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.
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ibogost% ./commandlines
by Ian Bogost April 29, 2005
categories: Political Games

I'm in Milwaukee for Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace, which starts today. The conference isn't game-specific, but it does feature a host of virtual world researchers, including Terra Novans T.L. Taylor, Ted Castronova, Richard Bartle, Greg Lastowka, as well as Linden Labber Robin Harper. To balance out the virtual communities folks, I'll be talking about simulated politics based on procedural representations, rather than virtual politics based on real people's online interactions. Not sure if I'll be blogging or not, but stay tuned for some updates.