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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Liz Losh on the NASA MMO Fail
by Ian Bogost May 9, 2008
categories: Educational Games

Recently I made some strong remarks about NASA's decision to pull (or "reconfigure") the funding plan for their long-planned educational MMO. Virtualpolitik tracker Liz Losh has since authored a far more sophisticated analysis of the situation. Go read the whole thing, but in brief Losh attributes three main factors to NASA's decision: profound hierarchy, assumptions about volunteerism, and a sense of strong branding.