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.
Search Water Cooler Games:  
You are reading an archived version of this article. The original URL was (loading...)
Paul McCartney Divorce Newsgame
by Ian Bogost March 28, 2008
categories: Newsgames

The game is called Splash & Grab. Play as Heather Mills, and try to earn a larger divorce settlement by splashing water on McCartney, while avoiding the judge.

I guess it's always nice to see another newsgame effort, but for the love of god does everything have to be Whack-a-Mole? Crap; not even a viable example of a tabloid game.

(thanks to Ben)

Comments (1)

The game rhetoric is completely divorced from its topic. A better, more interesting game would be one in which you played Heather but had to make decisions - such as how much money to go for, whether to hire a lawyer or a publicist, how to react to tabloid gossip, etc., and then seeing what the effect of these decisions would be on your own approval rating and on the size of the ultimate settlement.