This volume is the first reader on video games and learning of its kind. Covering game design, game culture and games as twenty-first-century pedagogy, it demonstrates the depth and breadth of ...scholarship on games and learning to date. The chapters represent some of the most influential thinkers, designers and writers in the emerging field of games and learning - including James Paul Gee, Soren Johnson, Eric Klopfer, Colleen Macklin, Thomas Malaby, Bonnie Nardi, David Sirlin and others. Together, their work functions both as an excellent introduction to the field of games and learning and as a powerful argument for the use of games in formal and informal learning environments in a digital age.
Racing the Beam Montfort, Nick; Bogost, Ian
2009, 20090109, 2009-01-09
eBook
The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that "Atari" became the generic term for a video game console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the ...flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives. Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.
The Art of Videogamesexplores how philosophy of the arts theories developed to address traditional art works can also be applied to videogames. Presents a unique philosophical approach to the art of ...videogaming, situating videogames in the framework of analytic philosophy of the artsExplores how philosophical theories developed to address traditional art works can also be applied to videogamesWritten for a broad audience of both philosophers and videogame enthusiasts by a philosopher who is also an avid gamerDiscusses the relationship between games and earlier artistic and entertainment media, how videogames allow for interactive fiction, the role of game narrative, and the moral status of violent events depicted in videogame worldsArgues that videogames do indeed qualify as a new and exciting form of representational art
Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live provides a much-needed theoretical framework for examining deviant behavior and deviant bodies within one of the largest virtual gaming communities-Xbox Live. ...Previous research on video games has focused mostly on violence and examining violent behavior resulting from consuming this medium. This limited scope has skewed criminologists' understanding of video games and video game culture. Xbox Live has proven to be more than just a gaming platform for users. It has evolved into a multimedia entertainment outlet for more than 20 million users. This book examines the nature of social interactions within Xbox Live, which are often riddled with deviant behavior, including but not limited to racism and sexism. The text situates video games within a hegemonic framework deploying whiteness and masculinity as the norm. The experiences of the marginalized bodies are situated within the framework of deviance as they fail to conform to the hegemonic norm and become victims of racism, sexism, and other types of harassment.
Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework ...that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles. What can we learn from existing theories around agency? How do paratextual materials reflect design intention with regards to what the player can and cannot do in a videogame? How does game design shape the possibility space for player action? Through these questions and selected case studies that include AAA and independent games alike, the book presents a unique approach to studying agency that combines game design, game studies, and game developer discourse. By doing so, the book examines what discourses around player action, as well as a game’s design can reveal about the nature of agency and videogame aesthetics. This book will appeal to readers specifically interested in videogames, such as game studies scholars or game designers, but also to media studies students and media and screen studies scholars less familiar with digital games. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutting's Gun Fight depicted a classic showdown ...between gunfighters. Rich in Western folklore, the game seemed perfect for the American market; players easily adapted to the new technology, becoming pistol-wielding pixel cowboys. One of the first successful early arcade titles, Gun Fight helped introduce an entire nation to video-gaming and sold more than 8,000 units.
In Gamer Nation, John Wills examines how video games co-opt national landscapes, livelihoods, and legends. Arguing that video games toy with Americans' mass cultural and historical understanding, Wills show how games reprogram the American experience as a simulated reality. Blockbuster games such as Civilization, Call of Duty, and Red Dead Redemption repackage the past, refashioning history into novel and immersive digital states of America. Controversial titles such as Custer's Revenge and 08.46 recode past tragedies. Meanwhile, online worlds such as Second Life cater to a desire to inhabit alternate versions of America, while Paperboy and The Sims transform the mundane tasks of everyday suburbia into fun and addictive challenges.
Working with a range of popular and influential games, from Pong, Civilization, and The Oregon Trail to Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, and Fortnite, Wills critically explores these gamic depictions of America. Touching on organized crime, nuclear fallout, environmental degradation, and the War on Terror, Wills uncovers a world where players casually massacre Native Americans and Cold War soldiers alike, a world where neo-colonialism, naive patriotism, disassociated violence, and racial conflict abound, and a world where the boundaries of fantasy and reality are increasingly blurred. Ultimately, Gamer Nation reveals not only how video games are a key aspect of contemporary American culture, but also how games affect how people relate to America itself.
How to Play Video Games Payne, Matthew Thomas; Huntemann, Nina B
2019, 2019-03-26, Volume:
1
eBook
Forty original contributions on games and gaming culture
What does Pokémon Go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: ...Hollywood ? How does BioShock Infinite help us navigate world-building?
From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Unlike other media technologies, video games demand engagement like no other, which begs the question—what is the role that video games play in our lives, from our homes, to our phones, and on global culture writ large?
How to Play Video Games brings together forty original essays from today’s leading scholars on video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand Theft Auto V , or music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time . See how Age of Empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture. They are a must read for fans and students of the medium.
ABSTRACT
Aims To provide empirical data‐driven identification of a group of addicted online gamers.
Design Repeated cross‐sectional survey study, comprising a longitudinal cohort, conducted in 2008 ...and 2009.
Setting Secondary schools in the Netherlands.
Participants Two large samples of Dutch schoolchildren (aged 13–16 years).
Measurements Compulsive internet use scale, weekly hours of online gaming and psychosocial variables.
Findings This study confirms the existence of a small group of addicted online gamers (3%), representing about 1.5% of all children aged 13–16 years in the Netherlands. Although these gamers report addiction‐like problems, relationships with decreased psychosocial health were less evident.
Conclusions The identification of a small group of addicted online gamers supports efforts to develop and validate questionnaire scales aimed at measuring the phenomenon of online video game addiction. The findings contribute to the discussion on the inclusion of non‐substance addictions in the proposed unified concept of ‘Addiction and Related Disorders’ for the DSM‐V by providing indirect identification and validation of a group of suspected online video game addicts.
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