Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games "...is a site about video games with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment. Water Cooler Games explores the emerging field of games want to do more than simply being fun: they want to make a point, share knowledge, change opinions. This includes new genres such as advergaming, newsgaming, political games, simulations and edutainment."

Advergaming and edutainment. Kinda scary. Wanting to do more than simply being fun. Even scarier. I tried a "newsgame" by one of the two main contributors. The non-game, called "September 12" gives you an opportunity to launch rockets at terrorists. There's no score. You can't win. More often than not, by the time the rocket hits, the terrorists have left, and all you get are a few civilians and a building or two. After playing (I guess it's all right to call it "playing") a few minutes, I got bored trying to get the terrorists and discovered it was really more fun to see how many civilians I could hit. I guess you could call it a learning experience.

Methinks that those who are able to make a game that's really fun and truly informative are doing something worth watching, carefully.