Download or read book Speedrunning written by David Snyder and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  More than 30 years after its 1985 release on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Mario Bros. continues to be one of the best-selling video games of all time. For many, completing the classic side-scrolling platformer remains challenging enough to provide many hours of entertainment. In late 2016 an American gamer known online as “darbian” completed the game in record time, rescuing Princess Peach in 4 minutes, 56 seconds. darbian practices speedrunning, a method of play in which quick reflexes and intimate familiarity with games are used to complete them in the fastest possible time. Through 10 interviews with darbian and other elite speedrunners, this book explores the history and techniques of this intense and competitive type of gaming.

Download or read book Speedrun Science written by Eric Koziel and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-14 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Speedrunning written by David Snyder and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 30 years after its 1985 release on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Mario Bros. continues to be one of the best-selling video games of all time. For many, completing the classic side-scrolling platformer remains challenging enough to provide many hours of entertainment. In late 2016 an American gamer known online as "darbian" completed the game in record time, rescuing Princess Peach in 4 minutes, 56 seconds. darbian practices speedrunning, a method of play in which quick reflexes and intimate familiarity with games are used to complete them in the fastest possible time. Through 10 interviews with darbian and other elite speedrunners, this book explores the history and techniques of this intense and competitive type of gaming.

Download or read book SpeedRunner written by Pete Magill and published by VeloPress. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The speed you need to outsprint the competition, juke your opponent on the field or court, set personal records, and achieve peak performance. In SpeedRunner, celebrated running coach Pete Magill reveals his 4-week training plan to make any athlete into a faster runner, no matter the sport, age, gender, experience, or goals. In every sport that includes running, the difference between the best and the rest is tenths of a second. From team sports like football, soccer, basketball, and baseball to individual sports like distance running, track, and triathlon, faster leg speed makes champions. By targeting the neuromuscular system and strengthening muscle and connective tissue, Magill’s SpeedRunner program builds speed, strength, endurance, agility, coordination, balance, proprioception, and explosive power so athletes can excel. Developed over decades of experience coaching athletes of all ages from short sprints to the marathon, Magill’s SpeedRunner program is your key to speed. Magill has led his club to two dozen US National Masters Championships in road running and cross country. As a 5-time USA Masters Cross Country Runner of the Year and multiple American and world age-group record holder himself, Magill is proof that his training methods are effective. Along with its core 4-week program, SpeedRunner offers speed only training, once-a-week speed work for distance runners, and single-day sessions focused on injury prevention and whole-body strength. SpeedRunner will make you faster, stronger, quicker—no matter your sport!

Download or read book Mixed Reality and Games written by Emir Bektic and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2020-10-31 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Videogames allow us to immerse ourselves in worlds that are reflective of cultural phenomena. At the same time, games are in the process of occupying and utilising the real world as a part of the game. The book provides a combination of theoretical and practical approaches to mixed reality through the lenses of game studies and pedagogy. These novel approaches invite the reader to rethink their conceptions of games and mixed reality. They are complemented with classical analyses of games and applications in educational contexts. In uniting theory and hands-on approaches, the book provides a broad spectrum that facilitates and inspires interdisciplinary thinking and work.

Download or read book Video Games Have Always Been Queer written by Bonnie Ruberg and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues for the queer potential of video games While popular discussions about queerness in video games often focus on big-name, mainstream games that feature LGBTQ characters, like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, Bonnie Ruberg pushes the concept of queerness in games beyond a matter of representation, exploring how video games can be played, interpreted, and designed queerly, whether or not they include overtly LGBTQ content. Video Games Have Always Been Queer argues that the medium of video games itself can—and should—be read queerly. In the first book dedicated to bridging game studies and queer theory, Ruberg resists the common, reductive narrative that games are only now becoming more diverse. Revealing what reading D. A. Miller can bring to the popular 2007 video game Portal, or what Eve Sedgwick offers Pong, Ruberg models the ways game worlds offer players the opportunity to explore queer experience, affect, and desire. As players attempt to 'pass' in Octodad or explore the pleasure of failure in Burnout: Revenge, Ruberg asserts that, even within a dominant gaming culture that has proved to be openly hostile to those perceived as different, queer people have always belonged in video games—because video games have, in fact, always been queer.

Download or read book Real Life in Real Time written by Johanna Brewer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural ramifications of online live streaming, including its effects on identity and power in digital spaces. Some consider live streaming—the broadcasting of video and/or audio footage live online—simply an internet fad or source of entertainment, yet it is at the center of the digital mediation of our lives. In this edited volume, Johanna Brewer, Bo Ruberg, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud present a broad range of essays that explore the cultural implications of live streaming, paying special attention to how it is shifting notions of identity and power in digital spaces. The diverse set of international authors included represent a variety of perspectives, from digital media studies to queer studies, from human-computer interaction to anthropology, and more. While important foundational work has been carried out by game studies scholars, many other elements of streaming practices remain to be explored. To deepen engagement with diversity and social justice, the editors have included a variety of voices on such topics as access, gender, sexuality, race, disability, harassment, activism, and the cultural implications of design aesthetics. Live streaming affects a wide array of behaviors, norms, and patterns of communication. But above all, it lets participants observe and engage with real life as it unfolds in real time. Ultimately, these essays challenge us to look at both the possibilities for harm and the potential for radical change that live streaming presents.

Download or read book How Pac Man Eats written by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean; with examples ranging from Papers, Please to Dys4ia. In How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin considers two questions: What are the fundamental ways that games work? And how can games be about something? Wardrip-Fruin argues that the two issues are related. Bridging formalist and culturally engaged approaches, he shows how the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean.

Download or read book Ability Machines written by Sky LaRell Anderson and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video games are both physically and cognitively demanding--so what does that mean for those with a disability or mental illness? Though they may seem at odds, Ability Machines illuminates just how vital video games are to understanding our bodies and abilities. In Ability Machines, Sky LaRell Anderson shows us how video games can help us imagine what our abilities mean and how they engage us physically, behaviorally, and cognitively to envision our agency beyond limitations. On the surface, this can mean games provide power fantasies; more profoundly, games can fundamentally reshape cultural and personal understandings of mental health, illness, disability, and accessibility. Video games are indeed ability machines that produce a reimagined state of agency. Featuring a comparative analysis of key video game titles, including Metal Gear Solid V, Wolfenstein II, Celeste, Devil May Cry 5, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Hades, Nier: Automata, and more, Ability Machines tackles larger questions of ability and how our bodies relate to interactive media.

Download or read book Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames written by Jason Hawreliak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book merges recent trends in game studies and multimodal studies to explore the relationship between the interaction between videogames’ different modes and the ways in which they inform meaning for both players and designers. The volume begins by laying the foundation for integrating the two disciplines, drawing upon social semiotic and discourse analytic traditions to examine their relationship with meaning in videogames. The book uses a wide range of games as examples to demonstrate the medium’s various forms of expression at work, including audio, visual, textual, haptic, and procedural modes, with a particular focus on the procedural form, which emphasizes processes and causal relationships, to better showcase its link with meaning-making. The second half of the book engages in a discussion of different multimodal configurations and user generated content to show how they contribute to the negotiation of meaning in the player experience, including their role in constructing and perpetuating persuasive messages and in driving interesting and unique player decisions in gameplay. Making the case for the benefits of multimodal approaches to game studies, this volume is key reading for students and researchers in multimodal studies, game studies, rhetoric, semiotics, and discourse analysis.

Download or read book Playing with Videogames written by James Newman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing with Videogames documents the richly productive, playful and social cultures of videogaming that support, surround and sustain this most important of digital media forms and yet which remain largely invisible within existing studies. James Newman details the rich array of activities that surround game-playing, charting the vibrant and productive practices of the vast number of videogame players and the extensive 'shadow' economy of walkthroughs, FAQs, art, narratives, online discussion boards and fan games, as well as the cultures of cheating, copying and piracy that have emerged. Playing with Videogames offers the reader a comprehensive understanding of the meanings of videogames and videogaming within the contemporary media environment.

Download or read book Battlefields of Negotiation written by Rene Glas and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massively multiplayer online role-playing game 'World of Warcraft' has become one of the most popular computer games of the past decade, introducing millions around the world to community-based play. Within the boundaries set by its design, the game encourages players to appropriate and shape the game to their own wishes, resulting in highly diverse forms of play and participation. This illuminating study frames 'World of Warcraft' as a complex socio-cultural phenomenon defined by and evolving as a result of the negotiations between groups of players as well as the game's owners, throwing new light on complex consumer- producer relationships in the increasingly participatory but still tightly controlled media of online games.

Download or read book Games written by C. Thi Nguyen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn't just create a world; they create who you will be in that world. They tell you what abilities to use and what goals to take on. In other words, they specify a form of agency. Games work in the medium of agency. And to play them, we take on alternate agencies and submerge ourselves in them. What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that we have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over. Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art - the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity. And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency."--

Download or read book A History of Competitive Gaming written by Lu Zhouxiang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Competitive gaming, or esports – referring to competitive tournaments of video games among both casual gamers and professional players – began in the early 1970s with small competitions like the one held at Stanford University in October 1972, where some 20 researchers and students attended. By 2022 the estimated revenue of the global esports industry is in excess of $947 million, with over 200 million viewers worldwide. Regardless of views held about competitive gaming, esports have become a modern economic and cultural phenomenon. This book studies the full history of competitive gaming from the 1970s to the 2010s against the background of the arrival of the electronic and computer age. It investigates how competitive gaming has grown into a new form of entertainment, a sport-like competition, a lucrative business and a unique cultural sensation. It also explores the role of competitive gaming in the development of the video game industry, making a distinctive contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the history of video games. A History of Competitive Gaming will appeal to all those interested in the business and culture of gaming, as well as those studying modern technological culture.

Download or read book Transnational Contexts of Culture Gender Class and Colonialism in Play written by Alexis Pulos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the local, regional and transnational contexts of video games through a focused analysis on gaming communities, the ways game design regulates gender and class relations, and the impacts of colonization on game design. The critical interest in games as a cultural artifact is covered by a wide range of interdisciplinary work. To highlight the social impacts of games the first section of the book covers the systems built around high score game competitions, the development of independent game design communities, and the formation of fan communities and cosplay. The second section of the book offers a deeper analysis of game structures, gender and masculinity, and the economic constraints of empire that are built into game design. The final section offers a macro perspective on transnational and colonial discourses built into the cultural structures of East Asian game play.

Download or read book Who Are You written by Alex Custodio and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Game Boy Advance platform as computational system and cultural artifact, from its 2001 release through hacks, mods, emulations, homebrew afterlives. In 2002, Nintendo of America launched an international marketing campaign for the Game Boy Advance that revolved around the slogan “Who Are You?”—asking potential buyers which Nintendo character, game, or even device they identified with and attempting to sell a new product by exploiting players' nostalgic connections to earlier ones. Today, nearly two decades after its release, and despite the development of newer and more powerful systems, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance lives on, through a community that continues to hack, modify, emulate, make, break, remake, redesign, trade, use, love, and play with the platform. In this book Alex Custodio traces the network of hardware and software afterlives of the Game Boy Advance platform. Each chapter considers a component of this network—hardware, software, peripheral, or practice—that illuminates the platform's unique features as a computational system and a cultural artifact. Examining the evolution of the design and architecture of Nintendo's handhelds and home consoles, and the constraints imposed on developers and players, for example, Custodio finds that Nintendo essentially embeds nostalgia into its hardware. She explores Nintendo's expansion of the platform through interoperability; physical and affective engagement with the Game Boy Advance; portability, private space, and social interaction; the platformization of nostalgia; fan-generated content including homebrew, hacking, and hardware modding; and e-waste—the final afterlife of consumer electronics. Although the Game Boy Advance is neither the most powerful nor the most popular of Nintendo's handhelds, Custodio argues, it is the platform that most fundamentally embodies Nintendo's reliance on the aesthetics and materiality of nostalgia.

Download or read book Throne of Eldraine The Wildered Quest written by Kate Elliott and published by Wizards of the Coast. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the exciting new story of Magic's latest release, Throne of Eldraine, the young warrior-mage twins Rowan and Will Kenrith quest for their missing father, High King Kenrith. Venturing far from the safety of the Realm, their search takes them deep into the Wilds—a hostile land of faeries, monsters, and untamed magic. A chance encounter with the wily and inscrutable shapeshifter Oko seems somehow connected, but memory of the Fey trickster flits away with a wink. Beleaguered by unclear recollections and pursued relentlessly by Garruk, a cursed hunter stalking Planeswalkers across the Multiverse, can the royal scions unravel the mystery of their father's disappearance and restore him to his rightful throne before his absence shatters the peace of their home?