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.
Following my occasional series of gripes about Apple openness (1, 2, 3, 4), I thought I'd share a part of the agreement iPhone application developers must accept in order to be able to publish to the forthcoming iTunes App Store:
You understand and agree that Apple may, in its sole discretion:
(a) determine that Your Application does not meet all or any part of the Documentation or Program Requirements then in effect;
(b) reject Your Application for distribution for any reason, even if Your Application meets the Documentation and Program Requirements; or
(c) select and digitally sign Your Application for distribution via the iTunes Store.
There's reason for some kind of discretionary policy, but it's worth noting that para 6.2(b) allows so-called "soft censorship" as well. It's hard to say how or if it will be exercised.
Incidentally, the same is apparently true for the XBox Community Arcade (or whatever it will be called). I haven't seen the agreement for it, but at the Academic Days on Game Development conference Dean O'Donnell asked a Microsoft rep if they would pull down a game like, say, "George Bush: War Criminal." The answer? "Basically, yes."
Information is Beautiful
The Art History of Games
The Art History of Games
Objects & Things
Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
Comments
Jeff Medcalf on Information is Beautiful
Shane on Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
Ian Bogost on Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
Shane on Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
Ian Bogost on The Sanitary Handheld






