Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Nielsen and Activision co-sponsor Collective Hallucination

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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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Nielsen and Activision co-sponsor Collective Hallucination

by Ian Bogost October 20, 2004

categories: Advergames

Nielsen Entertainment Media, conjurers of numbers replete, and Activision, skateboard bankers, have partnered to develop tools to create complex fictions of relevance for in-game branding.

I offer my perspective on the latest victory for the Razor-scooter-set over in eMarketingIQ, the gist of which is "... The concern is that it might be more of a way for the ad industry to justify the ‘buying’ of in-game ads to the media purchaser."

If you need any more evidence that there is a special circle of hell for advertising executives, check out what Andy Wing, CEO of Nielsen had to say about the collaboration:

I expect the Activision/Nielsen Entertainment partnership will be a milestone in media history books; the chapter on how video games became a dominant force in our culture and a magnet for advertising dollars.

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