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 The site has been archived in full (with comments) at http://www.bogost.com/watercoolergames.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/ 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 The Mereology of Cola On generic names for carbonated soft drinks — Harman links to this lovely map infographic of generic names for soft drinks in the United States (click below for a bigger version). It's been around for a while but is worth revisiting in light of a few points Graham makes in his post. First, Graham wonders what comprises the green "other" category in these maps, which is far more... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_mereology_of_cola.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_mereology_of_cola.shtml blog food philosophy rhetoric Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:05:51 -0500 Thank Galt I've Stockpiled Let's Laugh at Libertarians — After a few days talking about Marxism here and elsewhere, I figured it would be good to spread my wings and pick on libertarians. Here are two specimens. First, from cartoonist Barry Deutsch comes the 24 Types of Libertarians (or click on the cartoon for a legible version at Deutsch's site). There's one variety that's clearly missing, the Palo Alto-style... http://www.bogost.com/blog/thank_galt_ive_stockpiled.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/thank_galt_ive_stockpiled.shtml blog cynicism humor politics Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:35:03 -0500 Letting Go The Realist Invitation and the Correlationist Imperative — A lively discussion erupted from my post on philosophy and politics of a few days ago. Among other things, commenters revisited the relationship between ontology and politics, issues OOO proponents in particular have attempted to disentangle. Among the many lengthy comments from David Rylance comes this snippet, which may have finally helped me understand something fundamental about the whole ontology/politics... http://www.bogost.com/blog/letting_go.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/letting_go.shtml blog art philosophy politics Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:12:15 -0500 There are no Blown Calls in Football On World Cup officiating and the nature of Soccer — The topic of World Cup officiating came up in the comments on my recent Gamasutra column. I offered some thoughts there, but given the fact that the quarter final matches will start up today, it seemed worth rescuing those thoughts from the noise of web page comments. Specifically, I've been very interested in all the accusation of bad refereeing in... http://www.bogost.com/blog/there_are_no_blown_calls.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/there_are_no_blown_calls.shtml blog sports Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:48:26 -0500 Slow Media A manifesto and blog — Given that I'm currently completing a project called A Slow Year, and given that it is, somewhat poetically, taking longer than I anticipated to finish, and given that I'm resolved to do it right rather than to do it fast, given all those things I was intrigued to learn of the Slow Media Manifesto from my friend Julian Bleecker. As... http://www.bogost.com/blog/slow_media.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/slow_media.shtml blog art computing media Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:03:59 -0500 Plumbing the Depths On the familiar and the unfamiliar in games. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra. — Consider two sorts of familiarity that arise in art. The first is the familiarity of predictability. Through craft, this sort of work gives us what we expect in a well-conceived fashion. It's one of the reasons people enjoy television. The sitcom and the procedural tend to be particularly good at giving us what we expect. In twenty minutes, a banal... http://www.bogost.com/writing/plumbing_the_depths.shtml http://www.bogost.com/writing/plumbing_the_depths.shtml writing geekery sports videogames Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:17:51 -0500 I am not a Marxist More on Politics and Philosophy — In recent days there's been a flare-up of discussion about speculative realism and politics. It's a more mild and reasoned one than previous debates, with contributions well worth reading. First read Chris Vitale's post Queering Speculative Realism. Then read Diversifying Speculative Realisms on Archive Fire. After that go read Levi Bryant's post, which responds to the first two. The argument... http://www.bogost.com/blog/i_am_not_a_marxist.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/i_am_not_a_marxist.shtml blog philosophy politics Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:43:16 -0500 I felt a little like Oppenheimer Gary Yost on Videogames — Gary Yost, creator of 3D Studio Max, on videogames in San Francisco Magazine: Several years later, Autodesk saw Yost's work and gave him a contract to start developing three-dimensional design software. That got Yost jazzed up; his father was an architect, and he loved the idea of helping to build and create things. But he started having qualms when companies... http://www.bogost.com/blog/i_felt_a_little_like_oppenheim.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/i_felt_a_little_like_oppenheim.shtml blog cynicism software videogames Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:35:24 -0500 Latertasking How multitasking really works on iOS 4 — Despite the fact that I develop for iPhone, I can't tolerate using beta versions of the OS on my personal device. So it was only last week that I I installed iOS 4 on my iPhone last week. Ever since, I've been trying to grasp how the widely-anticipated multitasking feature really works. I understood that actually running a background thread... http://www.bogost.com/blog/latertasking.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/latertasking.shtml blog Apple computing iPhone Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:00:49 -0500 Playful & Playable Plus yet another update on A Slow Year — My forthcoming game A Slow Year is on exhibit at a show curated by Lara Sánchez Coterón, Playful & Playable: Critica y Experimentacion con Videojuegos. It runs until September 15 at Sala Amarica, in Vitoria Gasteiz (in northern Spain). Here's a description of the exhibition, which also includes work by Eastwood - Real Time Strategy Group, Anita Fontaine y Mike... http://www.bogost.com/blog/playful_playable.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/playful_playable.shtml blog art Atari videogames Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:40:35 -0500 Mommy, Can I Be Daniel Larusso for Halloween? Thoughts on Karate Kid — Recently I've been interested in remakes, so I was eager to see The Karate Kid, which revisits the now-classic 1984 film of the same name. The remake is one of the most faithful I can remember; in a time (in a world?) of updates and adaptations that wax nostalgic about TV, film, and toys of the 1970s and 80s while... http://www.bogost.com/blog/mommy_can_i_be_daniel_larusso.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/mommy_can_i_be_daniel_larusso.shtml blog film Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:54:38 -0500 Objects and Videogames Why I Am Interested in Both — Like every sane person who does anything in public, I egosearch to see how people are reacting to things I'm doing. I use a few tools, but mostly Icerocket, which offers a condensed view of blog, Twitter, news, and Facebook reactions to search terms. The latter results are new, thanks to Facebook's recent privacy "upgrades" that allow wall posts to... http://www.bogost.com/blog/objects_and_videogames.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/objects_and_videogames.shtml blog philosophy videogames website Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:40:18 -0500 Cartoonist Our Winning Project in the 2010 Knight News Challenge — The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's News Challenge award winners were announced Wednesday at MIT, and my project was among the 12 of 2,400 entries to have been awarded a grant. It's research I'm working on with my colleague Michael Mateas (UC Santa Cruz). Here's a summary of what we're doing: Among the casualties of local newspaper cuts... http://www.bogost.com/blog/cartoonist.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/cartoonist.shtml blog journalism videogames Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:22:00 -0500 Burgertimeology You've just thrown away a lot of points, and a lot of peppers — This is amazing.... http://www.bogost.com/blog/burgertimeology.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/burgertimeology.shtml blog geekery videogames Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:05:09 -0500 Object-Oriented Rhetoric Thoughts on the RSA panel papers — I've now had a chance to read three of the four papers from the RSA Object Oriented Rhetoric panel. Jim Brown's summary is quite accurate, and I also recommend Nate's thoughts on the potential of OOR. Here I'll offer an overview of my reading of the papers, followed my my own sense of what object-oriented rhetoric might look like, or... http://www.bogost.com/blog/object-oriented_rhetoric.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/object-oriented_rhetoric.shtml blog philosophy rhetoric Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:49:56 -0500 The Rancor of Rhetoricians Object-Oriented Misunderstandings — A while back Jim Brown mentioned to me that there would be an object-oriented rhetoric panel at this year's Rhetoric Society of America conference. Jim attended RSA but wasn't able to make the panel; still, he's managed to dig up the papers and he wrote up a summary over on the RSA's Blogora. I'm not yet sure what object-oriented rhetoric... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_rancor_of_rhetoricians.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_rancor_of_rhetoricians.shtml blog computing philosophy rhetoric Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:24:28 -0500 Cross about Crosswords — Graham has a short post up mentioning Heidegger's distaste for the crossword puzzle. Given that we have a whole chapter about crosswords and related puzzles in Newsgames, I'm particularly keen to read this if anyone digs it up. Heidegger's reaction was actually quite common. Some may not realize that the crossword puzzle incited a moral panic when it rose to... http://www.bogost.com/blog/cross_about_crosswords.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/cross_about_crosswords.shtml blog games journalism philosophy Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:12:54 -0500 The Spring Handhelds Apple and the Rhetoric of Change — Now that yet another Steve Jobs keynote is over, I find myself more interested in what Apple was saying about itself than what others are saying about its new gadgets. Despite my apparent pique pommaire, I like Apple stuff. I do my computing on a Mac and I have an iPhone and so forth. But as both a user and... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_spring_handhelds.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_spring_handhelds.shtml blog Apple fashion geekery iPhone Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:07:52 -0500 The Cocktail Party Test Branding Your Weird Academic Field — I've been meaning to post a link to Ethan Watrall's April article Building an Interdisciplinary Identity in a (Mostly) Non-Interdisciplinary Academic World. It includes a number of tips for branding yourself as an academic when working outside of or in-between traditional fields. I know that many academics, particularly those straggler pinko humanists, sometimes writhe at the idea of "marketing" themselves... http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_cocktail_party_test.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/the_cocktail_party_test.shtml blog computing education Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:31:11 -0500