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.
I forgot to put this up when it broke, but me and our Howard Dean for Iowa Game were mentioned in this Ad Age article about Dean and political marketing.
Despite Dean's recent troubles in Iowa and New Hampshire, almost 100,000 people played the game in the 5 weeks since we launched it. I have a pile of feedback from players, good and bad, and I'll be assembling it soon into a coherent debrief. Gonzalo and I will probably be giving a presentation on the game sometime this spring, venue and date still TBD. I'll let you know when it's finalized.
In related news, I will be at the Digital Democracy Teach-In at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on February 9 in San Diego, rapping with Britt Blaser about games and other tools for politics. If you can make it to San Diego and can afford the $100 cover, it's bound to be a good show -- Joi Ito, Dave Weinberger, Doc Searls, and Wes Boyd are among the speakers.
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10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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