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.
After getting more media attention that I ever asked for (see www.ludology.org for my recent incursion on Spanish tabloids with the European royalty), I am glad to report that the press is still interested in political games. New York's 24-hour news station NY1 run a story on political games, focusing on September 12th and also featuing Marc Prensky, from SocialImpactGames.com site. The video also shows the Howard Dean game (uncredited :( and Madrid (again, uncredited). Today, there is also a story (in Spanish, free registration required) in Spain's La Vanguardia.
Overall, I am really glad of all this media attention and not just for personal reasons (I have the Royalty tabloid story for that :), but mainly because the world is (slowly) starting to see that games can deal with important issues. And that feels good.
Making Books
Academic Professional Job Opening
Slashdot Q&A
The Bulldog and the Pegasus
Speculative Realism Aggregator Update
Comments
Ian Bogost on Making Books
NeMutluTürkümDiyene on Where in the World was Middle Earth?
Christopher Schaberg on Making Books
Jose Zagal on Making Books
Ian Bogost on Making Books
The Curse of Cow Clicker
Beyond the Elbow-Patched Playground
Low-Earth Lamentation
Shit Crayons
Aerotropolis
Against Aca-Fandom
There are no Blown Calls in Football
We Think in Public
What is Object-Oriented Ontology?
The Metaphysics Videogame
Cascading Failure
Top Ten Reasons I Returned My Kindle
Carrying On Over Carry-Ons
Reading Online Sucks