Water Cooler Games

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)


SPONSORS
Visit Persuasive Games
Visit Powerful Robot


COMMUNITY

Stop Disasters Game
March 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Stop Disasters
PlayerThree, creators of Food Force among other great titles, have a new game sponsored by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. The game is appropriately called Stop Disasters!, and it's a fantastic, simple, rich little strategy game.

It's also a rich game, covering five disaster scenarios in great detail. The current scenarios include tsunami, wild fire, flood, hurricane, and earthquake; more may be added over time. In the game, the player must accomplish a series of infrastructure and safety subtasks as they prepare for a pending disaster. The implementation is solid, but I really wish I could have invoked the disaster at any time to see how I would have fared. As it is, you have to wait an inordinately long time for the typhoon or flood or fire to hit, which makes iteration nearly impossible.




POST A COMMENT

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?



TRACKBACKS

SELF PROMOTION

RECENT ARTICLES
My new column: Texture

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on how videogames are tactile. But unlike paintings and plats ...

Liz Losh on the NASA MMO Fail

Recently I made some strong remarks about NASA's decision to pull (or "reconfigure") the funding plan for their long-planned educational ...

iTunes App Store can reject you for any reason

Following my occasional series of gripes about Apple openness (1, 2, 3, 4), I thought I'd share a part of ...

Boxing Politician Games. Again.

It happens every election cycle, it seems. Games that allow players to make their favorite candidate box against their least ...

Me on Advertising and Games in the Guardian

If you read the Guardian, you may have noticed that they are running a series of articles and opinion pieces ...

Libery City Satire

I am a Gorilla

NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding

NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0

Air Traffic Chaos


FAVORITES

ALSO VISIT
RECENT COMMENTS
Ian Bogost on Libery City Satire

tanner on Libery City Satire

Tele3dworld on NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding

Tele3dworld on NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0

Ian Bogost on NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0

more comments... 

ADVERTISERS






  Copyright © Ian Bogost & Gonzalo Frasca, unless otherwise noted. Re-printing for commercial purposes by permission only (contact us: ). Re-printing for educational purposes is allowed with proper attribution.