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.
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 his strategies has been to transition the company from an anonymous information portal into, essentially, an entertainment company. Incidentally, he made more than $200 million last year.
Yahoo! had a bizarrely vague presence at E3 this year. They had a big booth boasting "big changes" coming to Yahoo! Games. The booth and surrounding marketing all boasted an under-construction theme, and a few hints at their forthcoming strategy emerged. Among them, the three characteristics on the banner in the picture at top right (click for a bigger version), which was attached to a big crane being hauled around the convention center. The innovations?
I thought maybe their idea of multiplayer and mobile-to-pc gaming might take the form of asynchronous play, which I've argued for in the past as a good strategy for mutiplay in casual games. Unfortunately, that's not what they mean; they mean synchronous multiplayer between mobile and PC. Newsflash: not casual play.
Worse, though, richer graphics? Is that what the world's casual game players are yearning for? "Yeah, I liked Bejeweled, but what's up that there's no dynamic lighting? I just can't get into a puzzle game without pixel shaders."
Play With Us
A Slow Year Cover Art
An Atari Travels
Exergames, Microtalks, Nuovo Sessions, and More
Exhaust Objects
Comments
anxiousmodernman on An Atari Travels
anxiousmodernman on A Slow Year Cover Art
Jose Zagal on An Atari Travels
Michael Austin on A Slow Year Cover Art
Erik on An Atari Travels






