Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - PopCap for healthy minds

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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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PopCap for healthy minds

by Ian Bogost January 12, 2006

categories: Casual Games , Health & Medicine Games

This just in on the Games for Health front. Casual games heavy PopCap has funded research with G4H on the "Cognitive Health Benefits of Digital Gameplay." Here's the official word from the press release:

PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, and The Games for Health Project announced a unique effort to gather, evaluate, and share research on the use of digital games and cognitive health. The jointly funded effort will result in a publicly available knowledge-base summarizing both the research and market development activities associated with the possible use of digital games for maintaining healthy minds. Initial findings will be made available in early Spring 2006.

Apparently initial results will be presented at the Serious Games Summit at GDC this March. Apparently PopCap got interested in this subject based on feedback from their players, who told them they played to "keep their minds sharp," so to speak. This is probably related to other widely played puzzles like crosswords and the afflictive, hipster puzzle of recent vogue, sudoku.