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.
As previously discussed here on WCG, Ship of Fools is launching an online Church, called Church of Fools. The New York Times published an article today (free registration required) about the virtual church.
Dan Hunter asks an interesting question over at Terra Nova:
The comments so far on TN suggest that such projects are subjected to massive in-world regulatory and user abuse. But I'd rather turn the objection around: a compelling reason to have a virtual church that's not contained in a larger virtual world is because VWs require a great deal more player investment just to understand the world itself. I think a great many people might be interested in a virtual church, but wouldn't have any interest in slogging through all the other VW mechanics to get there.
This might suggest that there are viable applications of small-scale VW experiences, perhaps many more than there are opportunities for full-scale virtual worlds.
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