Computer Games and Virtual Worlds

Computer Games and Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Ross A. Dannenberg
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781604427509
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This book explores and discusses how to obtain traditional intellectual property law rights in the non-traditional settings of video game and virtual world environments, and serves as a primer for researching these emerging legal issues. Each chapter addresses: end user license agreements; copyrights, patents, trademarks; and trade secrets, as addressed by U.S. law. It also covers international legal issues stemming from the multi-national user-base and foreign operation of many virtual worlds.

Computer Games and Virtual Worlds

Computer Games and Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Ross A. Dannenberg
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781604427509
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores and discusses how to obtain traditional intellectual property law rights in the non-traditional settings of video game and virtual world environments, and serves as a primer for researching these emerging legal issues. Each chapter addresses: end user license agreements; copyrights, patents, trademarks; and trade secrets, as addressed by U.S. law. It also covers international legal issues stemming from the multi-national user-base and foreign operation of many virtual worlds.

Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds

Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Clark Aldrich
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470438347
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds Strategies for Online Instruction Clark Aldrich Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds The infusion of games, simulations, and virtual worlds into online learning can be a transforming experience for both the instructor and the student. This practical guide, written by education game expert Clark Aldrich, shows faculty members and instructional designers how to identify opportunities for building games, simulations, and virtual environments into the curriculum; how to successfully incorporate these interactive environments to enhance student learning; and how to measure the learning outcomes. It also discusses how to build institutional support for using and financing more complex simulations. The book includes frameworks, tips, case studies and other real examples, and resources. Praise for Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds "Clark Aldrich provides powerful insights into the dynamic arena of games, simulations, and virtual worlds in a simultaneously entertaining and serious manner as only he can. If you are involved with educating anyone, from your own children to classrooms full of students, you need to devour this book." — Karl Kapp, assistant director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University "At a time when the technologies for e-learning are evolving faster than most people can follow, Aldrich successfully bridges the perceptual gap between virtual worlds, digital games, and educational simulations, and provides educators with all they really need to use this technology to enhance and enrich their e-learning experiences." — Katrin Becker, instructor, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Mount Royal College, and adjunct professor of education, University of Calgary "I consider this a must-read for anyone engaged in or contemplating using these tools in their classrooms or designing their own tools." — Rick Van Sant, professor of learning and technology, Ferris State University

Video Games and American Culture

Video Games and American Culture PDF Author: Aaron A. Toscano
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793601313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Digital media are immersive technologies reflecting behaviors, attitudes, and values. The engrossing, entertaining virtual worlds video games provide are important sites for 21st century research. This book moves beyond assertions that video games cause violence by analyzing the culture that produces such material. While some popular media reinforce the idea that video games lead to violence, this book uses a cultural studies lens to reveal a more complex situation. Video games do not lead to violence, sexism, and chauvinism. Rather, Toscano argues, a violent, sexist, chauvinistic culture reproduces texts that reflect these values. Although video games have a worldwide audience, this book focuses on American culture and how this multi-billion dollar industry entertains us in our leisure time (and sometimes at work), bringing us into virtual environments where we have fun learning, fighting, discovering, and acquiring bragging rights. When politicians and moral crusaders push agendas that claim video games cause a range of social ills from obesity to mass shooting, these perspectives fail to recognize that video games reproduce hegemonic American values. This book, in contrast, focuses on what these highly entertaining cultural products tell us about who we are.

Designing Virtual Worlds

Designing Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Richard A. Bartle
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 9780131018167
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
This text provides a comprehensive treatment of virtual world design from one of its pioneers. It covers everything from MUDs to MOOs to MMORPGs, from text-based to graphical VWs.

ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds

ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Jobe Makar
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 0321679466
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The demand for multiplayer games and virtual worlds has exploded over the last few years. Not only do companies want them for site stickiness through social networking, but developers have tremendous interest in exploring this niche area. While developing multiplayer content is challenging, it isn’t as difficult as you might think, and it is fun and highly rewarding! ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds explains fundamental multiplayer concepts from connecting to a server to real-time latency hiding techniques. In this book you’ll learn: How to connect users to achieve real-time interaction When to make decisions on the server versus the game client Time synchronization techniques How to use dead reckoning smoothing to hide network latency About tile-based games the isometric view Techniques for customizing and rendering avatars in a virtual world In addition, you’ll learn everything that goes into building: A real-time multiplayer tank battle game A real-time multilayer cooperative game A virtual world

Serious Games and Virtual Worlds in Education, Professional Development, and Healthcare

Serious Games and Virtual Worlds in Education, Professional Development, and Healthcare PDF Author: Klaus Bredl
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1466636742
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"This book explains how digital environments can easily become familiar and beneficial for educational and professional development, with the implementation of games into various aspects of our environment"--Provided by publisher.

Gaming the System

Gaming the System PDF Author: David J. Gunkel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253035732
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
1. This extremely multidisciplinary book engages descriptive and prescriptive methods of study to video games, drawing heavily on philosophical traditions. It will have appeal outside of Film & Media and Philosophy to other areas of scholarly research including Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science. 2.The author is a senior scholar with extensive publications that explore the intersection of philosophy and ethics with digital games and reality. He has a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter as well as a well-designed personal website. He has historically be very engaged with his own digital and social media marketing for books he authors and plans to do the same for this title. 3. The author works to debunk and reframe what readers think they know about video games and digital culture, showing that it is wrong (or at least misguided) and that the important questions are often far more interesting and potentially disturbing than anticipated.

Synthetic Worlds

Synthetic Worlds PDF Author: Edward Castronova
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226096319
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hours—and dollars—partaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs. In Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the everyday lives of the gamers—outlining what they do in their synthetic worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems, from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons. Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete? With more than ten million active players worldwide—and with Microsoft and Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game development—online games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects. “Illuminating. . . . Castronova’s analysis of the economics of fun is intriguing. Virtual-world economies are designed to make the resulting game interesting and enjoyable for their inhabitants. Many games follow a rags-to-riches storyline, for example. But how can all the players end up in the top 10%? Simple: the upwardly mobile human players need only be a subset of the world's population. An underclass of computer-controlled 'bot' citizens, meanwhile, stays poor forever. Mr. Castronova explains all this with clarity, wit, and a merciful lack of academic jargon.”—The Economist “Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.”—Tim Harford, Chronicle of Higher Education

The Proteus Paradox

The Proteus Paradox PDF Author: Nick Yee
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190999
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A surprising assessment of the ways that virtual worlds are entangled with human psychology

Making Virtual Worlds

Making Virtual Worlds PDF Author: Thomas Malaby
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online. Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created. Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens"—as the Linden Lab employees call themselves—found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions. Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab.