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.
Nick Montfort, who also blogs on Grand Text Auto, has released Book & Volume, an interactive fiction (IF) piece about one night in the life of a sysadmin for nWare, the curious and increasingly dubious corporate hub of the fictional world nTopia.
Nick is one of the foremost authorities on IF, both as a practitioner and a theorist, having previously released Ad Verbum (2000) and Winchester's Nightmare (1999), and also having authored Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (MIT Press, 2003).
Nick was kind enough to let me play several pre-release versions, and I completed the game to great satisfaction. It does take some effort to complete successfully, but persistence is rewarded. I highly recommend the game to IF experts and newbies alike. In fact, in my opinion, Book & Volume makes a number of interesting and worthwhile statements about the medium itself.
You can read the launch announcement at Grand Text Auto, and you can download Book & Volume for free, along with an interpreter, if you need one. You can also play a preview edition in-browser.
Some may wonder why I've categorized this entry under advertising and politics. Well, in my opinion Book & Volume is really about consumerism, the culture of work, and numerous other related things. But you'll have to play to get the full story.
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