Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Eurogamer on Wafaa Bilaal

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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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Eurogamer on Wafaa Bilaal

by Ian Bogost March 27, 2008

categories: Political Games

I've been following but not yet writing about the controversy at RPI regarding Wafaa Bilaal and his hacked version of Night of Bush Capturing. (If you need to catch up on the project, check out GamePolitics' extensive coverage).

Eurogamer just published an article, including an interview with the creator, which offers both a summary and a set of new material on the controversy. One of the observations reminds me of a point I made about America's Army in Persuasive Games:

That Night of Bush Capturing had only to change some textures to turn the message against the original creator reveals a kind of logical symmetry between the anti-Saddam and anti-Bush messages. "I think it's fair to say that," says Bilal. Since I lived in both places I see more and more similarities between the decisions made by the two regimes."

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