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.

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.

Playing Dystopia

Playing Dystopia PDF Author: Gerald Farca
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839445973
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.

Games, Sports, and Play

Games, Sports, and Play PDF Author: Thomas Hurka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192519255
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This volume presents new philosophical essays on a topic that's been neglected in most recent philosophy: games, sports, and play. Some contributions address conceptual questions about what games and sports have in common and that distinguishes them from other activities; here many take their start from Bernard Suits's celebrated analysis of game-playing in his book The Grasshopper and either elaborate it or propose an alternative to it. Other essays discuss normative issues that arise within games and sports, such as about fairness, for example in the treatment of male and female athletes. Yet others consider broader evaluative questions about the value of games and sports, which some see as enabling the display of distinctive excellences. Games, Sports, and Play includes a posthumous essay by Suits defending his claim, in The Grasshopper, that life in utopia would consist primarily in playing games. The volume's chapters approach the topic of games, sports, and play from different angles but always in the belief that there is rich terrain here for philosophical investigation.

Playing with Reality

Playing with Reality PDF Author: Kelly Clancy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 059353820X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
A wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re really playing. We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. Games are an essential aspect of humanity and a powerful tool for modeling reality. They’re also a lot of fun. But games can be dangerous, especially when we mistake the model worlds of games for reality itself and let gamification co-opt human decision making. Playing with Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, political science, evolutionary biology, the development of computers and AI, cutting-edge neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. Neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows how intertwined games have been with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behavior and brought us to the brink of annihilation—yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics, and technology design. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy. In this revelatory new work, Clancy makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature and our actions.

The Role-Playing Society

The Role-Playing Society PDF Author: Andrew Byers
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786498838
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Since the release of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, role-playing games (RPGs) have spawned a vibrant industry and subculture whose characteristics and player experiences have been well explored. Yet little attention has been devoted to the ways RPGs have shaped society at large over the last four decades. Role-playing games influenced video game design, have been widely represented in film, television and other media, and have made their mark on education, social media, corporate training and the military. This collection of new essays illustrates the broad appeal and impact of RPGs. Topics range from a critical reexamination of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, to the growing significance of RPGs in education, to the potential for "serious" RPGs to provoke awareness and social change. The contributors discuss the myriad subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which the values, concepts and mechanics of RPGs have infiltrated popular culture.

The Philosophy of Play

The Philosophy of Play PDF Author: Emily Ryall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136269916
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophers and theorists, as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical considerations. The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.

Games and Sport in Everyday Life

Games and Sport in Everyday Life PDF Author: Robert S. Perinbanayagam
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317259378
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"This is a powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative pedagogical intervention. It provides ground zero-the starting place for the next generation of theorists who study the self, narrative theory, and the place of games and sport in everyday life. A stunning accomplishment by one of America's major social theorists." Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Games of many kinds have been played in all cultures throughout human history. This wide-ranging book explores the social and psychological processes involved in the playing of games. One player (or team) seeks to outwit another by undertaking various physical and communicative moves-not unlike conversations. Games have well-formed "narrative" structures, analogous to myths, that are enacted by each participant to give play to his/her self and its attendant emotions. These plays of the self enable each agent to seek adventures and heroic moments. Going beyond the mythmaking and catharsis that may be achieved by individuals, the author shows how games have been devised and played in particular societies and eras as means of promoting specific ideologies of a society, even social ideals such as utopias.

Seven Days in Utopia

Seven Days in Utopia PDF Author: David L. Cook
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310336198
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
Golfers and non-golfers alike will be moved by this powerful story of transformation revealing the secrets to success in life beyond success in our game or work. Luke Chisolm is a talented young golfer set on making the pro tour. But when his first big shot turns into a very public disaster, he escapes the pressures of the game and finds himself unexpectedly stranded in Utopia, Texas. There, he meets Johnny Crawford, an eccentric rancher with a passion for teaching truth, whose faith forces Luke to question not only his past choices, but his direction for the future. Written by author and performance psychologist Dr. David Cook--who has worked with NBA World Champions, National Collegiate Champions, PGA Tour Champions, Olympians, and many Fortune 500 companies--this remarkable and encouraging story reminds us to get our game, and our life, back on course. Now a major motion picture starring Academy Award Winner Robert Duvall and Lucas Black! Also published as Golf's Sacred Journey.

Return of the Grasshopper

Return of the Grasshopper PDF Author: Bernard Suits
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000683958
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
In this sequel to Bernard Suits’ timeless classic philosophical work The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, published in its full and unabridged form for the first time, Suits continues to explore some of our most fundamental philosophical questions, including the value of sport and games, and their relationship to the good life. In Return of the Grasshopper, Suits puts his theoretical cards on the table, exploring the in-depth implications of his definition of utopia, assessing the merits of a gamified philosophy, and explaining how games can provide an existential balm against the fear of death. Perhaps most importantly, for the first time in print, Suits reveals his underlying worldview: that humanity is forever fated to endure a cyclical existence of privation, brought on by material scarcity, and boredom, resulting from material plenitude. An essential companion to The Grasshopper, this edition includes an introductory chapter that puts Suits’ life and work into context, helping the reader to understand why Suits has had such a profound influence on contemporary philosophy and how his ideas still provide powerful insight into the human condition. This book is important reading for anybody with an interest in the philosophy of sport, leisure and play, political philosophy, ethics, existentialism or utopian studies.

Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport

Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport PDF Author: Daniel Brennan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793640793
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport uses the insights gained through an analysis of the sport of surfing to explore key questions and discourses within the philosophy of sport. As surfing has been practiced dynamically, since its beginnings as a traditional Polynesian pursuit to its current status as a counter-culture lifestyle and also a highly professionalized and commercialized sport that will be included in the Olympic Games, it presents a unique phenomenon from which to reconsider questions about the nature of sport and its role in a flourishing life and society. Daniel Brennan examines foundational issues about defining sport, sport's role in conceptualizing the good life, the aesthetic nature of sport, the place of technology in sport, the principles of Olympism and surfing’s embodiment of them, and issues of institutionalized sexism in sport and the effect that might have on athletic performance.