Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Indie Game Events + Persuasive Games at Slamdance

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Ian Bogost - videogame theory, criticism, design

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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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Indie Game Events + Persuasive Games at Slamdance

by Ian Bogost December 16, 2005

categories: General

Slamdance It's the season for independent game exhibitions.

First, a call for papers, games, and machinima has been issued for media@terra 06, a festival. Click over to Grand Text Auto for the full call. Submissions for the game exhibition are due April 28, and they're particularly looking for "games with socio-political content" and "games that constitute tools for education and other scientific fields," subjects of particular interest to our readers.

Next, the finalists have been announced for the Independent Game Festival (IGF). The IGF takes place at the Game Developers Conference in March, in San Jose.

And most notably for me, the second Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition has announced its finalists. I'm pleased to say that my studio Persuasive Games has a game in the competition again this year. We had a great time in Park City last year, and I'm looking forward to going again in January. The game is called Disaffected!, and it hasn't been released to the public yet! We'll be making it available in the next few weeks. Until then, here's the short short description:

Disaffected! is a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. The game puts the player in the role of employees forced to take on the often frustrating behavior of workers at such a store. Disaffected! is the first in a series of persuasive games we call anti-advergames: games that challenge players to rethink their relationship with consumption and encourage corporate critique.

And even better, Grand Text Auto friends Michael Mateas (also a fellow Georgia Tech Experimental Game Lab faculty) and Andrew Stern's interactive drama Façade has also been selected for the exhibition. Congrats to the two of them, as well as the other finalists.