But there was one thing that always brought us together: Difficult video games.

In the 70s and 80s, the heyday of gaming's explosive appearance in homes and arcades, playing a video game with your brother usually meant taking turns. Or, if you were the younger, less-skilled brother, it meant asking for help, learning from your older sibling.

It was, at least for us, one of the few ways we could bond openly.

Nintendo's latest innovation in gaming, the Super Guide, could throw all of that out the window by enabling the game console to take over the role of big brother, big sister, father, mother, role-model and play the game for you, virtually holding your hand when things get tough.

The Super Guide will make its first appearance in November when Nintendo releases New Super Mario Bros. Wii for their console. In the familiar game, players run and jump through the Mushroom Kingdom, avoiding pitfalls and cartoon enemies on their quest for the perpetually displaced Princess Peach.

One of the twists (the game also introduces the ability for four people to play the game at the same time) is that if you get stuck, failing at a level eight times, the game will offer to play through the level for you via the Super Guide.

If you accept the offer, the single-player-controlled Mario is replaced with a Wii-controlled Luigi who then plays through the level on his own. The play-through will actually be a recording of a developer's imperfect, survivable play-through of the game. At any time the player can take control back from the guide, but once they do they can't relinquish control again without starting over.

Ian Bogost, associate professor at Georgia Tech and author of several books on games, most recently Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System, likens the Super Guide to the video game equivalent of fast forwarding a movie or skimming a book.

"Games are long, too long perhaps," he said. "Designers have combatted this problem partly through shorter games, like casual games and minigames, particularly on the Wii. But such games also can't carry the sort of longform spatial or narrative experience that we're used to from games like Super Mario Bros."

The problem, though, is that it undercuts one of the things that makes video games unique as a medium: How interactive they are.

"It certainly makes a game more passive. It does violence to the experience. It strips out the challenge and accomplishment that characterizes some games," Bogost said.

This first implementation of the Super Guide seems stripped of some of the potential found in the original patent filed for the system back in January. The patent also talks about the ability for gamers to save and share their own play-throughs of the game, making the hand-holding a bit more communal. It also allowed a gamer to bring up on-screen hints and skip to specific scenes of a game to play.

Developer Kellee Santiago, co-founder and president of ThatGameCompany, calls the concept an interesting potential solution to a problem that continues to plague the industry: How do you make a game that satisfies the increasingly separate groups of hardcore and casual gamers?

"There have been some rumblings from the hard-core community that games have gotten a little too easy as they've attempted to gain a larger audience," Santiago said. "It makes me think of watching a horror film and closing your ears and eyes during the really scary parts. Personally, I don't know why people would do this - I watch horror films because I like getting scared. If I didn't like it, I'd probably just not go see horror films. But there are people that still want the experience of sharing the experience of watching a scary movie with friends, and so they 'cheat' by tuning out the really terrifying parts. It's possible there's a gaming audience who will also enjoy playing hard games, and just skipping over the actual interaction of the really tricky sections.

"My concern as a developer is that this could lead to some lazy game design. Instead of addressing what could be some serious design flaws, they could rely on this system to simply show the player what to do."

Bogost raises the same concerns. And, he says, the Super Guide could be considered the byproduct of what philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer termed the culture industry, essentially popular culture mass produced to pacify, not enlighten or intellectually stimulate, the masses.

"I do believe that dynamic difficulty adjustment in general undermines the art's ability to produce unfamiliar and disturbing experiences in favor of giving the player just what he wants when he wants it... It's a computationally automatic version of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the culture industry."

And would beating a game with something, not someone, playing for you, be as fun?

At least when I handed the controller over to my big brother I got something more then a false sense of accomplishment out of it. And I'm not sure how much I want to bond with my Wii.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Bogost, who started the blog with Georgia Tech colleague Gonzalo Frasca, attributes the closure to two things. One is the mainstreaming of the discussions Water Cooler Games sought to start back in 2003, when games' relevance to politics, advertising, education and the news were not common topics in the overall conversation.

"The very idea of our project was novel then, in a way that it is not now. Isn't that what we wanted all along?" Bogost wrote.

And two, it sounds like the man's made his arguments, and is resting his case. And himself. He says that closing WCG will open up new opportunities for his writing.

"While I'm sure I'll continue to write occasionally, on Bogost.com, in my Gamasutra columns, or in other articles about political games, advertising and games, and other topics covered on WCG, the truth is that I've said most of what I want to say about them, generally speaking," Bogost says.

The blog will remain online and archived, but no new contributions will be made to it.

"From my perspective, the Water Cooler Games project was very much a success. The fact that so many venues now exist for discussing of what we coyly called 'video games with an agenda' speaks at least in part to the influence we exerted," he says.

Well put. Water Cooler Games had a long and rich life and contributed tremendously to video gaming's many communities. And this isn't the last anyone will hear from Bogost, for certain.

When Blogs Close [Ian Bogost, via GamePolitics]

There's the time I split my knee racing friends while wearing flip-flops. The stitches in my head earned during a vigorous match of tag. The countless skinned elbows, bumps and bruises of a youth spent on skateboard and bike.

Those were just the hallmarks of growing up outside. Each wound, each scar a tiny reminder of time spent running, laughing, playing.

But the summers of today's youth seem far removed from those times. Over the decades the evolution of play has drawn children closer and closer to home, from side streets to backyards to, finally, dens and video games. As parents become more cautious and children more agoraphobic, is something getting lost?

In Roger Caillois' famed book on play and games, Man, Play and Games, he divides play into four categories: Competition, chance, role-play and the physical effects of vertigo.

That last one is the feeling of riding a roller coaster, of running with abandon, of losing control. And that's the only form of play that video games can't tap into points out Ian Bogost, video game designer, critic and researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology.

"The sense of vertigo is missing," he says, "of being very active, physically spastic in some way. I don't see how we could argue that video games provide that."

While some games include a physical aspect, like what is found with Nintendo's Wii and in-development projects for both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, they still require very controlled motion and physicality. For a game to truly tap into that fourth element, vertigo, there has to be a sense of abandon, of danger.

"Outdoor play has to be almost destructive in some ways, you have to be at risk at some time, of breaking something, of falling," Bogost says. "You don't really have that in games, simulating it isn't sufficient."

But don't blame video games. Video games are just the byproduct of a society and encroaching suburban lifestyle that buys into the culture of fear, Bogost says.

"It used to be that before suburban life, in the early 20th century, people would play in the streets, not just backyards or parks," he said. "But then you had to move the kid with the stick and the ball to the park.

"Now we're taking the backyard and moving it into the den and the television screen."

These relocated children still find ways to tap into three of those elements. They make up their own rules, games within video games. They play Rock Band or Guitar Hero with friends. But by limiting play to the relatively safe confines of home, children might be missing out on a chance to find and explore the raw edges of life.

"Something about play should be disruptive and antagonistic, not toward each other, but toward the environment. It should be about children finding the edges of their world, " Bogost said. "When we were children our neighborhood kind of became this kingdom."

Now a child's kingdom is often a haven of air-conditioned safety, of entirely explored space and little opportunity.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe today's children don't live in the same type of world that we did, don't need to run the risk of injury or testing oneself. Maybe they should prepare for a life indoors, online, physically void of risk. Maybe that's what we've all become.

If you find that hard to accept as a desirable beacon of progress, then do something about it.

But don't just send your children outside, go outside with them, even at the risk of a skinned knee.

Play games with them, even if they're ones that mimic their childhood pastimes.

Have fun.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

The feature, Dramatic Play, analyzes the intersection of interactive media, drama and games as well as the classic tenants of play and storytelling that make or break a video game. Dinehart says that Aristotle's original notion of dramatic play — that's interactive drama where you experience a story instead of just hearing about it — has bled into games like World of Warcraft, Dead Space and his own Company of Heroes.

These games seek to immerse the player in a dramatic role play, whereby they assume the role of character in a different time and place, and whose actions and presence having meaning in the world as designed.

Dramatic play is the new niche these games expound upon, a paradigm that is the focus of interactive narrative design, a craft that meets at the apex of ludology and narratology and conjoins the theories into functional video game development methodologies.

Heavy stuff, but very interesting — the kind of thing that would make an awesome dissertation topic in a Rhetoric Department at some research university. I mean if we're all on the same page that games are interesting and important and worthy of respect, we have got to get more academics on the case. That, or clone people like Ian Bogost.

Dramatic Play [Gamasutra]

Six Days In Fallujah, which was announced and then abandoned by its publisher last month, was a game both hyped by its developer for its potential to be a game-documentary and scrutinized by game critics who questioned some of its Gears of War influences. To the public it became a flashpoint, a warning of video games perhaps going too far.

Is a game like Six Days in Fallujah even necessary? Coming out in favor, obviously, is Fallujah developer Atomic Games' President Peter Tamte. "Our point is that videogames are interactive, and they're the medium of choice for an entire generation," he told Kotaku this week. "Therefore, we should use this medium to deal with relevant issues while they're still relevant."

What obstacles are keeping the industry from tackling the sensitive subject of real-world warfare? And what divides the experts?

The Question of Fun

"It's not a great start that the Creative Director at Atomic Games is on the one hand talking about trying to "present the horrors of war" and on the other hand make 'entertainment'". - Dan Rosenthal, Iraqi War Veteran

When approaching a game that realistically depicts a modern combat situation, one criticism that often arises is the subject of fun. Can a realistic military shooter be fun? According to Ian Bogost, that's the wrong question to ask. "We use the word fun as a placeholder, when we don't even really know what we mean when we look for some sort of enjoyment in a serious experience," he said. Fun and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to entertainment based on real-world military conflicts.

As Bogost explains, fun isn't the key word in this situation. "It may not be possible to make a realistic war game that is fun - war is not fun - but it is possible to create an experience that is informative, appealing, and startling in a positive way."

Bogost cites the example of Blackhawk Down, the film adaptation of Mark Bowden's novel about military forces attempting to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid during the Battle of Mogadishu. It isn't the sort of movie you walk away from feeling good or happy, but it was a positively engaging experience for many film-goers. It wasn't fun, but it was fulfilling and by extension, entertaining.

Handling Sensitive Material

Retired U.S. Army Colonel John Antal is an author and a game developer, but he also spent 30 years of his life serving in the U.S. Army. From his unique perspective as a game industry insider who has led Soldiers from the level of a platoon to a regiment, Antal has his doubts that the industry could handle such a sensitive subject with the reverence it requires.

"There is a vital and very important role for video games and interactive entertainment in recording historic events," Antal admits, "But when you are talking about headlines - real situations involving real people - you really have to treat the subject with great reverence or it will fail. There are few interactive entertainment companies that even come close to being able to handle that properly."

The current war is perhaps more sensitive and politicized that any previous conflict. Every day, critical information of tactical importance is being transmitted. Horrifying images of soldiers wounded and killed in action began to circulate within days of the conflict starting. Antal compares this to World War II, where the first images of a dead U.S. soldier didn't appear until very late in the war. Just because we have easier access to information than ever before doesn't necessarily mean we should use it.

As for Atomic Games admittedly working with Iraqi insurgents on the development of Six Days in Fallujah? The former Army colonel was quite clear on his opinion of that matter.

"If you're working with the enemy, that's called treason. The jihadist killing our people today would love to get a larger audience to perpetrate their hate. If you think that reporters and filmmakers and interactive entertainment developers are not part of this world and their actions have no consequences, then you're wrong. There will be no virtual world in a real world run by the Taliban."

The Problem of Public Perception

If the distinction between fun and entertainment confuses the games industry, one can only imagine what it does to the general public, a large portion of which still see video games as light entertainment. Take the reaction of former Colonel Tim Collins, a decorated Iraqi war veteran who spoke up during the early days following the announcement of Six Days in Fallujah:

"It's much too soon to start making video games about a war that's still going on, and an extremely flippant response to one of the most important events in modern history. It's particularly insensitive given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of this game."

In a time where movies, documentaries, and books pertaining to the war have already been release, often to critical acclaim, the news of a video game covering those same subjects is referred to as "flippant" and "insensitive".

According to Bogost, reactions like this are part of an ongoing media literacy problem. People are just not willing to accept the fact that video games, like any other entertainment medium, are capable of handling a serious subject with the respect it deserves. Based off of media coverage of a game which only tangible assets were a handful of screenshots and a short video clip, a large portion of society was ready to dismiss Six Days in Fallujah.

Conflicting statements between publisher Konami and developer Atomic Games certainly didn't help the matter. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Atomic President Peter Tamte is quoted saying, "For us, games are not just toys", while in the same article Konami states that "At the end of the day, it's just a game."

"We have to insist that there's not a subject that's off limits and there aren't things that we can't do," Bogost said. "We can do it more or less effectively, but there is no sensibility that we have to account for."

Some might say that's dangerous thinking, including John Antal. "Every author, every filmmaker, every interactive entertainment developer creating a product is responsible for what it does and its after effects. Aristotle wouldn't agree with that."

Extreme statements aside, Bogost has hopes that the situation is slowly changing, citing a most unexpected catalyst - Nintendo's Wii Fit. Not only does the peripheral attract a whole new audience to the gaming market, it also affects them on a deeply personal level. The key to changing public perception lies in letting people know that games can be about much more than simply sitting on the couch, shooting at aliens. As silly as it may seem to "hardcore" gamers, Wii Fit does just that. It's ironic to think that Nintendo's focus on a wider audience

The Final Fate of Six Days In Fallujah

As for Six Days in Fallujah, developer Atomic Games remains quiet on the subject of finding a new publishers, instructing those interested to "stay tuned" for further developments. While some remain firmly opposed to the project, others believe it's a game that needs to see to see release, as Ian Bogost puts it, "if only to be another example of how to do things well or poorly."

It's no secret that print journalism is a rotting corpse; legitimate new sources are packing up and heading for the web left and right. With new levels of interactivity come new possibilities for the way we create and consume journalism. This article says online gaming is where it's at.

"BlackBerrys, iPods and Kindles are not enough anymore. Let's add a joystick to the expanding repertoire of tools available to news consumers.

Gaming is often overlooked as a tool for disseminating news. Online games are attempting to explain the economy through the politics of oil, educate users on disaster readiness in the context of Hurricane Katrina and, perhaps more in line with traditional video games, some are exploring the various military operations implemented in the Iraq war. In a strange likeness to fantasy sports, one game allowed people to draft their own cabinet picks for Obama's then-new administration."

The article goes on to conclude:

"In order to interest readers and keep them interested, news organizations should come up with ways to incorporate news in video game format without extricating the two."

"It's much more complex than that," Georgia Tech Professor Ian Bogost – whose Journalism and Games Project is sourced several times in the article – said. "The correct question [the article should be asking] is: ‘How can the institution of journalism benefit from video games, and vice versa.' This article is a great example of what's wrong with journalism in general. It assumes simple fixes: take news, add games, stir – profit."

From his perspective, games as journalism is not about keeping readers entertained or replacing traditional reporting with a virtual representation that readers can play around with. It should be about applying journalistic values – accurate information that helps people make decisions about their lives – to video games.

So take a look at some of these examples that the article kicks around both as good and bad applications of games to journalism: Darfur is Dying, Ars Regendi and Class Matters. Ask yourself if "games" like these will take the place of articles like these.

If your answer is yes, then proceed to this line of questioning about fun and games. If your answer is no, keep an eye on Bogost at the next Games For Change conference; we'll see if he can suss out where the games and journalism connection really lies.

Games and Journalism: Now that journalism is in trouble, why not play with it? [Online Journalism Blog]

"Their first gripe was about what they claimed was offensive sexual content in the game, which amounted to a couple things that we had included based on these stories.

"There was this guy in Chicago a couple years ago, who had this penis pump that he was trying to take in a carry on. Someone asked him what it was, and they thought he said it was a bomb, or he was joking and he said it was a bomb. And there was this kind of international story about this whole thing because it was funny but also it really highlighted the kind of embarrassment of having a personal item exposed to the world. And so that was one that they were uncomfortable with.

"We had also included a woman’s underwire bra, because there’s just a whole mess of stories about the underwire in women’s brassieres setting off certain metal detectors when their sensitivity is raised. And this has led to actually quite a large number of complaints about, you know, inappropriate groping by agents. So these are two items that Apple found offensive I guess."

I wonder if Bogost lectures on the topic at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Now that's a class I'd love to take.

The Making of an iPhone Game & Things That Make Apple Uncomfortable

Politics, if we take the word seriously, refers to the actual executive and legislative effort that our elected officials partake in to alter and update the rules of our society. In an ideal representative democracy, the one leads to the other, but in contemporary society the two are orthogonal.

Ironically, this is exactly where video games would find their most natural connection to political speech.

When we make video games, we construct simulated worlds in which different rules apply.

To play games involves taking on roles in those worlds, making decisions within the constraints they impose, and then forming judgments about living in them.

Video games can synthesize the raw materials of civic life and help us pose the fundamental political question, What should be the rules by which we live?

It's a nice roundup of the spectrum of election- and politics-related games, and Bogost has some interesting thoughts on where the 'serious games' industry could perhaps head next.

Persuasive Games: The Birth and Death of the Election Game [Gamasutra]

Much of the rhetoric surrounding these game creation and distribution sites relies on accessibility: they are supposed to make game development easy. But the truth is, simplified creation tools don't necessarily make creativity easier or harder, they just impose different constraints.

Honorarium [Sims Carnival via Ian Bogost]

When we acknowledge videogames as a medium, the notion of a monolithic games industry, which creates a few kinds of games for a few kinds of players, stops making any sense. As does the idea of a demographic category called “gamers” who are the ones who play these games.

The point is not whether games qualify as art or not. Nor whether games are useful tools or not. Rather, the point is that there are lots of other things people can and do accomplish with videogames. Some are well-established, like entertainment, and some are emerging, like meditation. No matter, all of those uses taken together make the medium stronger and give it greater longevity.

I'd quibble with some of his assertions on books (We don't distinguish between 'serious' and 'entertaining' books? C'mon Ian, you can't possibly believe that — and if you do, I've got a couple of bookshelves I'd like you to see), but it's an interesting essay on the wide and varied uses of games — and what that may mean for the industry.

The End of Gamers [Edge Online via Water Cooler Games]

SoftWhere 2008 videos [Grand Text Auto]

When you take or teach courses called, for example, Game Studies 101; when you hold a degree in "new media studies" (wink, wink); when you publish your research in a journal called Game Studies; or when you actually are a professor of game studies, you end up feeling like you know what games do - and what they should do.

That wouldn't be so bad - it's business-as-usual for academics, in fact - if game studies didn't harbor what amounts to a desperate need to lay claim to ownership of game design as well as theory. It turns out that they don't just want to write articles and grant Ph.D.'s - they want to design our games, too.

Well, Ian Bogost — one of those people Travis is referring to — fired back

A considerable portion of my first book and my other writings object to the very idea that game studies stands alone. You cite a three-year-old prolegomenon by Aarseth, one meant as a provocation (something he's known for), and decide to attribute it to all game scholars. You make a "plea to gamers to turn the tables on Aarseth and other doyens of game studies" (myself included). Many (most?) of us already have done work to turn those very tables. Do you actually read any game studies scholarship?

Oh, snap. I consider myself lucky to be in a field that doesn't really suffer from a 'real world' vs. 'academic' split — we have enough drama amongst ourselves. The debate continues in the comment sections of both pieces, and is worth paging through if you have the time.

Quibus Lusoribus Bono? Who is Game Studies Good For? [Escapist] & A Response to Roger Travis [Ian Bogost] [both via GrandTextAuto]

... the potential is great. We craft every aspect of videogame worlds in excruciating detail: the marbled, diffracted surfaces of water, the filthy grit of alleyways, the splintered grain of bombed-out church rafters.

We render the visual and aural aspects of these worlds in startling vividness and at great expense. But those worlds remain imprisoned behind the glass of our televisions and our monitors. Rez shows us that as far as texture is concerned, games can be as much like food as they are like film.

He's clearly not advocating that all games can — or should — be Rez, but it's just another aspect we should be paying attention to. And, unlike a lot of ideas that get floated about improving the gamer-game interaction, ramping up the tactile factor when warranted seems easy enough to do.

Persuasive Games: Texture [Gamasutra]

This untapped potential of games upsets the very foundation of advertising as we know it. Instead of surrounding us with images that reflect lives unlived, games can allow us to try out hypothetical lives with new products, people and ideas. To realise this potential, advertisers of both goods and viewpoints must stop blindly inserting their billboards into games or creating feeble copies of the cornerstones of videogame pop culture. Instead, they must start simulating the products, public policy positions, charitable interventions and other worldly ideas in new games - games worthy of our attention.

I'm not sure I want to see advergames all over the place, but if we have to put up with in-game advertising, a little more sophistication would be welcomed.

Advertisers have yet to unlock the power of play [The Guardian]

... The observation that surprised me the most was how people totally unfamiliar with Spore reacted to the very idea of a creature editor. From my perspective, it's a brilliantly engineered, elegantly constructed content authoring tool. But from theirs, it's an unfamiliar interface to an almost deviant act.

... Among the newbies, there was a significant amount of uncertainty and performance anxiety. People weren't sure they would be able to build something, even with encouragement and example. One even said, over my shoulder, "I'm not sure I'm creative in that way." I found this reaction fascinating.

Is Spore 'For Everyone'? [GameSetWatch]

Eric Marcoullier and I were tonight embroiled in a riveting, yet wistful conversation about 70s/80s pop duo Hall and Oates. After reviewing classics such as this music video for the #1 hit title track of the 1981 album Private Eyes, it occurred to me:

Daryl Hall and John Oates look exactly like Kotaku editors Brian Ashcraft and Brian Crecente. See above, if you can imagine one pair smiling, or not smiling. Coincidence? Probably, but that's not enough of a reason for the two to form a cover band. Where's Rock & Soul Hero when you need it? I suppose it would have to include a peripheral moustache and hair extensions.

... I can see it. A little. I'm just amazed this came to Ian in a flash, since I'm not sure I would've made the nostalgic connection between our fearless leader, the second in command and 70s/80s pop icons. "You think Ashcraft has one of those grey leopard-y shirts?" he asked me. I'm not sure, but I'm sure we could rustle up one somewhere.

PRIVATE EYES / THEY'RE BLOGGING YOU ... blogging you blogging you blogging you [Ian Bogost]

First up was Wendy Goldner who spoke about her game, Wild Divine's Healing Rhythms which was created to help with stress management. Through the use of some little leads, the player's heart rate and breathing are monitored and become used in the "gameplay." Its execution was a little hippy-dippy for my taste, something along the lines of scented candles in the bathroom and sage smudges. Various self help gurus such as Deepak Chopra appear and talk the player through various relaxation exercises like breathing in time to the pulsating graphic of a tree. Once the proper breath rate was achieved, things would happen with the graphics like magical bridges, rainbows and butterflies appearing. I'm sure it's a very helpful program for some and certainly a great concept, but not quite my cup of tea.

Persuasive Games' Ian Bogost was also on hand showing off a great little old-school style game to relax with, Guru Meditation. Using an old Amiga JoyPad hooked up to an Atari 2600, the player basically sits on the JoyBoard and doesn't move, causing an on-screen 8-bit counterpart to float above his little pixelated yoga mat. You essentially play by not playing. If this sounds familiar to you it's because it's the same basic concept as the Wii Fit Balance Board and its meditation program.

"I'd say Nintendo stole it from me if I hadn't already stolen it from Amiga," Bogost joked.

Finally, USC's Tracy Fullerton took the mic and spoke a bit about one of the games developed at USC's Experimental Game Lab, The Night Journey. I had heard Fullerton talk about this game before at last year's Serious Games Summit in Atlanta. Based on and using the works of Video Artist Bill Viola, The Night Journey isn't a game about reaching a certain destination, but more about the journey. A virtual "journey of enlightenment" that takes players through dreamy landscapes and promotes pausing and reflecting on one's surroundings. Stopping and reflecting at any given area will cause landscape to morph and change.

It was interesting to see the three very different takes on the "relaxation in games" theme. Especially given that with the exception of the burgeoning casual games market, many games these days aren't designed with relaxation in mind. So just remember to always take some time to stop and smell the 8-bit roses.

Hush offers a glimpse, as it were, of how vignette might be used successfully in games. As an exploration of the potential of the style, the game is a success. And as a vignette of a situation in mid-90s civil war-torn Rwanda, the game is compelling, if perhaps simplistic and overly mawkish.

The anxiety of literal death contradicts the core mechanic's demand for calm, but in a surprising and satisfying way, like chili in chocolate. The increasingly harsh sound of a baby's cry that comes with failure attenuates the player's anxiety, further underscoring the tension at work in this grave scenario.

The game itself is very short, somewhat successful (Bogost wonders if the designers had ever rocked a child to sleep, since the actual game mechanic can be somewhat jerky and on the opposite end of the spectrum from the soothing activity of singing and rocking a child to sleep), but interesting — they are successful in conveying a sense of rising panic with the need to stay calm. The game is available for download in Windows and Mac formats.

Videogame Vignette [Gamasutra] & Hush [Jamie Antonisse]

By choosing your character's dietary and exercise habits, you can experiment with the constraints of nutrition and economics as they affect your character's general health. Will it be wheatgrass and soy? Or fried chicken at every meal? How much can you afford to spend on food, and how does that affect your general health? Characters who eat poorly will get fat. Characters who don't exercise will move around the world more laboriously. Disease and death will eventually ravage players with poor health, while those with good health will live to a ripe age.

Sounds ... weighty, on a number of levels. We'll see what public reception is like in a few days.

Prepare to Fatten [Water Cooler Games]

It's a fantastic question, I think, as Hollywood has no fear trotting out the cinematic goods that have a very brief window of appropriateness. Right now, three holiday films—Fred Claus, This Christmas and The Perfect Holiday—are currently showing in the US top ten box office, but there's not much beyond timed events, downloadable clothing and quests that are holiday specific in games these days. Holiday era re-issues on titles that underperformed or could appeal to the pre-order shy might be something the industry should think about.

We're just about up to our eyeballs in Christmas cards from developers, but what about demos for already released games with a candy cane or two thrown in? One might think that with all that downloadable content out there, whether free or pay-to-play, it might make financial sense to toss in an elf or Hannukah Harry.

Actually, I won't be surprised to see 2K or Midway ship a Wii minigame collection next November. Any games that you can think of that would benefit from a holiday re-skin?

Persuasive Games: The Holly and the Ivy [Gamasutra]