Download or read book Ludopolitics written by Liam Mitchell and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can videogames tell us about the politics of contemporary technoculture, and how are designers and players responding to its impositions? To what extent do the technical features of videogames index our assumptions about what exists and what is denied that status? And how can we use games to identify and shift those assumptions without ever putting down the controller? Ludopolitics responds to these questions with a critique of one of the defining features of modern technology: the fantasy of control. Videogames promise players the opportunity to map and master worlds, offering closed systems that are perfect in principle if not in practice. In their numerical, rule-bound, and goal-oriented form, they express assumptions about both the technological world and the world as such. More importantly, they can help us identify these assumptions and challenge them. Games like Spec Ops: The Line, Braid, Undertale, and Bastion, as well as play practices like speedrunning, theorycrafting, and myth-making provide an aesthetic means of mounting a political critique of the pursuit and valorization of technological control.
Download or read book A Precarious Game written by Ergin Bulut and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Precarious Game is an ethnographic examination of video game production. The developers that Ergin Bulut researched for almost three years in a medium-sized studio in the U.S. loved making video games that millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers in the Global South. A Precarious Game explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless hours. Bulut argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable transnational industry thrives. Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even when based on mutual consent. As Bulut demonstrates, rather than considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one of democracy rooted in politics.
Download or read book Rules of the Father in The Last of Us written by J. Jesse Ramirez and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely regarded by critics and fans as one of the best games ever produced for the Sony Playstation, The Last of Us is remarkable for offering players a narratively rich experience within the parameters of cultural and gaming genres that often prioritize frenetic violence by straight white male heroes. The Last of Us is also a milestone among mainstream, big-budget (AAA) games because its development team self-consciously intervened in videogames’ historical exclusion of women and girls by creating complex and agentive female characters. The game’s co-protagonist, Ellie, is a teenage girl who is revealed to be queer in The Last of Us: Left Behind (DLC, 2014) and The Last of Us II (2020). Yet The Last of Us also centers Joel, Ellie’s fatherly protector. How is patriarchy, the rule of the father, encoded in rule-based systems like videogames? How does patriarchal rule become an algorithmic rule and vice-versa? These questions are at the heart of this book, the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the zombie apocalypse/ action-adventure/ third-person shooter videogame The Last of Us (2013). On the one hand, the book is a close, extended study of The Last of Us and its themes, genres, procedures, and gameplay. On the other hand, the book is a post-GamerGate reflection on the political and ethical possibilities of progressive play in algorithmic mass culture, of which videogames are now the dominant form.
Download or read book Lies of the Tutsi in Eastern Congo Zaire written by John Kapapi and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's no available information at this time. Author will provide once information is available.
Download or read book The Grounds of Gaming written by Nicholas Taylor and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-12-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we make space for video games in the places where we live, work, and play—and who is allowed to feel welcome there? Despite attempts to expand games beyond their conventional audience of young men, the physical contexts of gameplay and production remain off-limits and unsafe for so many. The Grounds of Gaming explores the physical places where games are played and how they contribute to the persistence of gaming's problematic politics. Drawing on fieldwork in an array of sites, author Nicholas Taylor explores the real-world settings where games are played, watched, discussed and designed. Sometimes these places are sticky, dark, and stinky; other times they are pristine and well appointed. Situating its chapters in such scenes as domestic gaming setups, campus computer labs, LAN parties, esports arenas, and convention centers, Taylor maps the infrastructural connections between games, place, masculinity, and whiteness. By inviting us to reconsider gaming's cultural politics from the ground up, The Grounds of Gaming offers new theoretical insights and practical resources regarding how to make game cultures and industries more inclusive.
Download or read book A Precarious Game written by Ergin Bulut and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Precarious Game is an ethnographic examination of video game production. The developers that Ergin Bulut researched for almost three years in a medium-sized studio in the U.S. loved making video games that millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers in the Global South. A Precarious Game explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless hours. Bulut argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable transnational industry thrives. Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even when based on mutual consent. As Bulut demonstrates, rather than considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one of democracy rooted in politics.
Download or read book Ludopolitics written by Liam Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the fantasy of control is the problem, then videogame controllers are the solution.
Download or read book America The Farewell Tour written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Hedges’s profound and unsettling examination of America in crisis is “an exceedingly…provocative book, certain to arouse controversy, but offering a point of view that needs to be heard” (Booklist), about how bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in a culture of sadism and hate. America, says Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet. Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. In his “forceful and direct” (Publishers Weekly) America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will grow and ravage the country. “With sharply observed detail, Hedges writes a requiem for the American dream” (Kirkus Reviews) and seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.
Download or read book The Playful Citizen written by René Glas and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies.
Download or read book BioShock written by Robert Jackson and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical, critical look at the famous videogame franchise BioShock, understanding it through philosophical, ideological and computational interpretations of systems, decisions and 'propaganda'.
Download or read book Mainstreaming and Game Journalism written by David B. Nieborg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why games are still niche and not mainstream, and how journalism can help them gain cultural credibility. Mainstreaming and Game Journalism addresses both the history and current practice of game journalism, along with the roles writers and industry play in conveying that the medium is a “mainstream” form of entertainment. Through interviews with reporters, David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman retrace how the game industry and journalists started a subcultural spiral in the 1980s that continues to this day. Digital play became increasingly exclusionary by appealing to niche audiences, relying on hardcore fans and favoring the male gamer stereotype. At the same time, this culture pushed journalists to the margins, leaving them toiling to find freelance gigs and deeply ambivalent about their profession. Mainstreaming and Game Journalism also examines the bumpy process of what we think of as “mainstreaming.” The authors argue that it encompasses three overlapping factors. First, for games to become mainstream, they need to become more ubiquitous through broader media coverage. Second, an increase in ludic literacy, or how-to play games, determines whether that greater visibility translates into accessibility. Third, the mainstreaming of games must gain cultural legitimacy. The fact that games are more visible does little if only a few people take them seriously or deem them worthy of attention. Ultimately, Mainstreaming and Game Journalism provocatively questions whether games ever will—or even should—gain widespread cultural acceptance.
Download or read book Optimizing Play written by Christopher A. Paul and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unexpected take on how games work, what the stakes are for them, and how game designers can avoid the traps of optimization. The process of optimization in games seems like a good thing—who wouldn’t want to find the most efficient way to play and win? As Christopher Paul argues in Optimizing Play, however, optimization can sometimes risk a tragedy of the commons, where actions that are good for individuals jeopardize the overall state of the game for everyone else. As he explains, players inadvertently limit play as they theorycraft, seeking optimal choices. The process of developing a meta, or the most effective tactic available, structures decision making, causing play to stagnate. A “stale” meta then creates a perception that a game is solved and may lead players to turn away from the game. Drawing on insights from game studies, rhetoric, the history of science, ecology, and game theory literature, Paul explores the problem of optimization in a range of video games, including Overwatch, FIFA/EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, Clash Royale, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends. He also pulls extensively from data analytics in sports, where the problem has progressed further and is even more intractable than it is in video games, given the money sports teams invest to find an edge. Finally, Paul offers concrete and specific suggestions for how games can be developed to avoid the trap set by optimization run amok.
Download or read book Experimental Games written by Patrick Jagoda and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our unprecedentedly networked world, games have come to occupy an important space in many of our everyday lives. Digital games alone engage an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide as of 2020, and other forms of gaming, such as board games, role playing, escape rooms, and puzzles, command an ever-expanding audience. At the same time, “gamification”—the application of game mechanics to traditionally nongame spheres, such as personal health and fitness, shopping, habit tracking, and more—has imposed unprecedented levels of competition, repetition, and quantification on daily life. Drawing from his own experience as a game designer, Patrick Jagoda argues that games need not be synonymous with gamification. He studies experimental games that intervene in the neoliberal project from the inside out, examining a broad variety of mainstream and independent games, including StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Stardew Valley, Dys4ia, Braid, and Undertale. Beyond a diagnosis of gamification, Jagoda imagines ways that games can be experimental—not only in the sense of problem solving, but also the more nuanced notion of problem making that embraces the complexities of our digital present. The result is a game-changing book on the sociopolitical potential of this form of mass entertainment.
Download or read book The Human Imperative written by Paul Nemitz and published by Ethics International Press. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important new book is about power in the age of Artificial Intelligence. It looks at what the new technical powers that have accrued over the last decades mean for the freedom of people and for our democracies. AI must not be considered in isolation, but rather in a very specific context; the concentration of economic and digital-technological power that we see today. Analysis of the effects of AI requires that we take a holistic view of the business models of digital technologies, and of the power they exercise. Technology, economic power, and political power are entering into ever closer symbiosis. Digital technologies and their corporate masters now know more than people know about themselves, or governments know about the world. These technologies accumulate more and more decision-making powers. Taken together this leads to a massive asymmetry of knowledge and power in the relationship between man and machine. The classical models of action and decision-making in democratic societies are being gradually undermined by such developments. In a new way, the question of the control of technical power arises. This is the first book to look in detail in a holistic way at the challenges of digital power and Artificial Intelligence to Democracy and Liberties, and to set out what can and needs to be done about these challenges in terms of engineering ethics, and democratic action of policy making and legislation. Key audiences are scholars in media sciences, political sciences, computer sciences and engineering, law and philosophy as well as policy makers, corporate and civil society leaders and the educated public. Adapted and updated from the original German language book “Prinzip Mensch – Macht, Freiheit und Demokratie im Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz“, published 2020 by Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH.
Download or read book Intersectional Automations written by Nathan Rambukkana and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intersectional Automations explores a range of situations where robotics, biotechnological enhancement, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic culture collide with intersectional social justice issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and citizenship. As robots, machine learning applications, and human augmentics are artifacts of human culture, they sometimes carry stereotypes, biases, exclusions, and other forms of privilege into their computational logics, platforms, and/or embodiments. The essays in this multidisciplinary collection consider how questions of equity and social justice impact our understanding of these developments, analyzing not only the artifacts themselves, but also the discourses and practices surrounding them, including societal understandings, design choices, law and policy approaches, and their uses and abuses.
Download or read book The Corruption of Play written by Christopher McMahon and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Corruption of Play explores how neoliberal ideology corrupts play in AAA videogames by creating conditions in which play becomes unbound from leisure, allowing play to be understood, undertaken, and assessed in economic terms, and fundamentally undermining the nature of play.
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.
