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: The Missing Social Rituals of Exergames
by Ian Bogost February 3, 2007
categories:
Health & Medicine Games
Serious Games Source has published my latest Persuasive Games column, this one about social practice in exergames. In the column, I argue that exergames are currently limited by the lack social rituals of physical activity like sports. A brief excerpt:
The whole experience exposes the inhumanity of exergames of this type: videogame-induced movements are no more inherently inspiring than exercise bikes or stairmasters. Wario Ware’s micro-games are cute and quirky, but their novelty quickly fades, and Wario’s characteristic end-of-session cackle becomes the gracious alarm of a new kind of countdown timer.
You can read the whole thing over at Serious Games Source.
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