The Psychology of Video Games

The Psychology of Video Games PDF Author: Celia Hodent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000194760
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
What impact can video games have on us as players? How does psychology influence video game creation? Why do some games become cultural phenomena? The Psychology of Video Games introduces the curious reader to the relationship between psychology and video games from the perspective of both game makers and players. Assuming no specialist knowledge, this concise, approachable guide is a starter book for anyone intrigued by what makes video games engaging and what is their psychological impact on gamers. It digests the research exploring the benefits gaming can have on players in relation to education and healthcare, considers the concerns over potential negative impacts such as pathological gaming, and concludes with some ethics considerations. With gaming being one of the most popular forms of entertainment today, The Psychology of Video Games shows the importance of understanding the human brain and its mental processes to foster ethical and inclusive video games.

The Psychology of Video Games

The Psychology of Video Games PDF Author: Celia Hodent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000194760
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Get Book Here

Book Description
What impact can video games have on us as players? How does psychology influence video game creation? Why do some games become cultural phenomena? The Psychology of Video Games introduces the curious reader to the relationship between psychology and video games from the perspective of both game makers and players. Assuming no specialist knowledge, this concise, approachable guide is a starter book for anyone intrigued by what makes video games engaging and what is their psychological impact on gamers. It digests the research exploring the benefits gaming can have on players in relation to education and healthcare, considers the concerns over potential negative impacts such as pathological gaming, and concludes with some ethics considerations. With gaming being one of the most popular forms of entertainment today, The Psychology of Video Games shows the importance of understanding the human brain and its mental processes to foster ethical and inclusive video games.

Redeeming Productivity

Redeeming Productivity PDF Author: Reagan Rose
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802474632
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Feeling overwhelmed and unproductive? The answer isn’t to do more. What image forms in your mind when you think of productivity? An assembly line? Spreadsheets? Business suits or workplace uniforms? In the ancient world, productivity didn't conjure images like these. Instead, it referred to crop yield and fruit bearing. This agrarian imagery helps us understand productivity through a biblical lens. Jesus taught, By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit (John 15:8). Who doesn’t want to have a truly productive life—to bear much fruit? But how does this happen in the places we hold dear—the home, workplace, and in our communities? We often feel overworked and overrun, defeated and discouraged. The world says be productive so that you can get all you can out of this life. The Bible says be productive so you can gain more of the next life. In Redeeming Productivity, author Reagan Rose explores how God’s glory is the purpose for which He planted us. And he shows how productivity must be firmly rooted in the gospel. Only through our connection to Christ—the True Vine—are we empowered to produce good fruit. This book shows how we can maintain the vitality of that connection through simple, life-giving disciplines. Readers will discover manageable applications like giving God the first fruits of our days. Additionally, Reagan discusses how our perspective on suffering is transformed as we see trials as God’s pruning for greater productivity.

The PlayStation Dreamworld

The PlayStation Dreamworld PDF Author: Alfie Bown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509518061
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
From mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.

Critical Play

Critical Play PDF Author: Mary Flanagan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262518651
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
An examination of subversive games like The Sims—games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—including worldwide poverty and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.

Playing Nature

Playing Nature PDF Author: Alenda Y. Chang
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145296226X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.

Avatars at Work and Play

Avatars at Work and Play PDF Author: Ralph Schroeder
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402038984
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Avatars at Work and Play brings together contributions from leading social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on virtual environments used for collaboration and online gaming. They present a well-rounded and state-of-the-art overview of current applications of multi-user virtual environments, ranging from highly immersive virtual reality systems to internet-based virtual environments on personal computers. The volume is a follow-up to a previous essay collection, ‘The Social Life of Avatars’, which explored general issues in this field. This collection goes further, examining uses of shared virtual environments in practical settings such as scientific collaboration, distributed meetings, building models together, and others. It also covers online gaming in virtual environments, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and presents an opportunity for studying a myriad of social issues. Covering both ‘work’ and ‘play’, the volume brings together issues common to the two areas, including: What kind of avatar appearance is suitable for different kinds of interaction? How best to foster collaboration and promote usable shared virtual spaces? What kinds of activities work well in different types of virtual environments and systems?

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition PDF Author: James Paul Gee
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466886420
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Cognitive Development in a Digital Age James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games–yes, even violent video games–and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. This revised edition expands beyond mere gaming, introducing readers to fresh perspectives based on games like World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2. It delves deeper into cognitive development, discussing how video games can shape our understanding of the world. An undisputed must-read for those interested in the intersection of education, technology, and pop culture, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy challenges traditional norms, examines the educational potential of video games, and opens up a discussion on the far-reaching impacts of this ubiquitous aspect of modern life.

Persuasive Games

Persuasive Games PDF Author: Ian Bogost
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261944
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties. Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric. Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and learning.

Glued to Games

Glued to Games PDF Author: Scott Rigby
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This book offers a practical yet powerful way to understand the psychological appeal and strong motivation to play video games. With video game sales in the billions and anxious concerns about their long-term effects growing louder, Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound brings something new to the discussion. It is the first truly balanced research-based analysis on the games and gamers, addressing both the positive and negative aspects of habitual playing by drawing on significant recent studies and established motivational theory. Filled with examples from popular games and the real experiences of gamers themselves, Glued to Games gets to the heart of gaming's powerful psychological and emotional allure—the benefits as well as the dangers. It gives everyone from researchers to parents to gamers themselves a clearer understanding the psychology of gaming, while offering prescriptions for healthier, more enjoyable games and gaming experiences.

The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games

The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games PDF Author: Clark Aldrich
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470506741
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
"Ready to blow your mind? Spend 15 seconds reading Clark Aldrich's The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games. Witty, fast-paced, and non-linear -- it's Spock meets Alton Brown." -- Lynne Kenney, Psy.D., The Family Coach This exciting work offers designers a new way to see the world, model it, and present it through simulations. A groundbreaking resource, it includes a wealth of new tools and terms and a corresponding style guide to help understand them. The author -- a globally recognized industry guru -- covers topics such as virtual experiences, games, simulations, educational simulations, social impact games, practiceware, game-based learning/digital game based learning, immersive learning, and serious games. This book is the first of its kind to present definitions of more than 600 simulation and game terms, concepts, and constructs.