Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity

Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity PDF Author: MJ Clarke
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793636044
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon’s Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon’s Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon’s Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon’s Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.

Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity

Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity PDF Author: MJ Clarke
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793636044
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Get Book Here

Book Description
Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon’s Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon’s Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon’s Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon’s Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.

Fifty Key Video Games

Fifty Key Video Games PDF Author: Bernard Perron
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000596168
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This volume examines fifty of the most important video games that have contributed significantly to the history, development, or culture of the medium, providing an overview of video games from their beginning to the present day. This volume covers a variety of historical periods and platforms, genres, commercial impact, artistic choices, contexts of play, typical and atypical representations, uses of games for specific purposes, uses of materials or techniques, specific subcultures, repurposing, transgressive aesthetics, interfaces, moral or ethical impact, and more. Key video games featured include Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, PONG, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft. Each game is closely analyzed in order to properly contextualize it, to emphasize its prominent features, to show how it creates a unique experience of gameplay, and to outline the ways it might speak about society and culture. The book also acts as a highly accessible showcase to a range of disciplinary perspectives that are found and practiced in the field of game studies. With each entry supplemented by references and suggestions for further reading, Fifty Key Video Games is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in video games.

30 Years of Adventure

30 Years of Adventure PDF Author: Of The Coast Wizards
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780786934980
Category : Games
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A thirtieth-anniversary retrospective explores the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, featuring a selection of essays and photographs that capture the events, products, personalities, art, and influence of the game through the years.

The Video Game Explosion

The Video Game Explosion PDF Author: Mark J. P. Wolf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031308243X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond traces the growth of a global phenomenon that has become an integral part of popular culture today. All aspects of video games and gaming culture are covered inside this engaging reference, including the leading video game innovators, the technological advances that made the games of the late 1970s and those of today possible, the corporations that won and lost billions of dollars pursing this lucrative market, arcade culture, as well as the demise of free-standing video consoles and the rise of home-based and hand-held gaming devices. In the United States alone, the video game industry raked in an astonishing $12.5 billion last year, and shows no signs of slowing. Once dismissed as a fleeting fad of the young and frivolous, this booming industry has not only proven its staying power, but promises to continue driving the future of new media and emerging technologies. Today video games have become a limitless and multifaceted medium through which Fortune 50 corporations and Hollywood visionaries alike are reaching broader global audiences and influencing cultural trends at a rate unmatched by any other media.

The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music

The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music PDF Author: Lisa Scoggin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000871061
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
In both video games and animated films, worlds are constructed through a combination of animation, which defines what players see on the screen, and music and sound, which provide essential cues to action, emotion, and narrative. This book offers a rich exploration of the intersections between animation, video games, and music and sound, bringing together a range of multidisciplinary lenses. In fourteen chapters, the contributors consider similarities and differences in how music and sound structure video games and animation, as well as the animation within video games, and explore core topics of nostalgia, adaptation, gender and sexuality. Offering fresh insights into the aesthetic interplay of animation, video games, and sound, this volume provides a gateway into new areas of study that will be of interest to scholars and students across musicology, animation studies, game studies, and media studies more broadly.

Trigger Happy

Trigger Happy PDF Author: Steven Poole
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 9781559705981
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Examines the history and phenomenal success of video games, and argues that the popular games are on the way to becoming a legitimate art form, much in the same way movies did a century earlier.

Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling

Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling PDF Author: Chris Crawford
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132582252
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
As a game designer or new media storyteller, you know that the story is everything. However, figuring out how to tell it interactively-and in a way that keeps your audience coming back for more-can be challenging. Here to help you out (and to open your mind to ever more creative ways of producing those stories) is the man who created the cult publication The Art of Computer Game Design and who has devoted much of his career to that very topic: Chris Crawford. To highlight the path for future gains in the quest for a truly interactive story, Chris provides a solid sampling of what doesn't work, contrasting unsuccessful methodologies with those that hold promise for the future. Throughout you'll find examples of contemporary games that rely on different technologies-and learn the storytelling lessons to be garnered from each of the past methodologies. Within the context of interactive storytelling, Chris explores ways of providing conflict and challenge, the difference between low- and high-interactivity designs, the necessity to move beyond purely visual thinking (so that the player is engaged on multiple levels), and more.

Rerolling Boardgames

Rerolling Boardgames PDF Author: Douglas Brown
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476639272
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Despite the advent and explosion of videogames, boardgames--from fast-paced party games to intensely strategic titles--have in recent years become more numerous and more diverse in terms of genre, ethos and content. The growth of gaming events and conventions such as Essen Spiel, Gen Con and the UK Games EXPO, as well as crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter, has diversified the evolution of game development, which is increasingly driven by fans, and boardgames provide an important glue to geek culture. In academia, boardgames are used in a practical sense to teach elements of design and game mechanics. Game studies is also recognizing the importance of expanding its focus beyond the digital. As yet, however, no collected work has explored the many different approaches emerging around the critical challenges that boardgaming represents. In this collection, game theorists analyze boardgame play and player behavior, and explore the complex interactions between the sociality, conflict, competition and cooperation that boardgames foster. Game designers discuss the opportunities boardgame system designs offer for narrative and social play. Cultural theorists discuss boardgames' complex history as both beautiful physical artifacts and special places within cultural experiences of play.

Ancient Kingdoms

Ancient Kingdoms PDF Author: Morten Braten
Publisher: White Wolf Publishing
ISBN: 9781588469946
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Dragon Fate

Dragon Fate PDF Author: Kris Schnee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781533265814
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Slay the Dragon. Free the Dragon. Love the Dragon. Be the Dragon.In the alchemists' hillside village, there are rumors of a dragon. Or maybe just kobolds, or drunken shepherds. That's what the locals are paying you to find out. In this interactive story, you decide what happens. Find twenty-one ways to get through this adventure alive... and fewer where you survive unscathed and unscaled.A story of exploration and fantasy adventure, intended for mature audiences. Requires no dice, only pen, paper and imagination.