perry is working on a multiplayer online dancing game called Dance!. Details are very thin, but according to the report publisher Acclaim will offer the game for free, although players will be able (or need?) to purchase clothing and other accessories for their avatars. Details are thin, but the game has an official site with a short statement about the game. You can also sign up to be a beta tester.

Strange as the concept might sound at first, it's already been partly proven in Ken Perlin, Mary Flanagan, and Andrea Hollingshead's Rapunsel Project, which uses programmable dancing avatars to teach computer science to tween girls computer science.

Comments (4)

I should mention that it's unclear if the game is played with a dance pad or other physical interface, but one can only assume that some such of affordance will be offered, even if optionally...

Ian Bogost on October 17, 2006 5:55 PM

Audition is a very popular dance MMO in Korea and China. There are a couple of other Asian dance MMOs. They are all keyboard based.

The dance games that I am aware of include:

Audition (or Club Audition)

Groove Party and

On Air Online

Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis on October 18, 2006 1:23 AM

Steven, thanks for correcting our Western-mindedness here. I wonder if Dance! will follow the Korean model, or try to reinvent it for the American/European markets.

Ian Bogost on October 18, 2006 1:58 AM

Ian -

Most likely, they are going to follow the Korean micro-payment model with an ad supported twist as that is what Mr. Perry has been doing with Acclaim's other games. Acclaim's rather interesting strategy is to cherrypick online games from Korea (so far) into the US market.

Steve

Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis on October 18, 2006 11:46 AM