Toilet Training for iPhone
May 23, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

In my 2007 book Persuasive Games, i discuss a wonderful advergame for the Britvic pacer-drink J2O. The game challenged the player to pee accurately into a toilet after drinking pint after pint of beer. The advertised product, a sort of fancy sugar water, helped with recovery in the same way . I don't think the game's online anymore, but you can read about it in this old press release. Well, now there's a version of a similar concept for iPhone: Drunk Sniper. Same type of gameplay, but now you can play in the toilet stall too. Available now for 99¢ ...

Reascending the Alps
April 2, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Whew, lots to catch up on! In the meantime, check out the best April Fools item I saw today: Alpine Legend for Xbox 360. Yes! ...

Jetset Sale, Optional Fairness
March 3, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

I previously announced the release of Jetset: A Game for Airports for iPhone. We've finally done a formal press release about the game. As a part of that effort, we've temporarily reduced the price of the game to $3.99, so now's a good time to buy it on the iTunes App Store. We've also made a few small updates since the game since release. The most notable change involved enlarging the passenger for easier touch-removal of trousers and shoes. But the most recent update, to v1.2, is worth talking about further. More on it after the jump. ...

Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds
February 4, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Rita King and Joshua Fouts send word that they have released findings from the "Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project." The project explores how people can learn about Muslim cultures through Second Life. The report comes in three forms, one a written report about digital diplomacy through virtual worlds, one a mini-documentary (you can watch it on YouTube), and one a graphical novel produced with in-world screenshots. ...

Jetset: A Game for Airports
January 22, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Over at Persuasive Games, we've launched our first iPhone game, Jetset: A Game for Airports. Here's the short blurb: A game for the frazzled globetrotter in all of us. Keep up with the changing rules of airport security on your iPhone or iPod touch. Play in airports to earn unique souvenirs to keep, give to friends, or redeem for prizes. The iPhone game connects to the Jetset Facebook App, where gifts and redemptions are handled. As Kotaku put it, now you can take an airport security game through airport security. Buy the game on the iTunes App Store (pretty ...

My New Column: Disjunctive Play
November 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, Disjunctive Play. The column mostly discusses Jason Rohrer's new game Between, but also tries to extrapolate a different kind of multiplayer experience from that title. When we talk about games, we normally use the language of conjunction, whether through accompaniment ("to play with") or conflict ("to play against"). Whether for competition, collaboration, or socialization, multiplayer games aim to connect people in the act of play itself. Between takes on a very different charge: it aims to remind players of the abyss that forever separates them from another. Read the whole thing over ...

Missile in the HASTAC
November 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The HASTAC consortium has just announced a forum hosted by their HASTAC Scholars fellows on digital games, entitled Participatory Play: Digital Games From Spacewar! to Virtual Peace to "explore game innovations that surpass violent first-person shooters and military training simulations." Here's a further description: Beginning with notable exemplars of imaginative game designs, such as "Virtual Peace," we will explore the theoretical and pedagogical issues surrounding video games. Among other topics, we'll consider the relationship between game play and game theory, changing trends in gaming culture, scholarly collaborations on game design, pedagogical uses of video games, and the social, political and ...

Superstruct
September 24, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Game designer (and friend and collaborator) Jane McGonigal's new game Superstruct, created at the Institute for the Future, is about to go online. IFTF is casting Superstruct as a "massively multiplayer forecasting game," and uses the following rhetoric to set up the scenario: What does the world of 2019 look like? Find out now. The full report from the Global Extinction Awareness System is LIVE -- and you can read it here for the first time anywhere. Find out exactly why the human species may face extinction by the year 2042 -- and what we can do about it. The ...

Attention Hog
August 13, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

San Francisco artist Chris Basmajian has created Attention Hog, A casual game about attention-driven social network culture. In Basmajian's words, "the game reflects some of the social and psychological trends present in social-networking communities. Eating its own hog feed, the game also offers extensive (almost 20) automated social network integrations, from Bebo to Xanga. In the game, the player pilots a cute pig toward people wandering around. If they face you for enough time, a heart fills up and turns gold, earning points. Each level has a target, and failing to meet it ends the game. Power-ups that improve your ...

Slim Jim's Virtual World of Meat Stick
July 3, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Slim Jim, makers of fine dry meat snacks, have a launched virtual world for "people who want to explore their spicy side." This inspired locus, dubbed Spicy Town, is a "wild place where people can create a unique alter ego that’s a little aggressive, insane, adventurous, and mischievous." So say Slim Jim's PR agency, which encourages me to let you all know that, once you've created your Spicy Side avatar, you can "challenge other users to real-time rumbles, talk smack, or just hang out in the immersive digital Spicy Town where you can cruise around and break mailboxes, spray paint ...

Parents: Sex is Worse than Severed Heads
July 2, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

USA Today is known for their daily infographics. Yesterday's covered "Video game offenders: What parents say they would find most offensive in a video game." You can see the results at right (click to make it bigger). It's nice that gay smooching just barely edged out "graphically severed human head" in terms of offensiveness, but we should all be relieved to see that heterosexual sex tops both of those by a whopping ten percentage points. Because, man, when I think of things more repulsive and depraved than severed human heads, the first thing that pops into my head is human ...

My latest colum: Performative Play
June 27, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on how gameplay can literally alter the real world, not through changes in attitude but via gameplay actions themselves. "Performative" is a name for speech acts that do things themselves when they are uttered. The classic example of the performative is the cleric or magistrate's declaration, "I now pronounce you man and wife." In this case, the utterance itself performs the action of initiating the marriage union. Other examples are promises and apologies, christenings and wagers, firing and sentencing. "I promise to come home by midnight"; "I dub thee Sir ...

Simulating disease is nothing to sneeze at
June 23, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Liz Losh mentions and critiques a new Facebook app called Patient Zero, from VisualDXHealth. It takes the concept of viral spread literally rather than figuratively, allowing users to create a new virus, "power it up," and spread it to friends. Seems like a decent idea at first blush. The problem, as Liz points out, is the implementation. Viruses are created, and immunities are granted, by answering quiz questions, no doubt a hat-tip to some idiot stakeholder at the sponsor who wanted to assure "knowledge transfer" by bludgeoning people with textbook learning. Despite the whole ideavirus metaphor, representations of actual infective ...

Rohrer sketches on Police Brutality, Immortality
June 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Last year I wrote briefly about Jason Rohrer's excellent game Passage. Since then, in addition to a couple more small games, Rohrer has been writing a monthly column at The Escapist called Game Design Sketchbook. Among them, two are of particular interest to readers here. The first is Police Brutality, a game about resisting police in the wake of a University of Florida student who was tased at a John Kerry rally in 2007. The game starts from the premise that inaction is cowardice, and then offers a suggestion of a process participants might have enacted. This process, the enacting ...

Knowledge is Nothing. Tenure is Everything.
March 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to David Wessman on the IGDA Education SIG mailing list for pointing out Survival of the Witless, a card game about the academic tenure process. The title above was the game's tagline. It’s a brutal game, where the most common card is "ass-kissing" (to simulate the most common action in academia). Three to eight players try to collect enough writing cards and a contract to finish their book, and enough influence with committee members to win a tenure decision. In addition to Ass Kissing, other cards you could play in the game included Seduction, Bold New Theory, Student Boycott, ...

World Without Oil wins at SXSW
March 10, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Alternate Reality Game World Without Oil, in which thousands of people simulated their lives after a major oil crisis, won in the "activism" category at the SXSW Web Awards. Congrats to friends/colleagues Jane McGonigal and Cathy Fischer, and comrades-in-spirit Ken Eklund, Dee Cook, and others who were involved in the project. ...

Dating Violence Game Contest
February 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Brian Crecente reports that his brother has launched a flash game design contest for games on the topic of dating violence prevention. First prize is $1,000, and entires are due April 15, 2008. More information here. ...

Center for Social Media Event
January 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The Center for Social Media is hosting an event, Making your Media Matter, on February 7-8 2008 at the American University in Washington DC. Among the panels is Games for Social Change: How Games and Video are Playing Well Together, which will be held the 7th at 5:30pm and moderated by Suzanne Seggerman of Games for Change. Panelists include Heidi Boisvert (ICED! I Can End Deportation), Eric Brown (PeaceMaker), Ivan Marovic (A Force More Powerful), Dennis Palmieri, (World Without Oil). Registration is a fairly modest $100 for the whole event. ...

Will there ever be politics in Second Life?
December 30, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Those of you who keep up with game industry news already know that Cory Ondrejka has left his post as CTO of Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. Cory is a respected friend, and I will be interested to see what he does next. On Friday, Cory mused on his last day on his new blog, Collapsing Geography. That may be one you want to add to your readers. More directly related to our interests on this site, however, is Cory's discussion of one of his 2007 predictions, which have become a Terra Nova tradition. ...

The Holidays In-World
December 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas yesterday. I dug out of Jell-O and constructed Transformers pies. As Christmas recedes into memory, here's one more post on the topic. One of the genres I didn't discuss at all in my recent column on holiday games are MMOs and virtual worlds. On Christmas Eve, Robert Cox published a detailed article, The Holidays in the MMO Universe. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in the topic of games and the holidays. ...

Parking Wars on Facebook
December 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

This isn't the first Facebook advergame, but it's the first I've seen that really tries to take advantage of the service's social graph. There is a new A&E television series called Parking Wars, which starts in January. The subject of the show is probably the only division of the police force not yet to have their own reality/documentary series: metermaids and parking enforcers. Parking Wars the game is a Facebook game built to promote the show. It's very simple. When you add the app you get your own street with a handful of spaces. Some have special rules, like only ...

Please play Jason Rohrer's Passage
December 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I am back from Montreal, where I attended the Montreal International Games Summit and spent some time with the folks at Concordia and also attended Kokoromi's Gamma 256 show. There's lots to say about all of these, but for now I want to point you to one of the games from the Gamma show. The constraint of the contest was 256 pixels square or less. All the games were very good, but the standout for me was Jason Rohrer's superb specimen, Passage. I don't even want to say too much about it here, but I think it's a terrific example ...

Alternate Reality Games Seminar
September 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Despite their interesting features, Alternate Reality Games like The Beast and ilovebees really got their start as marketing campaigns. Since World Without Oil, there has been growing interest in using ARGs for serious purposes. Game community Unfiction is sponsoring a one-day event, Embrace the Chaos, to help people understand how to use these games. The cost is $175 before Sept 30 and $200 thereafter. I think it's a bit unfortunate that the organizers have positioned the event toward marketers ("Alternate Reality Games and online experience marketing when done correctly create a powerful connection between the audience and you"), but I ...

Persuasive Games: The Reverence of Resistance
September 11, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the Manchester Cathedral controversy in popular PS3 shooter Resistance: Fall of Man. I take a fairly different position than A cynic, unbeliever, or Internet troll might point out the irony of the church pointing the finger, given the millennia-old history of church-sponsored violence. A gamer might rely on the title's status as fantasy fiction to nullify the validity of affront. Such impressions are merely instrumental attempts to foil the church’s parry rather than reasoned attempts to justify the expressive ends served by depicting the cathedral in the game. And ...

Strong Speech in Film and Games
August 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Just as Take Two announces that Manhunt 2 has been "revised" and ESRB rated at M, news comes that Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee's new film Lust, Caution has been rated NC-17 by the MPAA, for graphic sexuality. The difference is, film studio Focus Features is going to release the film uncut, with the rating, while Take Two will release a crippled version of the game to meet financial pressures. ...

Intimate Controllers
May 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Think you've seen every kind of alternate interface? NYU ITP student Jenny Chowdhury has devoted her masters thesis work to making a videogame controller out of a bra and undershorts. She calls it Intimate Controllers. Players have to touch each other in intimate places to play games created for the device. There's a video of one of the prototypes on her website, which seems to be a rhythm matching type of game tied to an abstract fiction about compatibility with one's partner. Great stuff. (thanks to Nico) ...

World Without Oil
May 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

A new Alternate Reality Game called World Without Oil has launched, taking on the end of oil. As described in a recent article on the game, in the game's fictional world, "gas prices will skyrocket, a dwindling food supply will rot, and the oil crisis literally will stop Americans in their tracks. How can you and your loved ones survive a crippling breakdown?" The game is created by Ken Eklund and is a part of PBS's Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows programming, which in turn are presented by iTVS, the same group that funded our forthcoming game Fatworld, about ...

No Marriage, Gay or Otherwise, in Middle Earth
April 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

One of our more popular posts here on Water Cooler Games is a mention three years ago about gay marriage in The Sims 2. Just last week, Turbine and Midway released The Lord of the Rings Online, sure to become an absurdly over-discussed and possibly popular massively multi-player game. The debate seems to have begun around the very topic of gay marriage. Today, Salon published a story by Katherine Glover: Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle-earth?. Apparently Turbine's solution to the quandary was just to pull marriage from the game entirely. The article covers many themes, including social ...

ID the Creep
April 25, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Liz Losh recently introduced me to ID The Creep, a game that purports to help young girls practice identifying pedophiles online. The game is sponsored by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and The Ad Council. As Liz argues, the player really isn't forced to make any hard decisions in the game; for example, there's no actual socialization or learning or interaction that takes place in the simulated chat space, so there's little motivation to treat the simulated interlocutors as . Liz found that the best strategy was just to identify everyone as a pedophile. Perhaps this is ...

American Idol Mii's
March 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I have no idea why I did this. I was writing all day, and my brain started to fry, and I went downstairs to play some Wii Play billiards. I must have been reeling still from the Life of a Mii segment, and I started creating Mii's. Somehow I ended up creating one of the remaining American Idol contestants. And then it started to seem like a good idea to make all of them. So, here you go, here's the ten remaining: I'm not sure how I'll lord my god-like power over them. I could delete one each week. Or ...

Turn It All Off, an energy savings game
March 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

We've been a bit lax on covering games lately, and I'm planning to make up for that this week. For starters, here's the 1E Energy Awareness Campaign game about how you can save energy at work. Turn It All Off is a cute, well-produced game that does more than many similar games I have seen over the years. The principle is familiar enough: move a character around an office and find the objects that are using energy unnecessarily. But Turn It All Off actually ads some gameplay for once: there's a time limit, and there are both obstacles and simple ...

Serious Games book for Japan
February 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Toru Fujimoto let me know that his new book Serious Games: Transforming Education and Society Through Digital Games has just been published by Tokyo Denki University Press. If you don't know Toru already, he's the source for serious games related material in Japan. So it's not surprising that he wrote the book on it! Here's a (bad) Babelfish translation of the book webpage (my favorite mistranslationism is "Dull fool is dyeing"). The book is in Japanese and written for the Japanese market, but Toru also knows everything about what's going on in serious games in Japan. ...

Super Columbine Massacre RPG Trailer
December 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

In preparation for its appearance as a finalist at Slamdance 2007 (more on that in a future post), SCMRPG creator Danny Ledonne has created a game trailer, which you can now view on YouTube. If you haven't been reading WCG for the last six months or so, you can catch up on our coverage of the game (1, 2, 3, 4), and some of my words and voice also appear in Danny's trailer. Danny is a filmmaker by trade, and I think the trailer he made effectively presents the game, particularly the range of responses the title has elicited and ...

Raph Koster announces Areae
December 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Today Raph finally announced his new company, Areae. Click over to Raph's blog or the corporate site for links to a bunch of news stories. Raph isn't saying much yet, but... this is definitely something our readers will want to keep an eye on... ...

SCMRPG creator Danny LeDonne on violent games
December 5, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Danny LeDonne, creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG (previously discussed on WCG: 1, 2, 3) was on KPBS public radio (San Diego) recently, where he discussed the game, as well as violent videogames in general. Danny's explanation of the game is thoughtful as usual. You can listen to it here. A number of other games come up in caller discussions, including Postal and America's Army. Dr. Karen Dill from Lenoir-Rhyne College and the Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media weighs in in the second half of the program, repeating the old, tired idea that games lead to ...

Cruel 2 B Kind update
November 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Do you live or work in San Francisco? Do you need something to do on your lunch hour tomorrow? There is a game of Cruel 2 B Kind, the game Jane McGonigal and I designed/built earlier this year, running tomorrow (the 8th) at noon in SF. Sign up here. Don't live in the Bay? No problem, play one of the other scheduled games, in Cleveland, Washington, London, or Tel Aviv. Or host your own. ...

Want to make a Safer Sex Video Game?
September 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

IGDA Sex Sig chair and author of the just-released Sex in Games, Brenda Brathwaite points us to a call for proposals from the University of Connecticut for a Safer Sex Video Game. If you're interested, act fast: there's a mandatory bid meeting Wednesday Sept 20 at 2pm ET. ...

Play (and code) the Munch Museum heist
September 18, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Recently I wrote about documentary games, games that depict an account of a real-life event. Silence Variations is a new one from Overdog. The game reenacts the 2004 armed robbery of the Munch Museum in Oslo, in which "Scream" and "Madonna" were stolen. The game was commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall for an exhibition in Norway, so it only exists in multiuser installation form. However, the team has released all the code for the game under a Creative Commons license. So, you build your own variations, or use it as a basis for another work. ...

Play Cruel 2 B Kind next weekend in NYC
September 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Earlier this month I mentioned that Jane McGonigal and I have been playtesting our new public game Cruel 2 B Kind in San Francisco. The two live playtests we ran (well, Jane really ran them on the ground, while I stared obsessively at our server) were tremendously useful and we've made a bunch of changes, updated the rules, taken some things out, put new things in. Jane liveblogged both playtests (1, 2) and collected some public reaction. You can also see photos from the playtests on the game website, and more on Flickr. By the way, Jane was just named ...

Montreal Gunman Aftermath
September 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

If you've seen the news in the past 24 hours, you've probably heard that a gunman, Kimveer Gill, opened fire at a Montreal college yesterday, killing one person and injuring 19 others. If you've read the headlines this morning, you may also have seen that the press has been highlighting the fact that the man posted on websites that he played Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a game I have discussed (positively) here before (1, 2). I feel compelled to say something about what this shooting says about the game and our response to it. ...

Playtesters needed for Cruel 2 B Kind
August 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Ubiquitous game designer and researcher Jane McGonigal and I have a new game and we need your help playtesting it. Cruel 2 B Kind is a new game of benevolent assassination Jane and I designed for the Come Out and Play Festival in New York. Real world games are hard to test in a vacuum, and we need your help to get it right. If you will be in the San Francisco area Sunday September 3 or Sunday September 10, please sign up for one or both of the San Francisco playtests. Read on for the full details. ...

Have a Paris Riot
August 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've been increasingly interested in so-called documentary games (or docu-games), such as JFK Reloaded and Escape from Woomera and Waco Resurrection. In fact, Cindy Poremba and I wrote an article on documentary games that should be out in the coming months (click over to her blog for more links on the topic, to which she is devoting her Ph.D. research) So, I was excited to learn about a new game that sounded documentarian in nature. Paris Riots is a mod of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in which the player takes the role of police mustered to respond to rioting ...

Top 10 Disaffections
July 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Since we launched Disaffected! back in January, we've enjoyed a continuous stream of feedback, some good, some bad, all interesting. I've shared portions of it in private presentations, but when I showed the game at the Games for Change Exhibition last week in New York, I reminded myself to write about it here. For those of you just tuning in, this January my studio Persuasive Games released Disaffected!, a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. Probably the fastest way to read up on the game is in this MTV News article, by Stephen Totilo. I'll spare listing the press ...

McDonald's Interactive Sticks it to McDo... or do they?
June 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

This post has been updated, please see below. This story has also been updated, please read here According to their website, McDonald's Interactive was founded to help the parent company strategize about future markets. Yesterday, they announced their "intention to split from McDonalds." Why? Said co-director Andrew Shimery-Wolf: "We can no longer stand by while McDonald's corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin." According to Shimery-Wolf, the group had created McMarketplace, a simulation of the global effects of the burger business. It worked well for training, but in long-term predictions, business ended in 2050, when everyone died due to ...

Columbine, Videogames as Expression, and Ineffability
May 21, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A few weeks ago I wrote about Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The game puts the player in the shoes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and attempts to paint a picture of their motivations, plans, and actions on that terrible day. It's a controversial topic to be sure, but exactly the kind of subject we should be taking on in videogames: hard problems for which there are no easy answers. I knew that public reaction to the game would be largely negative. I've received plenty of hate mail just for talking about the game. But I don't think I was ...

Columbine RPG
May 3, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've just learned about the Super Columbine Massacre RPG. It's a deep and complex account of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre interpreted in the style of 2D role-playing games. The game has been out for at least a year, but this is the first I've seen it. After Gonzalo's recent mention of Border Patrol, I can imagine that our readers might have strong reaction to this game. While it is a challenging subject, I think the effort is brave, sophisticated, and worthy of praise from those of us interested in videogames with an agenda. The purpose of this game ...

Calderoids - a different kind of mobile game
April 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Almost two years ago, we covered Pac Mondrian, an interpretation of Pac-Man through the lens of modernist painter Piet Mondrian. The arts collective Prize Budget for Boys is back with another videogame/art mashup. Calderoids is am interpretation of the classic arcade game Asteroids through the lens of American sculptor Alexander Calder. Calder is best known for inventing the mobile, kinetic sculptures that use equilibrium to counterbalance. This may come as a surprise to many of us today, who associate the mobile with baby nurseries. But it started out as an abstract art form. Here's what Prize Budget for Boys has ...

Accordion Hero - Leben Sie Der Traum!
March 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Bavarian videogame satirists Schadenfreude Interactive have announced their most recent parodic homage, Accordion Hero! Polka your way up from Der Rathskeller to Oktoberfest in Munich! From the amusing "product page": Hit all the right notes and get the crowd on their feet waving their beer steins in unison - you are an accordion hero! Includes all the great accordion melodies you've ever gotten really, really drunk to...from Ein Munchen Steht Ein Hofbrauhaus to Rock You Like A Hurricane. Accordion Hero follows in the long line of absurdities showcased at Schadenfreude, including Nazgul Thunder 2003, Grand Theft Ottoman, and Secret Weapons ...

Molleindustria's McDonald's Game
February 2, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Just two weeks after we released Disaffected!, WCG amici italiani Molleindustria have released another specimen in the now-rapidly-growing anti-advergame subgenre, this one a scathing critique of the McDonald's corporation. Visit the "official" website to play. The game requires the player to learn and master all the complex techniques of a big international corporation like McDo. You'll bribe South American officials for the rights to clear rainforests for cattle and soy; you'll plump up cattle with additives; you'll coerce and influence government and scientific interests back home; and you'll manipulate your employees to achieve the highest profits. From the game: Making ...

What worries the Virtual Magic Kingdom? Impropriety, but mostly sex.
January 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A little more than a year ago, I mused open-mouthed at Disney's intention to create a Habbo Hotel-like virtual world. Then back in May we announced the launch of the beta of Virtual Magic Kingdom (I was so disappointed they didn't call it Marketingland). We logged over 100 comments on that entry, some interesting but most inane -- users scrounging for cheat codes or mistaking WCG for a forum where empty chatter goes without notice. I got tired of the recent comments filling up with such things, so I turned off comments at the start of this month. Then, a ...

Is your PC ready for the Rapture?
December 30, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you who don't know it, Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have penned some 14 novels about life on earth after the rapture. Taken together with the associated kids books, graphic novels, audio books, fresh poultry, armored cars, vacation timeshares, and dutch ovens, the series has sold over 600 gazillion copies. A few years back, the group behind these tales of post-apocalyptic end of the world goodness created Left Behind Games, a division that promised to allow the 30 million billion people who had bought the books and dutch ovens to take on the role of ...

Sex, Violence, and Videogames on Nerve
December 15, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Nerve magazine is running a special video games issue this week, which includes, among other things, a review of Façade and a "panel of experts" discussion on sex and violence in games. I'm one of the participants in the panel, along with Steven Johnson, Eric Zimmerman, Henry Jenkins, Brenda Brathwaite, Rob Levine, and Katie Salen. Followers of our previous discussions on sex and games might be interested in the conversation. There are five questions: Question 1: Is the sex-and-violence content of video games a legitimate social concern? Or are Hillary Clinton et. al. criticizing games for easy political points? And ...

Amazon.com Wishlist Game
December 12, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a new game I just invented that you can play this holiday season, or anytime. All you need is a web browser and an Amazon.com account. It's part gift economy critique, part Oulipian writing. How to play: Go to the Amazon.com Wishlist page. Under "Find a wishlist," enter a name. Any name will do, forename or surname, and it's better if it's not someone you know. Browse the search results for a wishlist that actually has items in it (a lot of people don't add to their wishlist). Based solely on the contents of the wishlist, write a story, ...

iBelieve - social commentary goes meta
November 7, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm breaking the rules a little with this post. It has very little to do with videogames. But it's too good to pass up, and it does relate to the broader themes of our project. In a brilliant move, artist Scott Wilson created iBelieve, a cross-shaped lanyard and cap for iPod shuffle. Its purpose was social commentary: Inspired by the world's obsession and devotion to the iPod, ... [iBelieve] is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world. But much to Wilson's surprise, religious organizations have started buying the iBelieve in bulk! Incredible! I've been thinking and ...

Why the IGDA's new Sex & Games SIG goes limp
August 18, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Gamespot reports that the IGDA has launched a special interest group (SIG) for sex in games. The SIG even has it's own blog, Sex & Games, which strikes me as a great idea. Here's what they have to say about their goals: The Sex SIG welcomes everyone interested in the topic of sexual content in video games, from developers actively creating such content to parents to those working in or with organizations that seek to restrict such content. The Sex SIG hopes this "Sex & Games" blog will serve as an informational clearinghouse for such content, helping us to connect ...

Farming, Gender, Narcotics, and other related things
August 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Last week Natsume released new versions of Harvest Moon: Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for GameCube and Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for GBA. I hesitate to say that I'm a "big fan" of Harvest Moon, but like Animal Crossing it's a game that charms and allures me, both as a player and as a designer. The 3d Playstation and Gamecube varieties felt too complicated, but I've played an embarrassing number of hours of Harvest Moon on GBA, and I've still yet to convince someone to marry my sullen, zucchini-planting avatar. I do still carry my chickens around ...

Plush Therapy
August 1, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I've mentioned before that my father was a psychologist (now retired), and so I'm always amused by therapy humor. In fact, I think the first thing I ever had formally published was a cartoon in a local psychological review. I think I was 8 years old. How perverse is that. So, I was thrilled to find The Asylum, Psychiatry for Mishandled Plush. It's a Life & Death-style psychiatric treatment game in which you, the psychiatrist, examine and recommend treatment for an assortment of seriously disturbed plush toys. Each one has a different condition, all of which make disturbing sense given ...

A wee cup of Hot Coffee
July 25, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We haven't discussed the whole GTA: San Andreas Hot Coffee saga here on WCG, partly because the story was still unfolding, partly because all the usual game sites (not to mention the bungling normal news sites) were over-reporting on it. I did a couple interviews on the topic last week, including one the Atlanta Journal-Constitution didn't get quite right. Rather than blather on trying to make those quotes more precise, I thought I'd just post my main concerns in the aftermath. So, here they are, the official version. (1) Based on Take Two's announcement of an astounding 6% drop in ...

All work and no fun...
July 7, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

1up.com has a great feature on MMOG sweatshops, Third-World based companies that "farm" currency and valuables from massive multiplayer games in order to sell them online. This is one that traditional Marxist would love: not only poor nations are doing jobs, but they are also having dirty fun for them! By dirty fun I mean doing the obnoxious part of these games. Ask any teenager anywhere in the world if they would like to get paid in order to play games all day and I bet that more than 99% would say yes... until they actually tried it. It's the ...

Façade Ships!
July 5, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

After 5 years of development, Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas have released Façade, their one-act interactive drama, under their new aptly-named shingle Procedural Arts. You can download Façade for free, or if you don't want to wait for all 800MB of it, you can order a 2-CD installer. Those of you who haven't seen Façade yet are missing out. It represents the latest and greatest in AI-driven characters, dynamic drama management, and it doesn't give up any humanity in favor of pure technology (The New York Times recently called Façade "the future of video games"). You can read more about ...

Virtual World Tourism
June 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Wired News just published a story in which I'm quoted on the new GamePal account rental service, a system that allows players to pay a fee to visit MMOGs with characters of their choosing. Here's how Wired explains it: GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online. The article has since been Slashdotted, and general sentiments in the /. posts as well as the Wired article ...

Beer, Nudity, and Pac-Man
June 11, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Surely this must be the first ever advergame that draws a direct correlation between drinking beer and getting women naked. Undress Me is a Flash game with simple inverse-space invaders gameplay, similar to Ferry Halim's Apple Season. The game features the Czech beer Pilsner Urquell, and the player's goal is to catch falling bottles in a six-pack. Catch enough and the "avatar" you choose at the beginning begins to undress. The more beer you store in your magical six-pack, the more she takes off. The game's actually quite, er, challenging, and the avatar even mocks you when you fail. I'm ...

E3: Gamics software
June 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm finally getting back to posting my E3 news. Newcomer Planetwide Games is releasing an MMOG called RYL: Path of the Emperor. It's main novel features are guild wars and player-to-player combat, plus a $1 million tournament. But the most interesting feature doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. A couple weeks ago Gonzalo pointed us to Gamics, a resource for creating comic books from games (machinima:film::gamics:comics). RYL is shipping with the terribly named but quite cool GameFreq Comic Book Creator. It's a Windows app for authoring gamics. The software features templates for comic pages with various panel ...

E3: The Bible Game
May 19, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm running a bit behind with E3 coverage, but I'm going to try to catch up today. While everyone else covers the predictable stuff, I'm going to try to share my impressions of the more unique games on the floor this year. I knew about The Bible Game from Crave before arriving at the show and was happy to stumble upon it on the floor. There are two flavors, one for GBA and one for PS2. Disappointingly, both are quiz games, although each tries to overcome that creative defect in a different way. ...

Does expression come in HD too?
May 14, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

By now, most of our readers have heard and seen Microsoft's official unveiling of the Xbox 360, their next-generation console. Following through on Xbox chief J Allard's depressingly trite future vision for videogames at GDC, the focus of the Xbox 360 is visual resolution and graphical clarity. Microsoft's Robbie Bach summarizes the device's potential as seen by its creators: Remember going from 2-D games to 3-D? We're going from today's 3-D worlds to high-definition worlds that really will look like a movie or television show ... That is going to lead to fundamental changes in expectations, and Xbox 360 is ...

Police Profiling Game
April 11, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

NorthJersey.com reports that New Jersey State Police has commissioned a game to help state troopers understand and counteract racial profiling. It's a significant project, with $650,000 committed to WILL Interactive to develop the game. I'm not sure how much of a game it will be. The article tells the story of a live shoot for the game -- "They are filming a new computer video game on a side street of Hammonton..." In this case they are filming one possible outcome of an altercation between the fictional Officer Martinez and Paul, an African American man. The computer user will watch ...

Hold the meat
March 24, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Vancouver-based Veggie Games specializes in "games that promote kindness and compassion towards the animals that share our planet, and increase awareness about environmental issues." Their recent release Steer Madness allows the player to take the role of Bryce the Steer, who you can pilot to rescue animals, deliver soymilk, protest against fur, rescue chickens in an electric car, and take on other environmental and vegetarian challenges. The game recently took home an award for Innovation in Audio at the Independent Game Festival, and it was also runner-up for Best Animal-Friendly Videogame at the PETA Proggy Awards (Eidos Interactive's Whiplash took ...

Halo for Jesus
March 20, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

This is different. The Christian Post writes on How to Witness Using Halo 2, a rather bizarre account of how youth ministers are teaching kids to use Halo 2 to "testify the faith." Apparently the ministries really don't like Halo 2 (on account of its violence), but they perceive the game to be so culturally pervasive that they can "take something hugely popular in our culture and turn it into a way to share the most important message." One minister equates the game's premise -- a hero saving the world from aliens -- with Jesus saving the world from eternal ...

Drug Power-Ups
March 17, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Today's NY Times reports on new games that allow players to take drugs as a part of the gameplay (thanks to Jane). Narc, a game about arresting drug dealers, allows the player to take the drugs they confiscate. Each drug temporarily improves gameplay but also has side effects. A digital puff of marijuana, for example, temporarily slows the action of the game like a sports replay. Taking an Ecstasy tablet creates a mellow atmosphere that can pacify aggressive foes. The use of crack momentarily makes the player a marksman: a "crack" shot. What concerns me most about these games is ...

Are casual games a salve for film licenses?
February 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

With the Oscars poised to air tonight, it seems an appropriate time to meditate on the fate of film license games. I've written before on Hollywood's propensity to use games as a film marketing tool, as have I mused on the dangers of games mixing themselves up with film licenses. A new set of film licenses for games suggests that this stagnation might be ending... or worsening. For example, EA bought the Godfather license, promising to bring Brando's voice to the small screen. Majesco bought the Jaws license. Warner Bros. announced its plans to adapt the Dirty Harry franchise, with ...

Burger Man, the Super Size Me game
February 21, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Super Size Me, the popular documentary film about the health effects of a massive fast-food diet, has an official game. It looks like it was a promotion for the DVD release, so it must have been around for a while already. (thanks to Nico) It's cute and has good production value, but it's essentially a Pac Man clone. And if I'm going to criticize other clones, then I'm sort of obliged to give the same treatment here. The subject of healthcare and diet is a great subject for a game, because a game can show change over time, and furthermore ...

More Game-based Charity
January 17, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Two more examples of game-based charity. First, Xenopi Studios, who publishes and distributes games online, has announced the "Good Samaritan Games" Initiative. They plan to donate at least 10% of sales to charity, with a new charity or non-profit selected at some (yet undefined) interval. Second, Shooter Group, who also publishes and distributes games online, has announced the "Jett Reilly Program." Each time the company sells a million games, Shooter Group will donate $500,000 to construct "Shooter Playgrounds" at selected Children’s Hospitals, Ronald McDonald Houses, and public parks in New York City, Toronto, and Shanghai. I've never heard of these ...

Pac Modrian gets ink the Grey Lady, bank on Ebay
December 30, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The NY Times ran a story this week, which discusses the artistic merits of the game and offers some insightful observations on the relationship between games and art. The article also quotes and links to a discussion about Pac Mondrian held here on WCG back in July. But perhaps the best evidence of a ligature between games and art comes affixed as a price tag. Apparently the artists listed on Ebay four 4x6 "master postcard proofs" of the piece, which closed at around -- wait for it -- US$10,000. The arcade cabinet installation of Pac Mondrian will be on exhibit ...

Fishpong to Break the Ice
November 20, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Those wacky MIT Media Lab folks are at it again with Fishpong. It's a tabletop installation that responds to magnetically tagged cups to allow you to bounce fish around in a simulated aquarium. The purpose of the game is "stimulate informal computer-supported cooperative play (CSCP) in public spaces such as coffeehouses and cafés." For those of you who don't speak Abstractese, that means it's an "icebreaker game." ...

Grand Theft Auto for Counseling
November 9, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

MSNBC.com has published a story by frequent game journalist and cool cat Tom Loftus on gang experts' reactions to GTA:Vice City and San Andreas as There's a lot of media effects-type arguments in the story, but more interesting are the gang counselors who are actually using the Grand Theft Auto games as part of their counseling sessions. Ernest L. Cuthbertson, a police detective in Greensboro, N.C. ... actually uses "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," the predecessor of "San Andreas," as part of his work with at-risk kids. He films the kids as they play the game and then challenges them ...

Gambling Away Your Friends
November 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Fantastic. Friendster Pachinko lets you gamble your friends (or someone else's friends) as if they were pachinko balls. A great example of a data visualization, and a great commentary on the uses of social network software to boot. (via Joi Ito) ...

CFP: Ludologica Retro
October 31, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Videogame researchers longing to sport your striped polo shirts and off-the-shoulder oversize sweaters, wait no longer. While a little out of bounds of the usual themes of WCG, I want to announce the call for papers for Ludologica Retro, Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971 - 1984) a spinoff series of the regular Ludologica, edited by myself and the indefatigable Matteo Bittanti. This interdisciplinary critical anthology will explore a range of topics regarding the aesthetic, cultural, and social significance of seminal vintage arcade games. For detailed submission guidelines, wild parties, and deadlines, click over to the official call over at the ...

How the Stupid iPod Photo is Like the Stupid Games Industry
October 27, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Today, Apple announced the iPod Photo. iPod Photo is available in 40- and 60GB configurations, and comes with a new color LCD display capable of displaying 65,000 colors. You can view your image library on iPod photo, 25 thumbnails per page, and you can connect the iPod Photo to a TV to show slideshows with music. I'm a dedicated Apple user. I have a PowerBook G4 in my lap, a G5 and Cinema Display on my desk, and an iPod 3G in my backpack. But the iPod Photo is easily the dumbest piece of consumer electronics I've seen all year. ...

Play Games for Charity
October 8, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Extra Life for Kids is a game marathon organized by the Children's Miracle Network and Georgia Tech's Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. You can make donations or sponsor local marathons by donating food or games. Give US$30 by November 1 and you get a cool What Would Mario Do? T-shirt. Disclosure on donations, from their website: All money raised by Extra Life for Kids is given to Children's Miracle Network, with online donations supporting the kids at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. (thanks to Clara) ...

Catching up with the Sims 2
October 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I've been too busy to notice, but The Sims 2 has been out for about 10 days now. Mia Consalvo points to an MSNBC report that claims the game has sold 1 million units already. We started a discussion here on WCG back in July about gay marriage in the Sims 2, and WCG reader "gay simmer" has made some interesting discoveries in the actual game (versus the hypothetical game we discussed this summer), which seem worth sharing here. the only way two males, or even two females for that matter, can have a bio-baby together is in create a ...

Orgasm Girl
September 21, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ok, so this is just straight-up porn. "Orgasm girl is the hottest lesbian angel around..." But, it's quite interesting as a kind of procedural sex toy. Good God, I really said that. Anyway, if you're not at work, try it out (as it were). ...

One-Joystick Bandit
September 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Just in case there's anyone left out there who thinks games can't motivate real-world action, check this out. Atari has just announced that it plans to release casino slot machines based on their vintage arcade games. Appropriately, the first will be Pong. I hope they're all quarter slots. It's worth pointing out that there is a long history of collaboration between videogame and casino game companies. Casino game company Bally created Midway in the mid-1970s, which later released some of our favorite arcade games here in the states (like Pac Man). Pinball company Williams and Midway merged in the late ...

F*ck the Vote
September 8, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

We had a lively discussion recently over on Grand Text Auto about representations of sex in gaming, and I now officially feel stupid for not thinking of a way to tie the topic into political games. Why, you ask? Because now there's Votergasm, a website devoted to increasing voter turnout by tying acts of voting to sex acts. The concept is simple: you sign a pledge to vote and have sex on election night. You can even find Votergasm parties in your area on the site. I guess it's MoveOn meets Meetup meets Adult Friend Finder. ...

Games Gone Wild
September 3, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Aptly named Topheavy Studios has released The Guy Game for XBox and PS2. It's basically Girls Gone Wild meets You Don't Know Jack, a quiz game in which spring break girls expose themselves. But pay attention Guys ... during the Bonus question, you must play as a team to boost the Flash-O-Meter to See More Skin! Uhm, yeah. I guess it was bound to happen. You can also read the IGN and Gamespot reviews, which are disturbingly positive. ...

Bureaucracy Games
September 1, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Yesterday I spent three hours at the Georgia DMV getting my new drivers license. Three hours. That's one hour waiting in line outside the office, one hour waiting for my number to be called, and a third hour waiting for my license. Gimme that old time bureaucracy. I saw a lot of people turned away at the first desk inside (after having waited in line for an hour) because they didn't have the proper documentation. This got me thinking: is it possible that a game could more effectively communicate the rules and process of local political administration than a set ...

Beer, nudity, and wet towels
August 25, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Must be good, right? Swedish spirits company Åbro has made a great little game based on the age-old wet towel in the locker room game (it must be "age-old" right? The ancient Olympics were all nude after all). The company has an ongoing soccer (football for the rest of the world) sponsorship, and they put together this game to continue the sponsorship and promotion after the season ended. Great stuff. (thanks to Dave for this one) ...

Drunkenness and Bush-Bashing
August 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

In this age of strained international relations, there's at least two things Americans and Europeans can agree on: drunkenness and George W. Bush both make hilarious subjects for videogames. From Severin Gehring comes Home Run 2004. The concept is simple: you are a drunk partygoer at Wagenschenke trying to make your way home from the bar, totally sh*t-faced (note: in German). Severin has also created several political games, including George W. Bush National MIssile Defense, the cathartic Mr. President's Drag-n-drop-catch and George W. Bush Throw-At, and Bush Invaders. The last one is especially interesting in light of the GOP's game ...

Religion and Games
July 25, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Two notes on this topic. First, a reminder that next week, from 29 July - 1 August, is the Christian Game Developer's Conference in Portland Oregon. It's not too late to register, and the cost is a very reasonable US$40. Second, Gamer Dad has a great article up about representations of religion in games. The article is an extended version of a 2002 Computer Games Magazine article, but it's worth a read, featuring thoughts from Richard Garriott, Sid Meier, Will Wright, Peter Molyneaux, Phil Steinmeyer, and Jane Jensen. ...

Classic Gaming meets Modern Art
July 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

And now for something completely different. Arts collective Prize Budget for Boys offers Pac-Mondrian. Here's the group's statement: Pac-Mondrian closes the perceptual distance between fine art and video games by combining Piet Mondrian's Modernist masterpiece 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' with Toru Iwatani's classic video game Pac-Man. The project offers gamers a chance to compete for $2000 worth of cash prizes for high score and level design. The work includes the online game and level editor, a single-issue Pac-Mondrian arcade cabinet, and a series of silk-screen on canvas prints of game screens. One winner each in the high-score competition and level design ...

No gay marriage in The Sims 2?
July 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

WCG friend and cool cat journalist Clive Thompson wrote an article for Slate a while ago about gay marriage in videogames. Now he's noticed that the Maxis FAQ on the game no longer talks about gay marriage. Sez Clive, I wonder if Maxis has changed its mind on this -- or whether it's still in there, but the company is just trying to downplay it a bit? It could also be a simple editorial mistake... Anybody know? ...

Queer Power, the transgender videogame
June 9, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

New from Molleindustria: Queer Power, a transgender videogame. "They fornicate following their highly changeable desires." ...

Create your own cereal box ideology
May 23, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ok, it's not really a game, and it's a bit metatextual for this forum, but I'll bite anyway. 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 ...

Separation of Church and [Virtual] State
May 16, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

As previously discussed here on WCG, Ship of Fools is launching an online Church, called Church of Fools. The New York Times published an article today (free registration required) about the virtual church. Dan Hunter asks an interesting question over at Terra Nova: My question is why they go to the trouble of building this from scratch, instead of renting a server from Second Life and building a whole island retreat, or just building a church in [The Sims Online]? The comments so far on TN suggest that such projects are subjected to massive in-world regulatory and user abuse. But ...

Homestar Runner for Atari 2600
May 7, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you who enjoy social criticism the Homestar Runner way, Paul Slocum has announced that the first official Homestar Runner video game will be available in June... only for the Atari 2600. The game was designed by Slocum and Homestar Runner creators Matt and Mike Chapman. According to the site, you can play as Homestar, Homsar, or Strongsad. Strongbad is the enemy. I have no idea if the game will carry the deft (and daft) social humor of the animations, but I sure hope so. You can get your copy from homestarrunner.com for a cool $40 when it's ...

Getting Off in Virtual Worlds
May 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ah, irony. Just as TL Taylor launched a discussion on Terra Nova about women players' ability to birth in-game offspring in the forthcoming Wild West SIM MMOG, I got an email about the new Massively Multiuser Online Adult Environment, The Red Light World (warning: nudity). If you're over 18 and want to be a beta tester, they're looking for new, uhm, members. ...

Scale and Ideology in Political Games
May 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Nathan Combs writes the latest chapter in the book on politics in virtual worlds over a Terra Nova. Says Nate, ... could the next step for an MMORPG be a "simulation meets political role-playing?" Analogous to a Live Action Role Playing (LARP)? The problem is that its hard to get the right outcomes to emerge from the players. ... it is perhaps in the laboratories of MMORPGs that political awareness and activism become keenly sharpened? And furthermore it is there where they take on an edgy and raw quality. In this scenario, scale is a major issue. Not just the ...

Wired on Political Games
April 22, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Wired News ran a nice article today on Playing Games with a Conscience, featuring quotes from myself, Gonzalo, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, our friend from the field and Grand Text Auto. The article features Gonzalo's September 12 as well as Educational Simulations' Real Life 2004, which we discussed recently here on WCG among other games. Over at Ludology, Gonzalo lamented the fact that there's not time to make more games... this may be a good time to tease a new political game we'll be working on for the current US presidential election cycle, commissioned by a major US political group. Check ...

Games go to Church
April 20, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Ship of Fools, a hip Christian online magazine ("the magazine of Christian unrest") will launch Church of Fools on May 11th, 2004. It is going to be a 3 month online game project. They have a project description and some pics. The projects builds up on The Ark, a Big-Brother game they launched last year where you had to vote-out Bible heroes and villains. I am not very sure what the game component of Church of Fools will be (their description sounds more like a 3D chat room), but I am looking forward to check it out when they launch. ...

Real Life 2004
April 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Educational Simulations has released Real Life 2004, "the life simulation that gives you the opportunity to learn how people really live in other countries." From the USA Today review: This software creates a powerful learning opportunity for teens to experience other cultures. By allowing them to live another's life, the software makes learning personal. While photos and graphics would make this simulation more intriguing, it is nonetheless fascinating to play. ...

Gay video game characters
March 18, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The second issue of Armchair Arcade is out, including an article on Gay Video Game Characters by Matt Barton. ...

The continued plight of mobile games
February 16, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Today, an announcement from Nokia and VU Games about their new N-Gage title, Crash Nitro Cart: The Crash Nitro Kart on the N-Gage game deck ushers in one of the most advanced 3D Kart racing worlds ever developed for a portable gaming device, delivering connected, over the air features through N-Gage Arena, Nokia said. This is a great example of how badly we are ignoring the opportunities for mobile games as something other than the same old games rehashed and resold. Nokia's continued oblivion at the potential uses of mobile devices is no longer comical, its just sad. I guess ...

Women Dominate Online Games?
February 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A recent AOL Study claims that women over 40 are more likely to play online games than any other demographic. Even though men spend more time on the Internet each week than women (23.2 vs. 21.6 hours), female game-players over 40 spend the most hours per week playing online games (9.1 hours or 41 percent of their online time vs. 6.1 hours - 26 percent of their online time - for men). These women were also more likely to play online games every day than men or teens of either gender. The question, of course, is what does this mean? ...

IM Virus Osama Game
February 11, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A strange group called BuddyLinks has an Osama game (WARNING: if you click, do not play the game! read on!). The REALLY fascinating thing about the game is that it spreads itself through a virus that sends AIM instant messages to everyone on your buddy list when you play the game. This is why you shouldn't install it. Here's what the IM looks like: check this out... http://www.wgutv.com/osama_capture.php?5P5m It comes from the screenname of the friend who played it, so it's very credible. I haven't played it (thanks to the Mac for saving me from the world's viruses), but here's ...

Exercise Games
January 31, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Dance Dance Revolution, the Sony EyeToy, and the new ToySight all use physical movement as an input source. Some of these games require create a quite strenuous, aerobic experience, especially as the player gets better at the game. We've been dancing around this question for a while, but reports have started to appear about players using these games specifically for exercise. GetUpMove.com reports that 21 year old Tanya Jessen lost 95 pounds playing DDR. Ben Sawyer points out that the site is actually sponsored by Red Octane, who makes DDR dance pads. Sez Ben, The interesting thing is this site ...

More Grocery Game and me in the NY Times
December 21, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I was interviewed for a short NY Times article on the Grocery Game. It's a nice little article and good to see this interesting game getting press. I also learned that the people who made the game are redesigning it to be more game-like, which is interesting. I'm trying to find out more about that, so I'll post more info if I do. ...

Game against music piracy
December 3, 2003 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Kids: stealing music is wrong. That's the message that a PC game reported by Mercury News seems to be conveying. The article claims that the game was not developed by the RIAA but from a small Cambridge, MA startup. It is not clear if the game is already available in stores and I could not find any reference to it on the editor's website (Music Games International). ...

I laughed, I cried ... I fired 500 rounds?
November 12, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Andrew stern reopens the continued discussion on the absence of human emotion in games. There's a lot to be said on this topic, but I'm only going to make a few comments right now. First, I think it's a dream to think that there will be some renaissance, some incredible simultaneous tear through which truly emotionally impactful games will flow forth like rain over scorched earth. Rather, this will be a slow, deliberate process of incremental change. Andrew hints that a still forthcoming independent game movement might take big risks to tackle the challenge, but I think the risks will ...

The future of women gamers
November 9, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

A new, longish article on Game Girl Advance talks about the future of women gamers. It focuses specifically on the future of women console gamers, and I'd like to submit that this is the primary flaw of the article. Put more simply, I'm suspicious that the future of women gamers is bound to the future of console gaming. That's not to say that the future of women gamers is wholly unrelated to the future of the console market (for example, several of the comments attached to the GGA article point out that the XBox in its current form factor may ...

September 12th reaches 100.000 players
October 26, 2003 - by Gonzalo Frasca

100 thousand persons have played Newsgaming.com's September 12th during the last few weeks. When I launched this journalistic/political game I knew I was taking quite a risk with its design/scope, but I am thrilled at seeing how well it is performing. So far, reviews have ranged from “an interesting experiment in political speech” (Henry Jenkins, MIT Technology Review) to “an inane piece of offensive crap” (Greg Kostikyan). This is my first post on the subject after the game launched; I have tried not to get into the discussion in order to not interfere with the game’s ideas. Nevertheless, I will ...

The Grocery Game
October 25, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I recently found out about The Grocery Game on a parenting/education message board. The website gives subscribers access to a special grocery list, sorted by store and US location. The list is designed to maximize savings through strategic use of coupons and stockpiling. It's admittedly not an electronic game in the traditional sense. But I found it interesting that she chose to call it a game -- there is certainly an underlying goal (save as much money as possible), as well as a simple ruleset (stockpile rules + coupon rules - "I use coupons like trading stock!") that yields an ...

Rock, Paper, Scissors as a decision-making tool
October 24, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Heard on NPR today, a report on the 2002 Rock Paper Scissors Championship. The Managing Director of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society, Douglas Walker, praised the social benefits of the game: When you really get down to it, the primary purpose of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society is both the promotion and standardization of Rock Paper Scissors as a decision-making tool. So, for all of those daily decisions of life - who's got to take the dog for a walk on a rainy day, take out the garbage - things that can often end up in, you know, ...

Health Games Discussion List
October 22, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Ben Sawyer from Digital Mill and the Serious Games Project announces a new listserv on Games for Health. Here's what Ben sez: This new listserv will allow a unique community of game developers, researchers, policymakers and healthcare professionals to explore how to work together to utilize games and game technology to improve the state and quality of healthcare in the world today. ...