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.
Viacom's MTV Networks division has bought Atom Entertainment, who run Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com (which we've linked to recently for a few newsgames), AtomFilms.com, and AddictingClips.com. The acquisition price was a respectable $200 million.
This is an interesting acquisition for a few reasons. The rest of the world will probably note that the broadcast/media conglomerate ownership of a short films portal like Atom Films and the YouTubesque AddictingClips will offer new opportunities for moving niche and grassroots/fandom films up and down the broadcast chain. But most important to note for our audience is this fact: the acquisition of two casual games portals by a true network opens up many interesting possibilities for the future of such games. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Making Books
Academic Professional Job Opening
Slashdot Q&A
The Bulldog and the Pegasus
Speculative Realism Aggregator Update
Comments
Ian Bogost on Making Books
Mark N. on Making Books
Krystian Majewski on Making Books
Gamification101 on Gamification is Bullshit
James on Help Feed the Speculative Realism Feed
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