Author: Eric Freedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429784406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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.
The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture
Author: Eric Freedman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429784406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429784406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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.
Enacting Platforms
Author: James Malazita
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262379066
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself. In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself. The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author’s depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine’s entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America’s Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262379066
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself. In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself. The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author’s depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine’s entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America’s Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code.
Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production
Author: Frédérik Lesage
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031456939
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
This book explores how creativity is increasingly designed, marketed, and produced with digital products and services — a process referred to as softwarization. If ‘being creative’ has developed into one of the paradigmatic architectures of power for framing the contemporary subject, then an essential component of this architecture involves its material and symbolic configuration through tools. From image editors to digital audio workstations, video editors to game engines, these modern tools are used by creatives every day, and mastering these increasingly complex technologies is now a near-compulsory pathway to creative work. Despite their ubiquity in cultural production, few have sought to theorize them in aggregate and with interdisciplinary breadth. By bringing disparate creative and methodological traditions in one volume, this book provides a comprehensive overview of approaches for understanding this complex, emerging, and dynamic field that speaks beyond the disciplinary categories of ‘tool,’ ‘instrument,’ and/or ‘software’. It makes a unique intervention in the fields of cultural production and the cultural and creative industries.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031456939
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
This book explores how creativity is increasingly designed, marketed, and produced with digital products and services — a process referred to as softwarization. If ‘being creative’ has developed into one of the paradigmatic architectures of power for framing the contemporary subject, then an essential component of this architecture involves its material and symbolic configuration through tools. From image editors to digital audio workstations, video editors to game engines, these modern tools are used by creatives every day, and mastering these increasingly complex technologies is now a near-compulsory pathway to creative work. Despite their ubiquity in cultural production, few have sought to theorize them in aggregate and with interdisciplinary breadth. By bringing disparate creative and methodological traditions in one volume, this book provides a comprehensive overview of approaches for understanding this complex, emerging, and dynamic field that speaks beyond the disciplinary categories of ‘tool,’ ‘instrument,’ and/or ‘software’. It makes a unique intervention in the fields of cultural production and the cultural and creative industries.
Artificial Intelligence and Playable Media
Author: Eric Freedman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000648559
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
This book introduces readers to artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of playable media and explores the impact of such software on everyday life. From video games to robotic companions to digital twins, artificial intelligence drives large sectors of the culture industry where play, media and machine learning coexist. This book illustrates how playable media contribute to our sense of self, while also harnessing our data, tightening our bonds with computation and realigning play with the demands of network logic. Author Eric Freedman examines a number of popular media forms - from the Sony AIBO robotic dog, video game developer Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises, to Peloton’s connected fitness equipment - to lay bare the computational processes that undergird playable media, and addresses the social, cultural, technological and economic forces that continue to shape user-centered experience and design. The case studies are drawn from a number of related research fields, including science and technology studies, media studies and software studies. This book is ideal for media studies students, scholars and practitioners interested in understanding how applied artificial intelligence works in popular, public and visual culture.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000648559
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149
Book Description
This book introduces readers to artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of playable media and explores the impact of such software on everyday life. From video games to robotic companions to digital twins, artificial intelligence drives large sectors of the culture industry where play, media and machine learning coexist. This book illustrates how playable media contribute to our sense of self, while also harnessing our data, tightening our bonds with computation and realigning play with the demands of network logic. Author Eric Freedman examines a number of popular media forms - from the Sony AIBO robotic dog, video game developer Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises, to Peloton’s connected fitness equipment - to lay bare the computational processes that undergird playable media, and addresses the social, cultural, technological and economic forces that continue to shape user-centered experience and design. The case studies are drawn from a number of related research fields, including science and technology studies, media studies and software studies. This book is ideal for media studies students, scholars and practitioners interested in understanding how applied artificial intelligence works in popular, public and visual culture.
Transient Images
Author: Eric Freedman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
In this probing study, Eric Freedman focuses on what images from photography, mobile communications, and the Internet reveal about looking. Exploring subjectivity by critically examining the look, he elaborates on the nature of the photographic frame and its relation to interpretive practices. Freedman scrutinizes what he calls "technobiography"—a life written through technology, and considers the movement of personal images into public spaces. He also considers authorship that situates the self as inherently engaged with and inscribed by information technology. All of the chapters in Transient Images explore Freedman's interest in examining how media technologies activate particular notions of self and community. He provides examples that address trauma—pictures of missing children on milk cartons and episodes of the reality series Intervention—as well as the strategies behind creating and distributing personal advertisements on the Internet. Transient Images draws out the tensions that exist in images circulating in the digital era.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
In this probing study, Eric Freedman focuses on what images from photography, mobile communications, and the Internet reveal about looking. Exploring subjectivity by critically examining the look, he elaborates on the nature of the photographic frame and its relation to interpretive practices. Freedman scrutinizes what he calls "technobiography"—a life written through technology, and considers the movement of personal images into public spaces. He also considers authorship that situates the self as inherently engaged with and inscribed by information technology. All of the chapters in Transient Images explore Freedman's interest in examining how media technologies activate particular notions of self and community. He provides examples that address trauma—pictures of missing children on milk cartons and episodes of the reality series Intervention—as well as the strategies behind creating and distributing personal advertisements on the Internet. Transient Images draws out the tensions that exist in images circulating in the digital era.
Work's Intimacy
Author: Melissa Gregg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745637469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745637469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.
Prime Time Animation
Author: Carol Stabile
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136481648
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
In September 1960 a television show emerged from the mists of prehistoric time to take its place as the mother of all animated sitcoms. The Flintstones spawned dozens of imitations, just as, two decades later, The Simpsons sparked a renaissance of primetime animation. This fascinating book explores the landscape of television animation, from Bedrock to Springfield, and beyond. The contributors critically examine the key issues and questions, including: How do we explain the animation explosion of the 1960s? Why did it take nearly twenty years following the cancellation of The Flintstones for animation to find its feet again as primetime fare? In addressing these questions, as well as many others, essays examine the relation between earlier, made-for-cinema animated production (such as the Warner Looney Toons shorts) and television-based animation; the role of animation in the economies of broadcast and cable television; and the links between animation production and brand image. Contributors also examine specific programmes like The Powerpuff Girls, Daria, Ren and Stimpy and South Park from the perspective of fans, exploring fan cybercommunities, investigating how ideas of 'class' and 'taste' apply to recent TV animation, and addressing themes such as irony, alienation, and representations of the family.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136481648
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
In September 1960 a television show emerged from the mists of prehistoric time to take its place as the mother of all animated sitcoms. The Flintstones spawned dozens of imitations, just as, two decades later, The Simpsons sparked a renaissance of primetime animation. This fascinating book explores the landscape of television animation, from Bedrock to Springfield, and beyond. The contributors critically examine the key issues and questions, including: How do we explain the animation explosion of the 1960s? Why did it take nearly twenty years following the cancellation of The Flintstones for animation to find its feet again as primetime fare? In addressing these questions, as well as many others, essays examine the relation between earlier, made-for-cinema animated production (such as the Warner Looney Toons shorts) and television-based animation; the role of animation in the economies of broadcast and cable television; and the links between animation production and brand image. Contributors also examine specific programmes like The Powerpuff Girls, Daria, Ren and Stimpy and South Park from the perspective of fans, exploring fan cybercommunities, investigating how ideas of 'class' and 'taste' apply to recent TV animation, and addressing themes such as irony, alienation, and representations of the family.
Prime Time Animation
Author: Carol A. Stabile
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415283267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This is a new & original survey of television animation, which provides a full introduction to the historic & contemporary significance of animated programming.
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415283267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
This is a new & original survey of television animation, which provides a full introduction to the historic & contemporary significance of animated programming.
The Secret of Our Success
Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178437
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178437
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116
Book Description
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116
Book Description
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.