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.
Zach Whalen writes today about a letter he received from Left Behind Games threatening legal action, received in response to his several posts about Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a controversial game about the army of God after the rapture. Zach posted the letter itself, and notes that it is a form letter sent to a number of people, including Tim Simpson, Radical Congruency, Raving Atheists, and left-wing uberblog Daily Kos. GamePolitics has a mention of the letters and I'm sure many comments will follow over there.
I haven't read all the articles in question, but the cease and desist is the same in all cases, suggesting that the company is fishing.
Zach's far more cordial than I would have been, inviting readers to suggest possible legitimately false statements he may have made in his many posts about the game. I wrote a few pages about Left Behind in my book Persuasive Games, focusing on the ambiguous religious representation rather than the more incendiary features that others have raised a torch over. I met with the Left Behind crew at E3 a few years ago when I was researching the book, before the game was released, and asked a bunch of questions, some difficult. They seemed rational and understanding of the inevitable criticism of their work then, so I'm a little surprised to see this festering lawyer strategy. I don't know how the game has sold, but maybe they are just acting out their own disappointment that it didn't move as absurdly many copies as the namesake book.
A Game of Throwns
Food Insofar As They Give You Food
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Royalty Rate Reset
Rocks are Rocks
Comments
Michael Wilton on Gamification is Bullshit
Adam on Gamification is Bullshit
Sot on Gamification is Bullshit
Christopher Schaberg on A Game of Throwns
Ian Bogost on What is Object-Oriented Ontology?
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







