Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Fahrenheit 9/11

my affiliations

Ian Bogost - videogame theory, criticism, design

about me

contact

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.

You are reading an archived version of this article. The original URL was (loading...)

Fahrenheit 9/11 - the videogame?

by Gonzalo Frasca July 5, 2004

categories: Activism Games

Ok, the title probably caught your attention. Yup, it's a cheap tabloid trick, but it should remind you that you should never believe what you read, see or play, not even on this, your friendly site. Anyway, there is no Fahrenheit 9/11 game (at least yet, are you reading Michael? Give us a ring and we'll make a great game for ya :) but the fact is that Michael Moore made it to the cover or Time Magazine (you need to be registered to read it at Time.com, but you can read it at MichaelMoore.com for free). The best quote of the article (at least the best quote for WCG readers) reads:

[...] we may come to look back on [Fahrenheit 9/11's] hugely successful first week the way we now think of the televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as a moment when we grasped for the first time the potential of a mass medium--in this case, movies--to affect American politics in new ways. If that's the case, expect the next generation of campaign strategists to precede every major election not only with the traditional TV ad buys but also with a scheme for the rollout of some thermonuclear book, movie, CD or even video game, all designed to tilt the political balance just in time. (my emphasis)

Oh, yeah. Political videogames are gaining momentum.