Download or read book Playing at the World written by Jon Peterson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible. From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural innovation of the late twentieth century.
Download or read book Game Wizards written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators. When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies. Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the "Satanic Panic" accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR's reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax's losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D. With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.
Download or read book The Elusive Shift written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorizing a new game genre. When Dungeon & Dragons made its debut in the mid-1970s, followed shortly thereafter by other, similar tabletop games, it sparked a renaissance in game design and critical thinking about games. D&D is now popularly considered to be the first role-playing game. But in the original rules, the term "role-playing" is nowhere to be found; D&D was marketed as a war game. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson describes how players and scholars in the D&D community began to apply the term to D&D and similar games--and by doing so, established a new genre of games.
Download or read book Power Play written by Asi Burak and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An insider’s view of the good things that can emerge from being glued to a screen. . . . A solid piece of pop-culture/business journalism.” —Kirkus Reviews The phenomenal growth of gaming has inspired plenty of hand-wringing since its inception—from the press, politicians, parents, and everyone else concerned with its effect on our brains, bodies, and hearts. But what if games could be good, not only for individuals but for the world? In Power Play, Asi Burak and Laura Parker explore how video games are now pioneering innovative social change around the world. As the former executive director and now chairman of Games for Change, Asi Burak has spent the last ten years supporting and promoting the use of video games for social good, in collaboration with leading organizations like the White House, NASA, World Bank, and The United Nations. The games for change movement has introduced millions of players to meaningful experiences around everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the US Constitution. Power Play looks to the future of games as a global movement. Asi Burak and Laura Parker profile the luminaries behind some of the movement’s most iconic games, including former Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O’Connor and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They also explore the promise of virtual reality to address social and political issues with unprecedented immersion, and see what the next generation of game makers have in store for the future.
Download or read book A Play for the End of the World written by Jai Chakrabarti and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling novel—set in early 1970's New York and rural India—the story of a turbulent, unlikely romance, a harrowing account of the lasting horrors of World War II, and a searing examination of one man's search for forgiveness and acceptance. “Looks deeply at the echoes and overlaps among art, resistance, love, and history ... an impressive debut.” —Meg Wolitzer, best-selling author of The Female Persuasion New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Travelling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor's guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves. An unforgettable love story, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political upheaval, and a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present, A Play for the End of the World is a remarkable debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.
Download or read book Playing Tough written by Roger I. Abrams and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2013 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing Tough is an entertaining and thoroughly enlightening look at the unique and surprisingly outsized role that sports have played in politics and history. Ever since the bread and circuses of Rome, sports have been used as a tool to entertain the masses and to instill civic pride. Abrams shows both the positive and the negative ways in which sports and politics have coalesced, from the rabid nationalism of the 1936 Nazi Olympics, the political grudge match of the Louis and Schmeling fights, and the "futbol war" between Honduras and Costa Rica to the inspiring stories of South Africa's rugby nation-building and Muhammad Ali's brave antiwar stance, which nearly cost him his career. Abrams is an informed and impassioned writer who chronicles the profoundly creative and destructive influence that sports have on the political life of our nation and the world. This book will be of interest to any and all sports and politics enthusiasts and is a wonderful introduction for course creation and adoption.
Download or read book Leaving Mundania written by Lizzie Stark and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposing a subculture only beginning to enter the imagination of mainstream America, this is the story of live action role-playing (LARP) games. A hybrid of games—such as Dungeons & Dragons, historical reenactment, fandom, and good old-fashioned pretend—LARP games are thriving and this book explores its multifaceted culture and related phenomenon, including the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval reenactment group that boasts more than 32,000 members. The history of LARP is detailed and is shown to have arisen from the pageantry of Tudor England and is currently being used as a training tool for the U.S. military. Along the way, the author duels foes with foam-padded weapons, lets the great elder god Cthulhu destroy her parents' beach house, and endures an existential awakening in the high-art LARP scene of Scandinavia.
Download or read book Wonderland written by Steven Johnson and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2016 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everyone knows the old saying "necessity is the mother of invention," but if you do a paternity test on many of the modern world's most important ideas or institutions, you will find, invariably, that leisure and play were involved in the conception as well." Most history books don't concern themselves with delight. History is the serious business of war, treaties, governments and monarchs. This is a different kind of history book. Steven Johnson argues that if you want to understand how we got to now, you have to understand pleasure and play. A staggering amount of the landscape of modern life is populated by environments and technology designed to entertain and delight us. Here history of popular entertainment, arguing that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Throughout history, he locates the cutting edge of innovation wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows.
Download or read book A World of Excesses written by Faltin Karlsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores gaming culture, focusing on competent players and excessive use. Addressing the contested question of whether addiction is possible in relation to computer games - specifically online gaming - A World of Excesses demonstrates that excessive playing does not necessarily have detrimental effects, and that there are important contextual elements that influence what consequences playing has for the players. Based on new empirical studies, including in-depth interviews and virtual ethnography, and drawing on material from international game related sites, this book examines the reasons for which gaming can occupy such a central place in people's lives, to the point of excess. As such, it will be of interest to sociologists and psychologists working in the fields of cultural and media studies, the sociology of leisure, information technology and addiction.
Download or read book The Play of the World written by James S. Hans and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shared Fantasy written by Gary Alan Fine and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-08-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic study still provides one of the most acute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players—as well as their reasons for playing.
Download or read book Games of the World written by Frederic V. Grunfeld and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The World in Play written by Timothy B. Husband and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2016-01-20 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, card playing was widely enjoyed at all levels of society. The playing cards in this engaging volume are unique works of art that illuminate the transition from late medieval to early modern Europe, a period of tumultuous social, artistic, economic, and religious change. Included are the most important luxury decks of hand-painted European playing cards that have survived, as well as a selection of hand-colored woodblock cards, engraved cards, and tarot packs. The casts of characters they illustrate range from royals to commoners. Many feature animals such as falcons and hounds, while other portray such diverse objects as acorns, helmets, or coins. This is the only study of its kind in English and the only one in a generation in any language. The insightful narrative by Timothy B. Husband discusses the significance of playing cards in the secular art of the period and also recounts the varied stories they tell, conjuring the customs and facts of life of the time. Little is known abut the games played with these cards, but as Husband notes: "The playing out of a hand of cards can be seen as a microcosmic reflection of the ever-changing world around us—a world in play—a view that the creators of the cards under discussion here would seem to have shared.
Download or read book Play as Symbol of the World written by Eugen Fink and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eugen Fink is considered one of the clearest interpreters of phenomenology and was the preferred conversational partner of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Play as Symbol of the World, Fink offers an original phenomenology of play as he attempts to understand the world through the experience of play. He affirms the philosophical significance of play, why it is more than idle amusement, and reflects on the movement from "child's play" to "cosmic play." Well-known for its nontechnical, literary style, this skillful translation by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner invites engagement with Fink's philosophy of play and related writings on sports, festivals, and ancient cult practices.
Download or read book Globalization and Sport written by Toby Miller and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001-07-12 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization and Sport argues that although sport is a source of pleasure, it is also part of the government of everyday life. The creation of a sporting calendar, movements of rational recreation and the development of public sector physical education, are read as ways of disciplining and shaping urban-industrial populations.
Download or read book Play with Us written by Oriol Ripoll and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells how to play more than one hundred games that are played by children throughout the world, ranging from board games and jacks to jumping and hand games.
Download or read book Playing for Time written by Lucy Neal and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking handbook is a resource for artists, community activists and anyone wishing to reach beyond the facts and figures of science and technology to harness their creativity to make change in the world. This timely book explores the pivotal role artists play in re-thinking the future; re-inventing and re-imagining our world at a time of systemic change and uncertainty. Playing for Time identifies collaborative arts practices emerging in response to planetary challenges, reclaiming a traditional role for artists in the community as truth-tellers and agents of change. Sixty experienced artists and activists give voice to a new narrative – shifting society’s rules and values away from consumerism and commodity towards community and collaboration with imagination, humour, ingenuity, empathy and skill. Inspired by the grass-roots Transition movement, modelling change in communities worldwide, Playing for Time joins the dots between key drivers of change – in energy, finance, climate change, food and community resilience – and ‘recipes for action’ for readers to take and try. Praise for Playing for Time... ‘This book is full of wings – wings that are ancient practices, that are community, arts, modernity, wings of global learning for local concerns. Lucy Neal’s anthology of possibility offers a salmagundi of thought,knowledge, options and hope. It’s all here. An almanac to dip into and then create – in the kitchen and the window box and the garden, locally, in community, regionally, nationally, globally. The seeds of change are in us. This is a book to help us grow.’ Stella Duffy, author and founder of Fun Palaces ‘It’s so important that the role of artists in making change is being systematically and beautifully addressed. Playing for Time, holds the keys to the possibility of transformative action.’ Bill McKibben, environmentalist and founder of 350.org ‘A remarkable book that pulls no punches. It’s most enduring image is the poignant flock of passenger pigeons, drawn in sand on Llangrannog beach in 2014, the 100th anniversary of their extinction. It’s an image that will not leave my mind: a message of loss, but also of hope, from which we must, and can, learn.’ Dame Fiona Reynolds, Chair of the Green Alliance ‘“Barren art”, Kandinsky wrote, “is the child of its age”. But prophetic, powerful art is the “mother ofthe future”. A better world will be born of such art, and Lucy Neal’s wonderful cornucopia should beat the elbow of everyone helping in its midwifery.’ Tom Crompton, Common Cause Foundation WWF ‘A total delight’ Rob Hopkins, Co-founder Transition Movement ‘A hand-book for life’ Rose Fenton, Director Free Word. ‘A remarkable achievement’ Neil Darlison, Arts Council England ‘Beautiful from the first sentence’ Laura Williams ‘Deeply nourishing’ Mike Grenville ‘A beauty of a book’ James Marriott, Platform
