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.
Search Water Cooler Games:  
You are reading an archived version of this article. The original URL was (loading...)
Laden vs. USA
by Ian Bogost February 13, 2004
categories: Political Games

Thanks to Clive Thompson for unearthing Laden vs. USA, which appears to be a handheld electronic game out of Taiwan. I think Clive's comments about it are dead on. Here's what he says:

It's a pretty bleak specimen, but in a strictly academic sense, this is an interesting example of the trend towards using games as a form of political commentary. In this case, however, I suspect the motivation is just good old-fashioned profiteering. It's unlikely that the game has any political content specific to Al Qaeda or the USA. On the contrary, it's probably just some entrepreneur who bought a few truckloads of a generic war-like "shoot the soldiers" game; there are hundreds of these things produced every year by electronics sweatshops in Asia. Then they printed some labels to "rebrand" the generic game with a purported bin Laden theme, slapped 'em on the units, and sold them.

Comments (4)

ah jea ich fucke

HAHAHAHAHAHA! it's a jewel!! I bought two of them in a village near Barcelona (Spain). Isn't only a single person who made it... Surely there are millions of "Laden Vs. USA" machines worldwide. I think it's a very clever industry. CHINA RULES!!

DE-EVOLUTION on January 17, 2005 6:23 PM

HAHAHAHAHAHA! it's a jewel!! I bought two of them in a village near Barcelona (Spain). Isn't only a single person who made it... Surely there are millions of "Laden Vs. USA" machines worldwide. I think it's a very clever industry. CHINA RULES!!

DE-EVOLUTION on January 17, 2005 6:24 PM

this is a very useful project management resource