The Pleasures of Computer Gaming PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Pleasures of Computer Gaming PDF full book. Access full book title The Pleasures of Computer Gaming by Melanie Swalwell. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Melanie Swalwell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786451203
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection of essays situates the digital gaming phenomenon alongside broader debates in cultural and media studies. Contributors to this volume maintain that computer games are not simply toys, but rather circulate as commodities, new media technologies, and items of visual culture that are embedded in complex social practices. Apart from placing games within longer arcs of cultural history and broader critical debates, the contributors to this volume all adopt a pedagogical and theoretical approach to studying games and gameplay, drawing on the interdisciplinary resources of the humanities and social sciences, particularly new media studies. In eight essays, the authors develop rich and nuanced understandings of the aesthetic appeals and pleasurable engagements of digital gameplay. Topics include the role of “cheats” and “easter eggs” in influencing cheating as an aesthetic phenomenon of gameplay; the relationship between videogames, gambling, and addiction; players’ aesthetic and kinaesthetic interactions with computing technology; and the epistemology and phenomenology of popular strategy-based wargames and their relationship with real-world military applications. Notes and a bibliography accompany each essay, and the work includes several screenshots, images, and photographs.
Author: Melanie Swalwell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786451203
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection of essays situates the digital gaming phenomenon alongside broader debates in cultural and media studies. Contributors to this volume maintain that computer games are not simply toys, but rather circulate as commodities, new media technologies, and items of visual culture that are embedded in complex social practices. Apart from placing games within longer arcs of cultural history and broader critical debates, the contributors to this volume all adopt a pedagogical and theoretical approach to studying games and gameplay, drawing on the interdisciplinary resources of the humanities and social sciences, particularly new media studies. In eight essays, the authors develop rich and nuanced understandings of the aesthetic appeals and pleasurable engagements of digital gameplay. Topics include the role of “cheats” and “easter eggs” in influencing cheating as an aesthetic phenomenon of gameplay; the relationship between videogames, gambling, and addiction; players’ aesthetic and kinaesthetic interactions with computing technology; and the epistemology and phenomenology of popular strategy-based wargames and their relationship with real-world military applications. Notes and a bibliography accompany each essay, and the work includes several screenshots, images, and photographs.
Author: James Paul Gee
Publisher: Common Ground
ISBN: 186335574X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Get Book Here
Book Description
Imprint. In this text, built entirely around computer games and game play, the author shows how good video games marry pleasure and learning and, at the same time, have the potential to empower people.
Author: Betsy Rathburn
Publisher: Bellwether Media
ISBN: 1648341322
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24
Get Book Here
Book Description
People have played computer games for more than 50 years! Today, computer games are still some of the most popular video games. In this high-interest book, leveled text introduces readers to the history of computer gaming from the 1950s to the present day. Special features include a timeline, a list of top-selling games, a profile of one of today’s most popular titles, and a gaming event spotlight. This title is sure to excite reluctant readers who love video games!
Author: Shanna Compton
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1932360573
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
In Gamers, writers, artists, scholars, poets, and programmers talk about what gaming means to them and discuss the growing impact of video games on fashion, fiction, film, and music. Essays feature a glittering mix of topics from the esoteric to the purely entertaining: gender identity in relation to gaming, video golf as a meditative exercise, Ms. Pacman versus The Sims, the similarities between writing fiction and programming, the confessions of a video poker junkie, and much more.
Author: Barry Atkins
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719063657
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Get Book Here
Book Description
Taking its cue from practices of reading texts in literary and cultural studies, this book considers the computer game as a new and emerging mode of contemporary storytelling. In a carefully organized study, Barry Atkins discusses questions of narrative and realism in four of the most significant games of the last decade: Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Close Combat and SimCity. This is a work for both the student of contemporary culture and those game-players who are interested in how computer games tell their stories.
Author: Diane Carr
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745687504
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
Computer games are one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving media of our time. Revenues from console and computer games have now overtaken those from Hollywood movies; and online gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Games are no longer just kids' stuff: the majority of players are now adults, and the market is constantly broadening. The visual style of games has become increasingly sophisticated, and the complexities of game-play are ever more challenging. Meanwhile, the iconography and generic forms of games are increasingly influencing a whole range of other media, from films and television to books and toys. This book provides a systematic, comprehensive introduction to the analysis of computer and video games. It introduces key concepts and approaches drawn from literary, film and media theory in an accessible and concrete manner; and it tests their use and relevance by applying them to a small but representative selection of role-playing and action-adventure games. It combines methods of textual analysis and audience research, showing how the combination of such methods can give a more complete picture of these playable texts and the fan cultures they generate. Clearly written and engaging, it will be a key text for students in the field and for all those with an interest in taking games seriously.
Author: Pete Etchells
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 9781785784811
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
An exploration of the psychological effects - the pleasures, benefits and disbenefits - of computer games, and a touching memoir of a dedicated gamer.
Author: Melanie Swalwell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026236560X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
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.
Author: Ian Bogost
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096506
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
How filling life with play-whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds -- forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. Play Anything, reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't composed of two teams of eleven players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without falling pieces in characteristic shapes. Such rules seem needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that make games enjoyable, just like it's the hard things in life that give it meaning. Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances- like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints-as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling our days with attention and discipline, devotion and love for the world as it really is, beyond our desires and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, ancient poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed-and enjoyed-when we first impose boundaries on ourselves.
Author: Geoff King
Publisher: Wallflower Press
ISBN: 9781903364239
Category : Computer games
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Get Book Here
Book Description
Hollywood film franchises are routinely translated into games and some game-titles make the move onto the big screen. This collection investigates the interface between cinema and games console or PC.
