Ian Bogost, Oil wellan associate professor at the George Institute of Technology, has released a new “serious game” entitled Oil God. I have to say, I have never had much interest in what some people like to call “serious games” and my lord does this game ever do a good job of reinforcing that lack of interest.

Go ahead and click on the Oil God link above. Play the game. I discovered that I didn’t know what the goal of the game was, didn’t know how to tell if I was achieving that goal, and had no idea what the moves I was making did. If total confusion was the point of the game, consider it a masterpiece. A friend tried it out as well and had the same experience except that he somehow ‘won,’ much to his bewilderment. Oh, and for the privilege of this experience, you have to sit through a commercial before playing it.

You know what a serious game is to me? World of Warcraft. 7 million players and hundreds of jobs. That’s serious. Another serious game? Go. Very deep. Very serious. Fun, as well, which I don’t think is asking too much from a game.

Anyway, if you play Oil God and stick with it long enough to discover that there’s actually a decent game there, let me know.