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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Stella Artois 14th Century Brewing Games
by Ian Bogost November 21, 2007
categories:
Advergames
Belgian brewer Stella Artois has a new ad campaign, and they've published a new website with a complex fictional history of the Stella Artois brewing process, circa 1366. Dubbed "Le Courage," the site combines live-action video with occasional, simple games like trying to balance the (flat) world so the barley harvesters don't fall off its edge.
The production values are high even if the games are pretty basic and not particularly playable. I've been meaning to write something about advertisers' obsession with live action film/video and how they insist on integrating this medium into Flash games, even though it's not necessarily the best choice. All told though, this is a pretty good implementation.
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