Download or read book Ludotopia written by Espen Aarseth and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2019-08-31 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do computer games »happen«? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of »space«, »place« and »territory« featuring in most general theories of space to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games. Shifting the focus away from earlier debates on, e.g., the narrative nature of games, this collection proposes, instead, that thorough attention be given to the tension between experienced spaces and narrated places as well as to the mapping of both of these.
Download or read book Expressive Space written by Gregory Whistance-Smith and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video game spaces have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and inhabit. Like buildings, cities, and gardens before them, these virtual environments express meaning and communicate ideas and affects through the spatial experiences they afford. Drawing on the emerging field of embodied cognition, this book explores the dynamic interplay between mind, body, and environment that sits at the heart of spatial communication. To capture the wide diversity of forms that spatial expression can take, the book builds a comparative analysis of twelve video games across four types of space, spanning ones designed for exploration and inhabitation, kinetic enjoyment, enacting a situated role, and enhancing perception. Together, these diverse virtual environments suggest the many ways that video games enhance and extend our embodied lives.
Download or read book Video Games and Comedy written by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-26 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games. Chapter “Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Download or read book Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies written by Dietmar Meinel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-02-21 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths ("wilderness," "frontier," or "city upon a hill"), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games.
Download or read book Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice written by Mike Piero and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video Game Chronotopes and Social Justice examines how the chronotope, which literally means “timespace,” is an effective interpretive lens through which to understand the cultural and ideological significance of video games. Using ‘slow readings’ attuned to deconstruction along the lines of post-structuralist theory, gender studies, queer studies, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Mike Piero exposes the often-overlooked misogyny, heteronormativity, racism, and patriarchal structures present in many Triple-A video games through their arrangement of timespace itself. Beyond understanding time and space as separate mechanics and dimensions, Piero reunites time and space through the analysis of six chronotopes—of the bonfire, the abject, the archipelago, the fart as pharmakon, madness, and coupled love—toward a poetic meaning making that is at the heart of play itself, all in affirmation of life, equity, and justice.
Download or read book Assassin s Creed in the Classroom written by Erik Champion and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The open world role-playing Assassin’s Creed video game series is one of the most successful series of all time, praised for its in-depth use of historical characters and events, compelling graphics, and addictive gameplay. Assassin’s Creed games offer up the possibility of exploring history, mythology, and heritage immersively, graphically, and imaginatively. This collection of essays by architects archaeologists and historiansexplores the learning opportunities of playing, modifying, and extending the games in the classroom, on location, in the architectural studio, and in a museum.
Download or read book Paratextualizing Games written by Benjamin Beil and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaming no longer only takes place as a ›closed interactive experience‹ in front of TV screens, but also as broadcast on streaming platforms or as cultural events in exhibition centers and e-sport arenas. The popularization of new technologies, forms of expression, and online services has had a considerable influence on the academic and journalistic discourse about games. This anthology examines which paratexts gaming cultures have produced - i.e., in which forms and formats and through which channels we talk (and write) about games - as well as the way in which paratexts influence the development of games. How is knowledge about games generated and shaped today and how do boundaries between (popular) criticism, journalism, and scholarship have started to blur? In short: How does the paratext change the text?
Download or read book Artificial Intelligence and Playable Media written by Eric Freedman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-02 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The World of Fallout written by Kenton Taylor Howard and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-20 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the four main single player games in the franchise and its related spinoff games, this book explores the world of the popular role-playing video game, Fallout. Kenton Taylor Howard examines the maps of the games, the design of their worlds, and how the franchise has been expanded through fan-created video game modifications and tabletop games. This book highlights the importance of worldbuilding in the Fallout franchise, examining the extensive alternate history the game creates – diverging from real-world history in the early 1900s and resulting in a world that is destroyed by nuclear apocalypse in 2077 – and exploring how the series builds this detailed world over the course of many games. The book also examines how the franchise has served as an extended commentary on American militarism and expansionism. The series is closely examined through the lens of critical media studies, as well as relying on theoretical frameworks relating to video game design and world design. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and enthusiasts of video game studies, video game design, media fandom and fan studies, transmedia studies, and imaginary worlds.
Download or read book Disability and Video Games written by Markus Spöhrer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection intends to fill a long overdue research gap on the praxeological aspects of the relationships between disabilities, accessibility, and digital gaming. It will focus on the question of how Game Studies can profit from a Disability Studies perspective of en-/disabling gaming and issues of disability, (in)accessibility and ableism, and vice versa. Instead of departing from the medical model of disability that informs a wide range of publications on “disabled” gaming and that preconceives users as either “able-bodied,” “normal” or as “disabled,” “deficit,” or “unable to play,” our central premise is that dis/ability is not an essential characteristic of the playing subject. We rather intend to analyze the complex infrastructures of playing, i.e., the complex interplay of heterogeneous human and non-human actors, that are en- or disabling.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Video Games 3 volumes written by Mark J. P. Wolf and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 1365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its second edition, the Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming is the definitive, go-to resource for anyone interested in the diverse and expanding video game industry. This three-volume encyclopedia covers all things video games, including the games themselves, the companies that make them, and the people who play them. Written by scholars who are exceptionally knowledgeable in the field of video game studies, it notes genres, institutions, important concepts, theoretical concerns, and more and is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of video games of its kind, covering video games throughout all periods of their existence and geographically around the world. This is the second edition of Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming, originally published in 2012. All of the entries have been revised to accommodate changes in the industry, and an additional volume has been added to address the recent developments, advances, and changes that have occurred in this ever-evolving field. This set is a vital resource for scholars and video game aficionados alike.
Download or read book Intermedia Games Games Inter Media written by Michael Fuchs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com While all media are part of intermedial networks, video games are often at the nexus of that network. They not only employ cinematics, embedded books, and in-world television screens for various purposes, but, in our convergence culture, video games also play a vital role in allowing players to explore transmedia storyworlds. At the same time, video games are frequently thematized and remediated in film, television, and literature. Indeed, the central role video games assume in intermedial networks provides testament to their significance in the contemporary media environment. In this volume, an international group of contributors discuss not only intermedial phenomena in video games, but also the intermedial networks surrounding them. Intermedia Games-Games Inter Media will deepen readers' understanding of the convergence culture of the early twenty-first century and video games' role in it.
Download or read book Video Games and Storytelling written by Souvik Mukherjee and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-à-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.
Download or read book Digital Narrative Spaces written by Daniel Punday and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a broad consensus that digital narrative is "spatial," but what this critical term means and how it is used varies greatly depending on the discipline from which it is approached. Digital Narrative Spaces brings together essays by prominent scholars in electronic literature and other forms of digital authorship to explore the relationship between story and space across these disciplines. This volume includes an introduction with Marie-Laure Ryan’s typology of space, followed by thought-provoking individual chapters which explore innovative explorations of electronic literature, locative media, literary tourism, and the mapping of real-world literary spaces. The collection closes with an essay analyzing continuities and discontinuities in theory of space across the chapters. This volume will provide an important framework for establishing a dialogue across disciplines and future scholarship in these fields.
Download or read book Fiction Fiction written by Elena Peytchinska and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operative fiction: New narrative strategies With Fiction Fiction, visual artist Elena Peytchinska and poet Thomas Ballhausen are continuing their linguistic/artistic exploration of space and language, as well as with the intertwining of drawing and literature. While their previous works FAUNA (2018) and FLORA (2020) focused on strategies of rapprochement between the arts and the sciences based on linguistic-artistic premises, their latest work interrogates the relationship between the science of fiction and the fiction of science. Fiction Fiction presents a relational, practice-oriented model of operative fiction, which not only encounters the supposedly unthinkable other but integrates it as an active and necessary part of thought and creative processes. Literature and/as artistic research, following on from FAUNA (2018) and FLORA (2020) Artistic reflections on contemporary philosophy and its sociocritical contexts With contributions by Lucia D’Errico, Sabina Holzer, Elisabeth Schäfer, and Ferdinand Schmatz
Download or read book Playing at a Distance written by Sonia Fizek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential exploration of video game aesthetic that decenters the human player and challenges what it means to play. Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In Playing at a Distance, Sonia Fizek engages with these and many more daunting questions, forging new ways to think and talk about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them—Fizek shows how these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age. Introducing the concept of distance, Fizek reorients our view of computer-mediated play. To “play at a distance,” she says, is to delegate the immediate action to the machine and to become participants in an algorithmic spectacle. Distance as a media aesthetic framework enables the reader to come to terms with the ambiguity and aesthetic diversity of play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy, media theory, and posthumanism, as well as cultural and film studies, Playing at a Distance invites a wider understanding of what digital games and gaming are in all their diverse experiences and forms. In challenging the common perception of video games as inherently interactive, the book contributes to our understanding of the computer’s influence on practices of play—and prods us to think more broadly about what it means to play.
Download or read book Media Ecologies of Literature written by Susanne Bayerlipp and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the media ecologies of literature – the ways in which a literary text is interwoven in its material, technical, performative, praxeological, affective, and discursive network and which determine how it is experienced and interpreted. Through novel approaches to the complex, contingent and interdependent environments of literature, this volume demonstrates how questions about the mediality of literature – particularly in the wake of digitization – shed a new light on our understanding of textuality, reading, platforms and reception processes. By drawing on recent developments in advanced media theory, Media Ecologies of Literature emphasizes the productivity of innovative re-conceptualizations of literature as a medium in its own right. In an intentionally wide historical scope, the essays engage with literary texts from the Romantic to the contemporary period, from Charlotte Smith and Oscar Wilde to A. L. Kennedy and Mark Z. Danielewski, from the traditionally printed novel to audiobooks and reading apps.
