Download or read book Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us written by Jordan Erica Webber and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WOULD YOU KILL ONE PERSON TO SAVE FIVE OTHERS? If you could upload all of your memories into a machine, would that machine be you? Is it possible we're all already artificial intelligences, living inside a simulation? These sound like questions from a philosophy class, but in fact they're from modern, popular video games. Philosophical discussion often uses thought experiments to consider ideas that we can't test in real life, and media like books, films, and games can make these thought experiments far more accessible to a non-academic audience. Thanks to their interactive nature, video games can be especially effective ways to explore these ideas. Each chapter of this book introduces a philosophical topic through discussion of relevant video games, with interviews with game creators and expert philosophers. In ten chapters, this book demonstrates how video games can help us to consider the following questions: 1. Why do video games make for good thought experiments? (From the ethical dilemmas of the Mass Effect series to 'philosophy games'.) 2. What can we actually know? (From why Phoenix Wright is right for the wrong reasons to whether No Man's Sky is a lie.) 3. Is virtual reality a kind of reality? (On whether VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive deal in mass-market hallucination.) 4. What constitutes a mind? (From the souls of Beyond: Two Souls to the synths of Fallout 4.) 5. What can you lose before you're no longer yourself? (Identity crises in the likes of The Swapper and BioShock Infinite.) 6. Does it mean anything to say we have choice? (Determinism and free will in Bioshock, Portal 2 and Deus Ex.) 7. What does it mean to be a good or dutiful person? (Virtue ethics in the Ultima series and duty ethics in Planescape: Torment.) 8. Is there anything better in life than to be happy? (Utilitarianism in Bioshock 2 and Harvest Moon.) 10. How should we be governed, for whom and by who? (Government and rights in Eve Online, Crusader Kings, Democracy 3 and Fable 3.) 11. Is it ever right to take another life? And how do we cope with our own death? (The Harm Thesis and the good death in To The Moon and Lost Odyssey.)
Download or read book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy Second Edition written by James Paul Gee and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, new games like World of WarCraft and Half Life 2 are evaluated and theories of cognitive development are expanded. Gee looks at major cognitive activities including how individuals develop a sense of identity, how we grasp meaning, how we evaluate and follow a command, pick a role model, and perceive the world.
Download or read book Theory of Fun for Game Design written by Raph Koster and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2013-11-08 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in full color, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic book takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video games, and examines the elements they share with traditional games such as checkers. At the heart of his exploration, veteran game designer Raph Koster takes a close look at the concept of fun and why it’s the most vital element in any game. Why do some games become boring quickly, while others remain fun for years? How do games serve as fundamental and powerful learning tools? Whether you’re a game developer, dedicated gamer, or curious observer, this illustrated, fully updated edition helps you understand what drives this major cultural force, and inspires you to take it further. You’ll discover that: Games play into our innate ability to seek patterns and solve puzzles Most successful games are built upon the same elements Slightly more females than males now play games Many games still teach primitive survival skills Fictional dressing for modern games is more developed than the conceptual elements Truly creative designers seldom use other games for inspiration Games are beginning to evolve beyond their prehistoric origins
Download or read book How to Do Things with Videogames written by Ian Bogost and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2011-08-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center. Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books, music, and movies. They are increasingly used for purposes other than entertainment, yet debates about videogames still fork along one of two paths: accusations of debasement through violence and isolation or defensive paeans to their potential as serious cultural works. In How to Do Things with Videogames, Ian Bogost contends that such generalizations obscure the limitless possibilities offered by the medium’s ability to create complex simulated realities. Bogost, a leading scholar of videogames and an award-winning game designer, explores the many ways computer games are used today: documenting important historical and cultural events; educating both children and adults; promoting commercial products; and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks, and politics. Examining these applications in a series of short, inviting, and provocative essays, he argues that together they make the medium broader, richer, and more relevant to a wider audience. Bogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses. But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized. How to Do Things with Videogames offers a fresh starting point to more fully consider games’ progress today and promise for the future.
Download or read book Reality Is Broken written by Jane McGonigal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “McGonigal is a clear, methodical writer, and her ideas are well argued. Assertions are backed by countless psychological studies.” —The Boston Globe “Powerful and provocative . . . McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better.” —San Jose Mercury News “Jane McGonigal's insights have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same explosive force.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother A visionary game designer reveals how we can harness the power of games to boost global happiness. With 174 million gamers in the United States alone, we now live in a world where every generation will be a gamer generation. But why, Jane McGonigal asks, should games be used for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking book, she shows how we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world-from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change-and introduces us to cutting-edge games that are already changing the business, education, and nonprofit worlds. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games. Jane McGonigal is also the author of SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient.
Download or read book Video Games as Culture written by Daniel Muriel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video games are becoming culturally dominant. But what does their popularity say about our contemporary society? This book explores video game culture, but in doing so, utilizes video games as a lens through which to understand contemporary social life. Video games are becoming an increasingly central part of our cultural lives, impacting on various aspects of everyday life such as our consumption, communities, and identity formation. Drawing on new and original empirical data – including interviews with gamers, as well as key representatives from the video game industry, media, education, and cultural sector – Video Games as Culture not only considers contemporary video game culture, but also explores how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, late modernity, and contemporary political rationalities. This book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such Video Games, Sociology, and Media and Cultural Studies. It will also be useful for those interested in the wider role of culture, technology, and consumption in the transformation of society, identities, and communities.
Download or read book Lost in a Good Game written by Pete Etchells and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Etchells writes eloquently ... A heartfelt defence of a demonised pastime' The Times 'Once in an age, a piece of culture comes along that feels like it was specifically created for you, the beats and words and ideas are there because it is your life the creator is describing. Lost In A Good Game is exactly that. It will touch your heart and mind. And even if Bowser, Chun-li or Q-Bert weren't crucial parts of your youth, this is a flawless victory for everyone' Adam Rutherford When Pete Etchells was 14, his father died from motor neurone disease. In order to cope, he immersed himself in a virtual world - first as an escape, but later to try to understand what had happened. Etchells is now a researcher into the psychological effects of video games, and was co-author on a recent paper explaining why WHO plans to classify 'game addiction' as a danger to public health are based on bad science and (he thinks) are a bad idea. In this, his first book, he journeys through the history and development of video games - from Turing's chess machine to mass multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft- via scientific study, to investigate the highs and lows of playing and get to the bottom of our relationship with games - why we do it, and what they really mean to us. At the same time, Lost in a Good Game is a very unusual memoir of a writer coming to terms with his grief via virtual worlds, as he tries to work out what area of popular culture we should classify games (a relatively new technology) under.
Download or read book How to Play Video Games written by Matthew Thomas Payne and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty original contributions on games and gaming culture What does Pokémon Go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? How does BioShock Infinite help us navigate world-building? From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Unlike other media technologies, video games demand engagement like no other, which begs the question—what is the role that video games play in our lives, from our homes, to our phones, and on global culture writ large? How to Play Video Games brings together forty original essays from today’s leading scholars on video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand Theft Auto V, or music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. See how Age of Empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture. They are a must read for fans and students of the medium.
Download or read book Chris Crawford on Game Design written by Chris Crawford and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2003 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Crawford on Game Design is all about the foundational skills behind the design and architecture of a game. Without these skills, designers and developers lack the understanding to work with the tools and techniques used in the industry today. Chris Crawford, the most highly sought after expert in this area, brings an intense opinion piece full of personality and flare like no other person in this industry can. He explains the foundational and fundamental concepts needed to get the most out of game development today. An exceptional precursor to the two books soon to be published by New Riders with author Andrew Rollings, this book teaches key lessons; including, what you can learn from the history of game play and historical games, necessity of challenge in game play, applying dimensions of conflict, understanding low and high interactivity designs, watching for the inclusion of creativity, and understanding the importance of storytelling. In addition, Chris brings you the wish list of games he'd like to build and tells you how to do it. Game developers and designers will kill for this information!
Download or read book Things No One Else Can Teach Us written by Humble the Poet and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the international bestselling author of Unlearn, Humble the Poet speaks new truths about how we can create silver linings from our most difficult moments. Every one of us endures setbacks, disappointments, and failures that can beat us down. But we don’t have to let them. Instead, we can use them as opportunities for growth. In Things No One Else Can Teach Us, Humble the Poet goes against conventional wisdom for happiness and success, showing us how our most painful experiences can be our greatest teachers. Humble shares raw, honest stories from his own life—from his rocky start becoming a rapper to nearly going broke to battling racism—to demonstrate how we can change our minds to better our lives. From a breakup to losing a loved one, our hardest moments can help us flourish, but only if we seize the opportunity. While we can’t control life, we have the power to control how we react to it. Things No One Else Can Teach Us reminds us that we have the power to transform the way we respond to everyday challenges and ultimately be our best selves.
Download or read book Power Up written by Matthew Lane and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Did you know that every time you pick up the controller to your PlayStation or Xbox, you are entering a game world steeped in mathematics? Power-Up reveals the hidden mathematics in many of today's most popular video games and explains why mathematical learning doesn't just happen in the classroom or from books--you're doing it without even realizing it when you play games on your cell phone. In this lively and entertaining book, Matthew Lane discusses how gamers are engaging with the traveling salesman problem when they play Assassin's Creed, why it is mathematically impossible for Mario to jump through the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros., and how The Sims teaches us the mathematical costs of maintaining relationships. He looks at mathematical pursuit problems in classic games like Missile Command and Ms. Pac-Man, and how each time you play Tetris, you're grappling with one of the most famous unsolved problems in all of mathematics and computer science. Along the way, Lane discusses why Family Feud and Pictionary make for ho-hum video games, how realism in video games (or the lack of it) influences learning, what video games can teach us about the mathematics of voting, the mathematics of designing video games, and much more. Power-Up shows how the world of video games is an unexpectedly rich medium for learning about the beautiful mathematical ideas that touch all aspects of our lives--including our virtual ones."--Dust jacket.
Download or read book Introducing Discourse Analysis written by James Paul Gee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introducing Discourse Analysis: From Grammar to Society is a concise and accessible introduction by bestselling author, James Paul Gee, to the fundamental ideas behind different specific approaches to discourse analysis, or the analysis of language in use. The book stresses how grammar sets up choices for speakers and writers to make, choices which express, not unvarnished truth, but perspectives or viewpoints on reality. In turn, these perspectives are the material from which social interactions, social relations, identity, and politics make and remake society and culture. The book also offers an approach to how discourse analysis can contribute to lessening the ideological divides and echo chambers that so bedevil our world today. Organized in a user-friendly way with short numbered sections and recommended readings, Introducing Discourse Analysis is an essential primer for all students of discourse analysis within linguistics, education, communication studies, and related areas.
Download or read book Teaching the Basics of Theory of Mind written by Kirstina Ordetx and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2014-09-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This manual contains a 12-week curriculum designed to incorporate a multi-sensory approach to developing the critical and basic aspects of Theory of Mind (ToM). The activities are designed to be used with children aged 5-9, who have been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or who have related social challenges. By building on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles, this book shows how teaching ToM to young children can help them to better understand the emotions and actions of people around them. This curriculum has been designed to enhance the development of ToM and subsequently enhance social understanding in children who demonstrate challenges with pre-requisite skills that lead to successful social relationships and situations. As well as practical advice and supplementary materials such as worksheets and cut-out-and-use flash cards, this book includes reinforcement activities to be carried out at home with parents and care givers. Written by Dr Kirstina Ordetx, an experienced Developmental Psychologist and CBT specialist, this book is essential reading for teachers and other professionals working with children with ASDs and related social difficulties, including SENCOs, behavioural therapists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists, wanting to explore the benefits that ToM can bring to pre-adolescent children.
Download or read book Good Video Games Good Learning written by James Paul Gee and published by New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this book argue that good games teach through well-designed problem-solving experiences. In the end, the book offers a model of collaborative, interactive, and embodied learning centered on problem solving, a model that can be enhanced by games, but which can be accomplished in many different ways with or without games.
Download or read book Extra Lives written by Tom Bissell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.
Download or read book SuperBetter written by Jane McGonigal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative guide to living gamefully, based on the program that has already helped nearly half a million people achieve remarkable personal growth In 2009, internationally renowned game designer Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion. Unable to think clearly or work or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a resilience-building game. What started as a simple motivational exercise quickly became a set of rules for “post-traumatic growth” that she shared on her blog. These rules led to a digital game and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. Today nearly half a million people have played SuperBetter to get stronger, happier, and healthier. But the life-changing ideas behind SuperBetter are much bigger than just one game. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the ways all games—including videogames, sports, and puzzles—change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting a more “gameful” mind-set. Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to real-world goals. Drawing on hundreds of studies, McGonigal shows that getting superbetter is as simple as tapping into the three core psychological strengths that games help you build: • Your ability to control your attention, and therefore your thoughts and feelings • Your power to turn anyone into a potential ally, and to strengthen your existing relationships • Your natural capacity to motivate yourself and super-charge your heroic qualities, like willpower, compassion, and determination SuperBetter contains nearly 100 playful challenges anyone can undertake in order to build these gameful strengths. It includes stories and data from people who have used the SuperBetter method to get stronger in the face of illness, injury, and other major setbacks, as well as to achieve goals like losing weight, running a marathon, and finding a new job. As inspiring as it is down to earth, and grounded in rigorous research, SuperBetter is a proven game plan for a better life. You’ll never say that something is “just a game” again.
Download or read book Theory of Fun for Game Design written by Raph Koster and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2005 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.
