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a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment
ABOUT About This Site - RSS Feed Ian Bogost (editor) Gonzalo Frasca (editor emeritus) SPONSORS
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Create your own cereal box ideology May 23, 2004 - by Ian Bogost
PBS Kids has a really cool section called Don't Buy It, which teaches kids to think critically about media and become smarter consumers. They recently launched Freaky Flakes, a gadget that lets you design a kids cereal box to understand the tricks advertisers use to get consumers' attention. The interesting feature about the tool is that it lacks any kind of content filter whatsoever. I created the box of "Rumsfeld Crunch" depicted at right, but you can imagine much more, uhm, creative options. For my part, I think this feature is really a feature, not a defect. But sponsors should understand the freedoms they enable when they create and endorse games and applications with emergent creative properties. Moreover, they should resist letting fears about such unexpected uses cripple or cancel projects. I absolutely think that PBS Kids will benefit from their decision to launch this app, but I don't know if they anticipated it, or if they would feel the same way. Furthermore, game designers with for-hire projects need to make sure they explain this kind of emergent activity. There are ways to allow emergent play within a restricted possibility space without crippling the emergence. I'm working on such a process on a political game we're building right now. Finally, wouldn't it have been great if there were also a simulation that you could run on the boxes you create with this tool? Add some natural language processing and a few simple rulesets -- it might make the lessons about advertising more effective. (thanks to Clive) Comment from Gerard LaFond on May 23, 2004
Thanks for posting this. I can remember the first time I really wanted something at the store was probably around 4 or 5 years old and of course it was cereal. I also remember it was probably the toy/prize inside that made me throw the grocery store tantrum but it also could have been the saturation of cereal commercials during my favorite Saturday morning cartoons. The fact is, today, consumers are manufactured at a very young age and this game sounds like a great way to educate children and parents alike. Comment from Online Poker on February 16, 2005
Comment from Ester hesuassa on November 3, 2005
You guys suck!this didn't work at all!it was a phoney!you're all Bastards! J.K.! P.s.It's kinda lame anyways. POST A COMMENT
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SELF PROMOTION
My New Column: Disjunctive Play
Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, Disjunctive Play. The column mostly discusses Jason Rohrer's new game Between, but ... Missile in the HASTAC The HASTAC consortium has just announced a forum hosted by their HASTAC Scholars fellows on digital games, entitled Participatory Play: ... Pekid Oil Molleindustria has released a new game about the history and hypothetical future of oil, called Oiligarchy. The game feature's M's ... Announcing the Journalism & Games Research Project I'm excited to announce the first public materials from a research project on Journalism and Videogames, which I've been pursuing ... Politics and Games at Harvard It's been quiet around here! Next week I'll share the cause of it. Until then, I did a talk at ... Click Archaeology One More Election Game My New Column: The Birth and Death of the Election Game Truth Invaders Mad Men Jeopardy FAVORITES Does expression come in HD too?
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