Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - Nightline on the Terrorist Video Game

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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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Nightline on the Terrorist Video Game

by Ian Bogost June 23, 2006

categories: Political Games , Propaganda Games

Last month we reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that consultants from SAIC testified before Congress, mistakenly identifying a fan video created by a Dutch Battlefield 2 player as terrorist propaganda.

Nightline ran a story on the topic last night, in which they both show the absurdity of the whole series of events and expose the Pentagon's simple-mindedness about such issues. I was interviewed for the story, which you can read or watch at ABC's website. Also covered at Gamepolitics and Kotaku. It's a good story, and I'm glad Nightline put this sort of report together. I'm also glad I got the last word, which I think is really the point of the matter:

"We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting," Bogost says.

Comments (5)

Wonderful. I'm so pleased that your campaign has borne such public and effective fruit. Let's hope some jobs are lost over this.

The Pentagon suits were an joke - and caught out lying yet again. Who'd have thought it?

troutio on June 23, 2006 6:00 PM

Should read "a joke", obviously. Grr...

troutio on June 23, 2006 6:01 PM

awesome Ian! nice job.

andrew stern on June 24, 2006 8:15 AM

Good to see a foward thinking representative of our medium get some mainstream press exposure, even if only for the "internet edition".

They asked the question: what if terrorists used a game to recruit young terrorists? Its already happened, its called America's Army.

Patrick on June 30, 2006 7:21 PM

It may have been sloppy research, but, sadly, it doesn't invalidate the assumption. In fact, Hizbullah used a US-made Open Source engine, (Genesis 3D) to make and publish an FPS game called Special Force. (I think SAIC also confused this with another BF2 mod, or another FPS mod, not sure.) the wikipedia has a bit on it, and it has its own english website.

Robert on July 4, 2006 5:46 PM