Positech, the single-man UK developer of simulation games like Kudos and Democracy 2, has announced that it will give away copies of the latter game to any politician worldwide.

In his Free Copies for Politicians announcement, Positech proprietor Cliff Harris describes the need thusly:

The press release I received was even bolder: "Video game developers save global economy, Usher in age of politician gamers." Publicity stunt? Sure, Harris has a history of 'em. But a clever stunt, one that frames games as positive cultural tools in what is arguably a more sophisticated way than the industry usually musters.

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Whosegame, another make-your-own-game website tool things, is sponsoring a contest to create a serious game using their tools. The game must deal with one of the following topics:

• improve your knowledge in the telecommunications field
• be an eco-citizen with the help of telecommunications
• acting against isolation and exclusion thanks to telecommunications

Yeah, sort of strange topics huh. Anyway, the prizes are cash money: first prize is €5,000, second is €2,500, and third is €1,000. The deadline is March 31, 2009.

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Vintage Computing and Gaming has published an interview with Richard Wiggins, one of the developers of Texas Instruments' 1978 electronic toy Speak & Spell. This device was among the first electronic educational games, and for better or worse it may remain among the best.

As the author admits, the interview was meant to be fodder for a proper article marking the 30th anniversary of the device last summer, and as an interview it is rough reading. But read through the whole thing; there are a lot of interesting observations, including a discussion of the speech chip and its limitations.

(via Kotaku)

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Remember that whole financial bailout thing? And remember how AIG got in some hot water for spending almost half a million dollars on an executive retreat just after the government's $85 billion takeover of the insurance company?

Here's a little newsgame about it, called AIG UFO Exec Catcher. It's like one of those carnival crane catching machines, except your goal is to remove or otherwise disable misbehaving AIG execs.

There's certainly some editorial at work here, but the game serves another function too: a type of simulated retaliation. That's certainly something that might warm the heart of the everyman who didn't get a bailout this holiday.

Which reminds me, Merry Christmas from Water Cooler games!

(thanks to Paolo)

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From South Korean company Eduflo comes Hanjamaru, an MMORPG designed to teach elementary school children Chinese characters. Characters are depicted on the monsters in the game, and the pronunciation and meaning is said aloud to the player as he attacks. There are rewards for collecting different characters, which are chosen to match a popular standardized test for school children in Korea.

The website is in Korean, but the company also maintains a blog in English.

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In case you didn't see them elsewhere, a few of the tabloid games based on last week's shoe attack on President bush:

Flying Babush
Bush's Boot Camp
Can you throw a shoe at Bush?

Any more that I'm missing?

Update: Ok, here's some more:

Bush's Shoe Dodge (in this one you dodge the shoe!)
Sock and Awe
Ninja Bush: Master of Ninjit-shoe

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The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has announced a new Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund, which has created quite a stir at the institution. Its supporters see it as a place to study "Western civilization and free market economics," while some faculty have accused the project of imposing ideology on courses and research.

No matter, the case, here's something interesting: in Inside Higher Ed's September report on the center mentions the possibility that it will pursue educational videogames as a part of its charge:

In my book Persuasive Games, I noted that videogames had not yet been made partisan, in the way that talk radio or documentary film has, for example. I think that's still true... save for the US Army, most government and institutional videogames are really quite liberal in their approach. Perhaps the balance is poised to shift. Then again, perhaps it's just talk.

(thanks to Alessandro Braidotti)

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Here's a different take on games for health: the Nintendo DS Spa, which I spotted recently at Lenox Mall in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. The service offers complimentary massages, during which time massagees are invited to play DS games.

If in-mall massage-demos weren't enough evidence of Nintendo's commitment to advertising their wares to women, an accompanying brochure available at the pavilion offers the following invitation:

The three celebrities named appear inside the brochure, playing DS games. Nintendogs, New Super Mario Bros., and Brain Age 2 are shown in particular.

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Kotaku disdainfully points out New Concept Gaming's jOG controller, a motion-sensing belt-clip that promises to translate physical movement (e.g. jogging) into character motion on-screen in any game. A video appears after the jump.

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Georgia Tech is hosting the fourth iteration of our Living Game Worlds conference today and tomorrow, December 1-2. This year's theme is "Interplay: Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds"; speakers include Raph Koster, Chris Klaus, Richard Bartle, Randy Farmer and more. The program is online, and you can watch via live video stream or join in on Second Life.

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