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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My new column: Promogames, Another Kind of Advertising Game
by Ian Bogost January 2, 2007
categories: Advergames

Serious Games Source has published my latest Persuasive Games column, this one on Burger King's recently released Xbox 360 games. In the article, I suggest that we think of these games as promotions, not advertisements:

I give the name promogames to video games whose primary purpose is to promote the purchase of a product or service secondary or incidental to the game itself. These Burger King games work by giving gamers a reason to buy Burger King hamburgers, not by telling gamers why they should buy those burgers over other burgers, or over fried chicken. While advergames promote the company, promogames offer an incentive to consume the company’s goods independent of the game’s representational properties.

Read the whole thing over at Serious Games Source.