Water Cooler Games http://www.watercoolergames.org/ Water Cooler Games is a forum for the uses of video games in advertising, politics, activism, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment. en Copyright 2010 Sat, 06 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Water Cooler Games is Closed - Please Read http://www.watercoolergames.org/archives/001056.shtml Water Cooler Games is now closed. Thanks for reading all these years. The site has been archived in full (with comments) at http://www.bogost.com/watercoolergames. For my take on "videogames with an agenda," you might want to read Persuasive Games.

I am now blogging at Bogost.com. This RSS feed now contains posts from there (after this one), although you might want to update to this feed instead: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ianbogost.

—Ian Bogost, August 2009

]]> 0000@http://www.watercoolergames.org/ Art History of Games on YouTube — Videos of the Art History of Games talks are now available on YouTube. They're a bit easier to watch this way, not to mention easier to embed. The whole event was so superb, it's tough for me to pick favorites. But if I had to, I'd probably settle on talks by Frank Lantz and Brenda Brathwaite, which you can find... http://www.bogost.com/blog/art_history_of_games_on_youtub.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/art_history_of_games_on_youtub.shtml blog art speaking videogames Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:54:31 -0500 It's This for That The Inflation of Absurdity — A website has been making the rounds over the past few days, called It's This for That. It's one of those simple, satirical text generators, of which there are dozens by now. This one target's today's technology startups, answering the question, "Wait, what does your startup do?" with a simple this-meets-that answer. Some examples: SO, BASICALLY, IT'S LIKE ASOCIAL GAMEFORCHINESE... http://www.bogost.com/blog/its_this_for_that.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/its_this_for_that.shtml blog cynicism Web 2.0 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:38:36 -0500 Two Books, One Summer Alien Phenomenology and How to Do Things with Videogames — My goal this summer was to finish two books I'd been working on. By July I had some concerns, as writing wasn't coming as easily as I'd hoped, and then I got overwhelmed by the unexpected stampede of cows. But I just completed the second manuscript, and I'll admit I'm quite chuffed to have reached my goal. The first book... http://www.bogost.com/blog/two_books_one_summer.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/two_books_one_summer.shtml blog books philosophy videogames writing Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:42:48 -0500 Persuasive Games in Paperback Cheaper and Floppier! — Persuasive Games is finally available in paperback! You can see it in all its perfect-bound glory at the bottom of this post. This is great news for everyone, as the paperback copy now costs a mere $12.82 on Amazon.com. If you prefer the hardcover, it's down to $23.40, and the Kindle edition is now $11.54. Those prices will likely fluxuate,... http://www.bogost.com/blog/persuasive_games_in_paperback.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/persuasive_games_in_paperback.shtml blog books videogames Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:44:07 -0500 Art History of Games: Video Go watch the awesome talks — Back in February, Georgia Tech Digital Media and SCAD Atlanta held the Art History of Games conference, which I organized along with Michael Nitsche and John Sharp. We had an amazing group of speakers as well as an opening for three commissioned games. It was unbelievably amazing in every way (here's a summary), but until now only the attendees knew... http://www.bogost.com/blog/art_history_of_games_video.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/art_history_of_games_video.shtml blog art speaking videogames Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:03:00 -0500 Academic Mumblespeak Stop it. — A week or so ago, I had a Twitter discussion with a few academics about writing pet peeves. I'd started the exchange with this simple request: Free advice to academics: if you find yourself writing "in many ways," stop and delete it. Other suggestions followed. Alice Daer suggested "the ways in which." Robert Jackson offered "could we not suggest that"... http://www.bogost.com/blog/academic_mumblespeak.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/academic_mumblespeak.shtml blog books writing Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:38:01 -0500 The Magic Carpet Notes on Glamour — When I was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, the Academy Awards were still being held at the Shrine Auditorium, which is located just north of Jefferson, directly across the street from campus. It's quite a structure, built in the Moorish Revival style and opened in 1926. At that time, the surrounding neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_magic_carpet.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_magic_carpet.shtml blog celebrity media television Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:02:59 -0500 Digital Printing Won't Save Scholarly Publishing ...but a few successful books might — Via my colleague Mark Guzdial, I've just learned that Rice University Press is being shut down entirely. It's unfortunate to see a university press shuttered, but it comes as no surprise that some will fall given the perfect storm of a terrible current economic climate in both universities and in the book industry. But Rice UP is unique because it... http://www.bogost.com/blog/digital_printing_wont_save_sch.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/digital_printing_wont_save_sch.shtml blog books business education Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:04:13 -0500 Modernauts Uhm, freeplay is the disruption of presence? — Finally! A way to connect the recent "Derrida Debates" to videogames! Behold Modernauts. It's inspired by the well-received Nintendo DS puzzle game Scribblenauts, in which the player solved puzzles by typing in the names of objects, which would appear for use in the puzzle. To complete it, the player would have to reach the goal, a star. Modernauts works similarly,... http://www.bogost.com/blog/modernauts.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/modernauts.shtml blog philosophy videogames Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:40:28 -0500 The University of Stockholm Syndrome On the "adjunct problem" — Brian Croxall writes in response to Anthony Grafton's New Republic review of Louis Menand's book The Marketplace of Ideas. In brief, one of Menand's suggestions is to admit fewer graduate students and shorten the time to the PhD to combat the lack of job opportunities; Grafton responds that grad school should be hard because it's supposed to "test people who... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_university_of_stockholm_sy.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_university_of_stockholm_sy.shtml blog education philosophy Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:17:23 -0500 DerridaGate Or is that De(rrida)bate? — This is the post in which I point to the latest installment in the almost-infamous 2010 Derrida Debates without commenting on them: Derrida's supposed textualism, by Adam Kotso at An und für sich Realism is de rigueur, by Levi Bryant at Larval Subjects What, you didn't believe me?... http://www.bogost.com/blog/derridagate.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/derridagate.shtml blog philosophy Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:51:33 -0500 Is Cow Clicker a Travesty? On the different sorts of satire — What is Cow Clicker? Is it a satire? Yes, but it's more complicated than that: it's also a real game that people can (and as it would seem, many thousands do) play "in earnest." That's caused a number of people to ask if it ought to be taken seriously as satire. We tend to throw around words like "satire" and... http://www.bogost.com/blog/is_cow_clicker_a_travesty.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/is_cow_clicker_a_travesty.shtml blog Facebook language videogames Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:50:54 -0500 The Sciences, The Humanities, and Design Nelson on Cross on Design — Mark Nelson wrote up an interesting bit on design as the third discipline, in which he suggests that design is a kind of third-term offset against the old science/humanities split. Mark notes that Whitehead is a precursor to such thinking, albeit in his educational writings rather than his metaphysics: There are three main roads along which we can proceed with... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_sciences_the_humanities_an.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_sciences_the_humanities_an.shtml blog design philosophy Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:35:40 -0500 Top 10 Ways Bartenders Screw Up My Old Fashioneds Plus, how to make one properly. — The Old Fashioned is one of a few common cocktails for me, both when I'm at home and when I'm out. However, when ordering one at a bar, the likelihood of something going mildly to terribly wrong is disturbingly high. That in mind, I present the Top 10 Ways Bartenders Screw Up My Old Fashioneds, followed by instructions for how... http://www.bogost.com/blog/top_10_ways_bartenders_screw_u.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/top_10_ways_bartenders_screw_u.shtml blog cynicism drink food Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:59:20 -0500 Speculations I A new journal of speculative realism — If you follow the speculative realism blogs you know this already, but many readers here who don't might be interested in this anyway: the first issue of the new journal Speculations has been released. The mission: "a journal of speculative realism that hopes to provide a forum for the exploration of speculative realism and post-continental philosophy." Paul Ennis is the... http://www.bogost.com/blog/speculations_i.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/speculations_i.shtml blog philosophy Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:24:52 -0500 On Coming Out as a Realist Morton Joins the OOO Mafia — Tim Morton has just announced his "coming out" as an object-oriented ontologist. For those of you haven't been following Morton, he's the author of The Ecological Thought and Ecology Without Nature, and his views on an interconnected "mesh" of life forms is one you should know about. There is something both wonderful and horrifying about having to "come out" as... http://www.bogost.com/blog/on_coming_out_as_a_realist.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/on_coming_out_as_a_realist.shtml blog philosophy Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:47:27 -0500 Cow Clicker Cloned! Dip your pointer into Fish Feeder — Cow Clicker is now officially a real Facebook game. How do I know? Because it's been copied! Christian Primozich has created Fish Feeder, which takes Cow Clicker's "innovative" cow clicking mechanics and applies them to the equally common social game genre of fish fondling. You can play it here. It's... well, it's Cow Clicker, but with fish. What did you... http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_cloned.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_cloned.shtml blog Facebook videogames Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:49:31 -0500 Non-Human Media Interview with Eric McLuhan — Harman points to Figure-Ground Communication's interview with Eric McLuhan. It includes a question from Harman about Laws of Media, namely "why did they they the tetrad to human artifacts?" Of course, this is also the question Levi and I will pose in our planned book on McLuhan. McLuhan doesn't really answer the question, from the very beginning seeming not to... http://www.bogost.com/blog/non-human_media.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/non-human_media.shtml blog media philosophy Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:45:21 -0500 Halo 2600 Ed Fries demakes Halo for Atari — Ed Fries, who used to run game publishing for Xbox, has created a demake of Halo for the Atari 2600. I'd talked to Ed about the project when I was exhibiting A Slow Year at the IGF this year, and he'd been kind enough to show me some late stage builds of the game. The result is excellent, both as... http://www.bogost.com/blog/halo_2600.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/halo_2600.shtml blog Atari videogames Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:28:52 -0500 Against Aca-Fandom On Jason Mittell on Mad Men — Television scholar Jason Mittell doesn't like the television show Mad Men, and he's written an article about why. It wasn't news to me; indeed, I'm one of the interlocutors he mentions having argued with about the show on Twitter and elsewhere. I knew Jason was writing this piece and I've been eager to read it. Now that I have done,... http://www.bogost.com/blog/against_aca-fandom.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/against_aca-fandom.shtml blog criticism television videogames Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:33:46 -0500 Weird Media and Tiny Ontology Two Teasers — I'm behind in keeping up with my corner of the philosophy blogosphere. In part I've been distracted by cow clickery, but more so I've been spending as much time as possible writing Alien Phenomenology, which I fully intend to complete before the end of August. I'm thus offering two teasers today, in lieu of earnest content. The first is related... http://www.bogost.com/blog/weird_media_and_tiny_ontology.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/weird_media_and_tiny_ontology.shtml blog books media philosophy Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:49:51 -0500 Moos and Merch Cow Clicker coverage and crap — I wasn't entirely prepared for the runaway success of Cow Clicker after it's release last week Indeed in the near future, I might pose the question of what counts as "success" for such a work. In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of a few of the more lively discussions about the game that might interest some of you: On... http://www.bogost.com/blog/moos_and_merch.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/moos_and_merch.shtml blog Facebook press videogames Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:25:59 -0500 Website Updates New stuff and new ways to get it — A few housekeeping notes this weekend. First, I've updated the Speculative Realism Aggregator to include the blogs of Jeff Bell ("Aberrant Monism) and Tim Morton ("The Ecological Thought"). If there are any other blogs that belong in the system that I'm missing, let me know. Second, you may not know it, but you can access a mobile version of this... http://www.bogost.com/blog/website_updates.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/website_updates.shtml blog philosophy website Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:59:27 -0500 Cow Clicker The Making of Obsession — I made a Facebook game about Facebook games, called Cow Clicker. You can go play it on Facebook now, or you can see some screenshots on on this site. Here's the short description, from the page just linked: Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It's partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today's social games,... http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml blog Facebook philosophy videogames Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:21:02 -0500 Social Games on Trial NYU Video Game Seminar IV — Jesper Juul has been organizing videogame theory seminars at NYU. This week, I'm going to be participating in the sixth iteration of said series, "social games on trial." Aki Järvinen will take the pro-social games position, and I will fill my court-ordered role as naysayer. The official announcement appears below. I should mention that I have a trick up my... http://www.bogost.com/blog/social_games_on_trial.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/social_games_on_trial.shtml blog cynicism videogames Web 2.0 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:09:50 -0500