Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - The Political Machine

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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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The Political Machine

by Ian Bogost March 31, 2004

categories: Political Games

Just came across The Political Machine, another US prexy election game/process sim. From the game description:

You choose (or design) your own Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates and begin in the first week of January of the election year. From there, you must compete against a candidate from the opposite political party in raising money, building support and awareness, and winning voters across the country.

WCG reader Randy Chase, designer of Power Politics III, is also releasing that game next week. Randy or any other qualified readers, perhaps you can offer some commentary on the various prexy election games out this year, and the differences between them.

Comments (2)

I'm running a few weeks behind schedule. Expect to release in about a month. (Sometime in April... is the official line at the moment.)

We are making a public announcement on Monday, however, about our partnership with The Christian Science Monitor. They'll be joining Rock the Vote as official sponsors of the game.

Delays in finalizing these partnerships, and some design changes and feature additions to take advantage of our partnership with The Monitor, have slowed things down a bit. But the chance to create dynamic interaction and links between a political sim and a news publication like The Monitor was just too tempting to resist. (Especially for a former journalist... the chance to experiment with a partnership like this is like turning a kid loose in a candy store!)

Randy Chase on April 2, 2004 8:05 AM

gewrut leyio.

Charles on December 25, 2004 4:04 PM

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