Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism

Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism PDF Author: Erik Champion
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1300540613
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Are games worthy of academic attention? Can they be used effectively in the classroom, in the research laboratory, as an innovative design tool, as a persuasive political weapon? Game Mods: Design Theory and Criticism aims to answer these and more questions. It features chapters by authors chosen from around the world, representing fields as diverse as architecture, ethnography, puppetry, cultural studies, music education, interaction design and industrial design. How can we design, play with and reflect on the contribution of game mods, related tools and techniques, to both game studies and to society as a whole?

Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism

Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism PDF Author: Erik Champion
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1300540613
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
Are games worthy of academic attention? Can they be used effectively in the classroom, in the research laboratory, as an innovative design tool, as a persuasive political weapon? Game Mods: Design Theory and Criticism aims to answer these and more questions. It features chapters by authors chosen from around the world, representing fields as diverse as architecture, ethnography, puppetry, cultural studies, music education, interaction design and industrial design. How can we design, play with and reflect on the contribution of game mods, related tools and techniques, to both game studies and to society as a whole?

The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities

The Routledge Handbook of Remix Studies and Digital Humanities PDF Author: Eduardo Navas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000346722
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
In this comprehensive and highly interdisciplinary companion, contributors reflect on remix across the broad spectrum of media and culture, with each chapter offering in-depth reflections on the relationship between remix studies and the digital humanities. The anthology is organized into sections that explore remix studies and digital humanities in relation to topics such as archives, artificial intelligence, cinema, epistemology, gaming, generative art, hacking, pedagogy, sound, and VR, among other subjects of study. Selected chapters focus on practice-based projects produced by artists, designers, remix studies scholars, and digital humanists. With this mix of practical and theoretical chapters, editors Navas, Gallagher, and burrough offer a tapestry of critical reflection on the contemporary cultural and political implications of remix studies and the digital humanities, functioning as an ideal reference manual to these evolving areas of study across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of digital humanities, remix studies, media arts, information studies, interactive arts and technology, and digital media studies.

Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality

Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality PDF Author: Melanie Swalwell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262044773
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The overlooked history of an early appropriation of digital technology: the creation of games though coding and hardware hacking by microcomputer users. From the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, low-end microcomputers offered many users their first taste of computing. A major use of these inexpensive 8-bit machines--including the TRS System 80s and the Sinclair, Atari, Microbee, and Commodore ranges--was the development of homebrew games. Users with often self-taught programming skills devised the graphics, sound, and coding for their self-created games. In this book, Melanie Swalwell offers a history of this era of homebrew game development, arguing that it constitutes a significant instance of the early appropriation of digital computing technology. Drawing on interviews and extensive archival research on homebrew creators in 1980s Australia and New Zealand, Swalwell explores the creation of games on microcomputers as a particular mode of everyday engagement with new technology. She discusses the public discourses surrounding microcomputers and programming by home coders; user practices; the development of game creators' ideas, with the game Donut Dilemma as a case study; the widely practiced art of hardware hacking; and the influence of 8-bit aesthetics and gameplay on the contemporary game industry. With Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality, Swalwell reclaims a lost chapter in video game history, connecting it to the rich cultural and media theory around everyday life and to critical perspectives on user-generated content.

The Republic of Games

The Republic of Games PDF Author: Elyse Graham
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773554211
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Many of today’s digital platforms are designed according to the same model: they encourage users to create content for fun (a mode of production that some have termed playbour) and to earn points. On Facebook, for example, points are based on a user’s number of friends and how many likes and shares a comment receives. New cultural and literary formations have arisen out of these feedback and reward systems, with surprising effects on amateur literary production. Drawing on social-text analysis, platform studies, and game studies, Elyse Graham shows that embedding game structures in the operations of digital platforms – a practice known in corporate circles as “gamification” – can have large cumulative effects on textual ecosystems. Making the production of content feel like play helps to drive up the volume of text being written, and as a result, gamification has gained widespread popularity online, especially among social media platforms, fan forums, and other sites of user-generated content. The Republic of Games argues that a consequence of this profound increase in the volume of text being produced is a reliance on self-contained, user-based systems of information management to deal with the mass of new content. Opening up new avenues of analysis in contemporary media studies and the humanities, The Republic of Games sifts through the gamified patterns of writing, interacting, and meaning-making that define the digital revolution.

Playful Participatory Practices

Playful Participatory Practices PDF Author: Pablo Abend
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3658286199
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
The volume addresses the matter of participatory media practices as playful appropriations within current digital media culture and artistic research. The aim is to explore and trace the shifting boundaries between media production and media use, and to develop concepts and methodologies that work within participatory media cultures. Therefore the articles explore and establish nuanced approaches to the oftentimes playful practices associated with the appropriation of technology.

Playing Utopia

Playing Utopia PDF Author: Benjamin Beil
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839450500
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Media narratives inform our ideas of the future - and Games are currently making a significant contribution to this medial reservoir. On the one hand, Games demonstrate a particular propensity for fantastic and futuristic scenarios. On the other hand, they often serve as an experimental field for the latest media technologies. However, while dystopias are part of the standard gaming repertoire, Games feature utopias much less frequently. Why? This anthology examines playful utopias from two perspectives. It investigates utopias in digital Games as well as utopias of the digital game; that is, the role of ludic elements in scenarios of the future.

Understanding Minecraft

Understanding Minecraft PDF Author: Nate Garrelts
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786479744
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has sold over 48 million copies across all gaming platforms. The premise of Minecraft is simple: destroy, collect, build and interact in a world made entirely of colored cubes. Unlike Lego blocks or other construction toys, Minecraft's digital play space allows for virtually limitless creation without the cost and limitations of physical building materials. Developer Mojang's generous policies toward modification and other uses of their intellectual property also engender enthusiasm and creativity from fans who make music, art and animation inspired by the software. The first essays in this collection cover Minecraft's origins, describing its relationship to other video games and toys and examining the learning models implicit in its design. Later essays describe and theorize the various ways players interact with the software, which simultaneously presents them with structural constraints and limitless possibilities. NOT OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG.

The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture

The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture PDF Author: Eric Freedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429784406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
With its unique focus on video game engines, the data-driven architectures of game development and play, this innovative textbook examines the impact of software on everyday life and explores the rise of engine-driven culture. Through a series of case studies, Eric Freedman lays out a clear methodology for studying the game development pipeline, and uses the video game engine as a pathway for media scholars and practitioners to navigate the complex terrain of software practice. Examining several distinct software ecosystems that include the proprietary efforts of Amazon, Apple, Capcom, Epic Games and Unity Technologies, and the unique ways that game engines are used in non-game industries, Freedman illustrates why engines matter. The studies bind together designers and players, speak to the labors of the game industry, value the work of both global and regional developers, and establish critical connection points between software and society. Freedman has crafted a much-needed entry point for students new to code, and a research resource for scholars and teachers working in media industries, game development and new media.

Every Game Is an Island

Every Game Is an Island PDF Author: Riccardo Fassone
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501316613
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Despite the pervasive rhetorics of immersion and embodiment found in industrial and social discourses, playing a video game is an exercise in non-linearity. The pervasiveness of trial and error mechanics, unforgiving game over screens, loading times, minute tweakings of options and settings, should lead us to consider video games as a medium that cannot eschew fragmentation. Every Game is an Island is an analysis and a critique of grey areas, dead ends and extremities found in digital games, an exploration of border zones where play and non-play coexist or compete. Riccardo Fassone describes the complexity of the experience of video game play and brings integral but often overlooked components of the gameplay experience to the fore, in an attempt to problematize a reading of video games as grandiosely immersive, all-encompassing narrative experiences. Through the analysis of closures and endings, limits and borders, and liminal states, this field-advancing study looks at the heart of a medium starting from its periphery.

100 Greatest Video Game Franchises

100 Greatest Video Game Franchises PDF Author: Robert Mejia
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442278153
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Video games take players on a trip through ancient battlefields, to mythic worlds, and across galaxies. They provide players with a way to try on new identities and acquire vast superpowers. Video games also give people the chance to hit reset – to play again and again until they achieve a desired outcome. Their popularity has enabled them to grow far beyond their humble origins and to permeate other forms of popular culture, from comic books and graphic novels to films and television programs. Video games are universal. In 100 Greatest Video Game Franchises, editors Robert Mejia, Jaime Banks, and Aubrie Adams have assembled essays that identify, assess, and reveal the most important video games of all-time. Each entry makes a case for the game’s cultural significance and why it deserves to be on the list, from its influence on other games to its impact on an international scale. In addition to providing information about the game developer and when the franchise was established, these entries explore the connections between the different video games, examining them across genre, theme, and content. This accessible collection of essays gives readers an opportunity to gauge their favorite video game franchises against the best of all time and argue how they each fit among the 100 greatest ever created. Whether casually looking up information on these games or eager to learn how franchises evolved over the years, readers will enjoy this entertaining and informative volume. Comprehensive and engaging, 100 Greatest Video Game Franchises will appeal to fans and scholars alike.