Download or read book Game written by Tom Tyler and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A playful reflection on animals and video games, and what each can teach us about the other Video games conjure new worlds for those who play them, human or otherwise: they’ve been played by cats, orangutans, pigs, and penguins, and they let gamers experience life from the perspective of a pet dog, a predator or a prey animal, or even a pathogen. In Game, author Tom Tyler provides the first sustained consideration of video games and animals and demonstrates how thinking about animals and games together can prompt fresh thinking about both. Game comprises thirteen short essays, each of which examines a particular video game, franchise, aspect of gameplay, or production in which animals are featured, allowing us to reflect on conventional understandings of humans, animals, and the relationships between them. Tyler contemplates the significance of animals who insert themselves into video games, as protagonists, opponents, and brute resources, but also as ciphers, subjects, and subversive guides to new ways of thinking. These animals encourage us to reconsider how we understand games, contesting established ideas about winning and losing, difficulty settings, accessibility, playing badly, virtuality, vitality and vulnerability, and much more. Written in a playful style, Game draws from a dizzying array of sources, from children’s television, sitcoms, and regional newspapers to medieval fables, Shakespearean tragedy, and Edwardian comedy; from primatology, entomology, and hunting and fishing manuals to theological tracts and philosophical treatises. By examining video games through the lens of animals and animality, Tyler leads us to a greater humility regarding the nature and status of the human creature, and a greater sensitivity in dealings with other animals.
Download or read book Playing Nature written by Alenda Y. Chang and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Burrows Badgers written by Michael Lovejoy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kingdom of Northymbra is a land in turmoil. King Redwulf is missing, and his son rules as regent in his stead, facing threats from within and without: growing dissention among the knights and nobles of the realm, whispers of revolution from the Freebeasts, Wildbeasts encroaching on the borders, and bandits of all stripes making the most of the chaos. Burrows & Badgers is a tabletop skirmish game set in the ancient realm of Northymbra, a kingdom where mice, badgers, toads and other animals wear armour, wield swords, and cast magic spells. Your tabletop becomes part of the Kingdom of Northymbra, whose ruined villages, haunted forests, and misty marshes play host to brutal ambushes and desperate skirmishes. Lead your warband from battle to battle, and uphold the name of your faction, whether you stand with Reinert's Royalists, the Freebeasts of the Fox Families, or simply for your own glory or survival. Each model in Burrows & Badgers represents an individual character, and can be selected from a wide range of species – from the humble mouse to the mighty badger – and armed and equipped as desired. Scenarios link into ongoing campaigns, where heroes and villains may make their names and the assistance of infamous mercenaries might mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Download or read book Animals Matching Game written by Bob Barner and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Players and Their Pets written by Mia Consalvo and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the world of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), Faunasphere was but a blip on the screen in its short public life from 2009 to 2011. Its devoted players, many of them middle-aged women, entered a world that did not build on common fantasy or science-fiction tropes. There was no evil to defeat or realms to conquer, only friendly animals to care for and pollution to fight. In Players and Their Pets, Mia Consalvo and Jason Begy argue that its very difference makes it critically important—even more so than the large, commercially successful games such as World of Warcraft that have all too often shaped game studies discourse. Consalvo and Begy demonstrate how the beta period of an MMOG can establish social norms that guide how the game is played. They also show how a game’s platform creates expectations for how the game will work and who is playing it—and what happens when those expectations clash with the reality. Even while telling the story of this particular game and its predominantly female players, however, Players and Their Pets cautions against oversimplifying players based on their gender. Faunasphere’s playerbase enjoyed diverse aspects of the game, for varied reasons. No other game studies book tracks the entire life cycle of an online game to examine how the game evolved in terms of design as well as how its player community responded to changes and events. The brief life of Faunasphere makes this possible.
Download or read book The Altruism Equation written by Lee Alan Dugatkin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world supposedly governed by ruthless survival of the fittest, why do we see acts of goodness in both animals and humans? This problem plagued Charles Darwin in the 1850s as he developed his theory of evolution through natural selection. Indeed, Darwin worried that the goodness he observed in nature could be the Achilles heel of his theory. Ever since then, scientists and other thinkers have engaged in a fierce debate about the origins of goodness that has dragged politics, philosophy, and religion into what remains a major question for evolutionary biology. The Altruism Equation traces the history of this debate from Darwin to the present through an extraordinary cast of characters-from the Russian prince Petr Kropotkin, who wanted to base society on altruism, to the brilliant biologist George Price, who fell into poverty and succumbed to suicide as he obsessed over the problem. In a final surprising turn, William Hamilton, the scientist who came up with the equation that reduced altruism to the cold language of natural selection, desperately hoped that his theory did not apply to humans. Hamilton's Rule, which states that relatives are worth helping in direct proportion to their blood relatedness, is as fundamental to evolutionary biology as Newton's laws of motion are to physics. But even today, decades after its formulation, Hamilton's Rule is still hotly debated among those who cannot accept that goodness can be explained by a simple mathematical formula. For the first time, Lee Alan Dugatkin brings to life the people, the issues, and the passions that have surrounded the altruism debate. Readers will be swept along by this fast-paced tale of history, biography, and scientific discovery.
Download or read book Animals and Science Fiction written by Nora Castle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Players and Their Pets written by Mia Consalvo and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the world of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), 'Faunasphere' was but a blip on the screen in its short public life from 2009 to 2011. Its devoted players, many of them middle-aged women, entered a world that did not build on common fantasy or science-fiction tropes. There was no evil to defeat or realms to conquer, only friendly animals to care for and pollution to fight. Mia Consalvo and Jason Begy argue that its very difference makes it critically important - even more so than the large, commercially successful games such as 'World of Warcraft' that have all too often shaped game studies discourse.
Download or read book The PlayStation Dreamworld written by Alfie Bown and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Old Wolf written by Avi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the starving time a wolf and a raven work together to survive.
Download or read book The Disneyfication of Animals written by Rebecca Rose Stanton and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines how Walt Disney Animation Studios has depicted – and sometimes failed to depict – different forms of harming and objectifying non-human animals in their films. Each chapter addresses a different form of animal harm and objectification through the theories of speciesism, romanticism, and the ‘collapse of compassion’ effect, from farming, hunting and fishing, to clothing, work, and entertainment. Stanton lucidly presents the dichotomy between depictions of higher order, anthropomorphised and neotonised animal characters and that of lower-order species, showing furthermore how these depictions are closely linked to changing social attitudes about acceptable forms of animal harm. An engaging and novel contribution to the field of Critical Animal Studies, this book explores the use of animals not only in Disney’s best known animated films such as 101 Dalmatians, but also lesser known features including Home on the Range and Fun and Fancy Free. A quantitative appendix supplying data on how often each animal species appears and the amount of times animal harm or objectification is depicted in over fifty films provides an invaluable resource and addition to scholars working in both Disney and animal studies.
Download or read book Videogames for Humans written by Merritt Kopas and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Fiction. Hybrid Genre. LGBTQIA Studies. VIDEOGAMES FOR HUMANS, curated and introduced by Twine author and games theorist merritt k, puts Twine authors, literary writers, and games critics into conversation with one another's work, reacting to, elaborating on, and being affected by the same. The result is an unprecedented kind of book about video games, one that has helped to jumpstart the discussions that will define the games culture of tomorrow. Featuring contributions from Aevee Bee, Alex Roberts, Anna Anthropy, Auriea Harvey, Austin Walker, Avery Mcdaldno, Benji Bright, Bryan Reid, Cara Ellison, Cat Fitzpatrick, Christine Love, Elizabeth Sampat, Elizabeth Sampat, Emily Short, Eva Problems, Gaming Pixie, Imogen Binnie, Jeremy Lonien & Dominik Johann, Jeremy Penner, John Brindle, Katherine Cross, Kayla Unknown, Lana Polansky, Leigh Alexander, Leon Arnott, Lydia Neon, Maddox Pratt, Mary Hamilton, Matthew S. Burns, Mattie Brice, Michael Brough, Mike Joffe, Mira Simon, Naomi Clark, Nina Freeman, Olivia Vitolo, Patricia Hernandez, Pippin Barr, Riley MacLeod, Rokashi Edwards, Sloane, Soha Kareem, Squinky, Tom McHenry, Toni Pizza, Winter Lake, and Zoe Quinn.
Download or read book Animals in Minecraft written by Josh Gregory and published by Cherry Lake. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minecraft is more than just a video game. It is a phenomenon that has taken the world by storm. In this book, readers will learn everything they need to know about dealing with animals in the world of Minecraft,including how to tame them and harvest valuable resources from them. Content is presented in a clear and concise way, perfect for the younger hands-on techie. Content is presented in a clear and concise way, perfect for the younger hands-on techie. Includes table of contents, glossary, and index--as well as sources for further reading.
Download or read book Video Games Save the World written by Heather E. Schwartz and published by Capstone Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To save the world, one must play video games. Sounds ridiculous, right? But in reality many people are looking to video games to tackle many of the world's problems. Take a closer look at the ways in which video games can help save the world.
Download or read book Minecraft Guide to Animals written by Josh Gregory and published by Cherry Lake. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 100 million players around the world, Minecraft is one of the most popular video games of all time. Its unique design encourages players to use their creativity and problem solving skills to build entire worlds from scratch. In this book, readers will learn everything they need to know about dealing with animals in the world of Minecraft, including how to tame them and harvest valuable resources from them.
Download or read book Animals That Live in Social Groups written by Bobbie Kalman and published by Crabtree Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-04-16 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the biggest adaptations made by some animals is to live and work together as a group to ensure their survival. This intriguing book shows how social animals communicate and interact with members of their own species. Elephants, dolphins and orcas, monkeys, apes, lions, and wolves, educate their young, work together to find food, and take care of their group members. Smaller animals that work together in microsocieties include termites, ants, bees, and wasps. Students will have fun comparing their own social groups to those found in nature. Fascinating photographs accompany thought-provoking questions and activities.
Download or read book Fifty Key Video Games written by Bernard Perron and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
