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 have a feeling that we've covered this before, but maybe I'm just starting to see all the military games bleed into one. To be fair, this is a bit different than the average military game. Virtual Environment Cultural Training for Operation Readiness (VECTOR) is a game that provides cultural training for military forces. Of course, the website does suggest that the purpose of such training is "survival and mission success," which isn't a terribly empathetic goal, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising anymore.
More interestingly, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict has created a game called A Force More Powerful, a role-playing exercise that has been used in classrooms and is being adapted into a computer game by Breakaway. Doug Whatley will be giving a preview of the game in two weeks at the GDC Serious Games Summit (more on the summit in a later post).
(thanks to Jim for the tips, and the title)
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