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.
DC Smackdown is the latest vaguely political PC game out on the market. It's a satirical fighting game, in which players pit Presidential candidates and political pundits against one another in Street Fighter-style battles. Each character has a special move, of course, from Hillary Clinton's "Intern Trample" to Bill O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone".
Even though I too have created games with this theme, I'm always a little disappointed to see yet another political game that's just a cute nod to the idea of politics rather than taking on political issues or personalities directly.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the game is the scale of it. It's still a small game, but it's a full downloadable PC game of high production value, high enough that the creators can justify selling it for $4.99 rather than giving it away as a web game or free downloadable. For that reason alone DC Smackdown is an interesting specimen. I'm not sure if we'll ever find out how well it sells, but I think five buck games have a lot of promise.
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