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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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Marketingland: Welcome to the Virtual Hypperreal

by Ian Bogost January 12, 2005

categories: Advergames

I've talked before about my fondness of finding the planet's highest order simulations, and this one is an amazing specimen. AdAge (click at right for larger version, or see page 4 of the January 3 issue -- thanks Cleo) reports on a free online game built by Disney to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Disneyland. They’ll be targeting Virtual Magic Kingdom at 7-12 year olds. From the article,

…players able to win special perks and head-of-line passes for rides in return for completing online challenges. Players who go to the parks also can compete in on-site games to win swag for their online personas.

Nothing like going to Marketingland in preparation for Frontierland... and more Marketingland! My favorite tidbit from the article: "There may be corporate branding on the site, though details are still coming together."

Comments (9)

Thank you so much for pointing me to this.

E. Tage Larsen on January 14, 2005 5:26 PM

Remember how McLuhan said that the content of a media was another media? Well, in, (!) late-postmodernity, marketing is the marketed. I suggest the term "hypermarketing."

It's Turtles(TM) all the way down, sonny.

William Huber on January 17, 2005 12:21 AM

USA Today also ran an article on this subject last week.

Ian Bogost on January 27, 2005 5:40 PM

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