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.
Gamasutra has published a postmortem of Stardock's political campaign game The Political Machine.
As with most of these features, it's a good read for any developer. I took special interest as someone interested in a different kind of political game. The following excerpt, from near the end of the article, was most fascinating for me.
This game notwithstanding, let me make some provocations. Is an unbiased political strategy game possible? Moreover, is it even desirable? Yes or no, would a publisher like Ubi Soft be comfortable publishing any other kind? Is a "political strategy game" really just a game bereft of politics? An apolitical game? A game about the machinations of a system, fodder for the indefatigable systems hackers rather than budding politicos?
A Game of Throwns
Food Insofar As They Give You Food
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Royalty Rate Reset
Rocks are Rocks
Comments
Michael Wilton on Gamification is Bullshit
Adam on Gamification is Bullshit
Sot on Gamification is Bullshit
Christopher Schaberg on A Game of Throwns
Ian Bogost on What is Object-Oriented Ontology?
The Curse of Cow Clicker
Beyond the Elbow-Patched Playground
Low-Earth Lamentation
Shit Crayons
Aerotropolis
Against Aca-Fandom
There are no Blown Calls in Football
We Think in Public
What is Object-Oriented Ontology?
The Metaphysics Videogame
Cascading Failure
Top Ten Reasons I Returned My Kindle
Carrying On Over Carry-Ons
Reading Online Sucks







