Computer Games and the Social Imaginary

Download Computer Games and the Social Imaginary PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 074567190X
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Computer Games and the Social Imaginary by : Graeme Kirkpatrick

Download or read book Computer Games and the Social Imaginary written by Graeme Kirkpatrick and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of colour and ‘fun’. In the process, play with computers became computer gaming – a new cultural practice with its own values. From the late 1980s gaming became a resource for people to draw upon as they faced the challenges of life in a new, globalizing digital economy. Gamer identity furnishes a revivified capitalism with compliant and ‘streamlined’ workers, but at times gaming culture also challenges the corporations that control game production. Analysing topics such as the links between technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this insightful text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.

Marx at the Arcade

Download Marx at the Arcade PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Haymarket Books
ISBN 13 : 1608468674
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Marx at the Arcade by : Jamie Woodcock

Download or read book Marx at the Arcade written by Jamie Woodcock and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More people are playing video games than ever before, and yet much of the work of their production remains obscured to us. Deploying a Marxist approach, Jamie Woodcock delves into the hidden abode of the gaming industry, unravelling the vast networks of artists, software developers, and factory and logistics workers whose material and immaterial labor flows into the products we consume on a gargantuan scale. Beyond this, the book analyzes the increasingly important role the gaming industry plays in contemporary capitalism, and the broader transformations of work and economy that it embodies. Woodcock also presents game-play itself not as a “deviant activity,” as it is often understood, but as a commentary of estrangement from contemporary forms of work. In so doing, it offers a fresh and much needed analysis of a sector which has for too long been neglected by scholars and labor activists alike.

Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World

Download Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110435128
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World by : Hans Alma

Download or read book Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World written by Hans Alma and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to study the contemporary dynamics between the religious, the nonreligious and the secular in a globalizing world? Obviously, their relationship is not an empirical datum, liable to the procedures of verification or of logical deduction. We are in need of alternative conceptual and methodological tools. This volume argues that the concept of ‘social imaginary’ as it is used by Charles Taylor, is of utmost importance as a methodological tool to understand these dynamics. The first section is dedicated to the conceptual clarification of Taylor's notion of social imaginaries both through a historical study of their genealogy and through conceptual analysis. In the second section, we clarify the relation of ‘social imaginaries’ to the concept of (religious) worldviewing, understood as a process of truth seeking. Furthermore, we discuss the practical usefulness of the concept of social imaginaries for cultural scientists, by focusing on the concept of human rights as a secular social imaginary. In the third and final section, we relate Taylor's view on the role of social imaginaries and the new paths it opens up for religious studies to other analyses of the secular-religious divide, as they nowadays mainly come to the fore in the debates on what is coined as the ‘post-secular.’

Mainstreaming and Game Journalism

Download Mainstreaming and Game Journalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262375516
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mainstreaming and Game Journalism by : David B. Nieborg

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.

Posthuman Legal Subjectivity

Download Posthuman Legal Subjectivity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000424847
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Posthuman Legal Subjectivity by : Jana Norman

Download or read book Posthuman Legal Subjectivity written by Jana Norman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a reimagining of how Western law and legal theory structures the human–earth relationship. As a complement to contemporary efforts to establish rights of nature and non-human legal personhood, this book focuses on the other subject in the human–earth relationship: the human. Critical ecological feminism exposes the dualistic nature of the ideal human legal subject as a key driver in the dynamic of instrumentalism that characterises the human–earth relationship in Western culture. This book draws on conceptual fields associated with the new sciences, including new materialism, posthuman critical theory and Big History, to demonstrate that the naturalised hierarchy of humans over nature in the Western social imaginary is anything but natural. It then sets about constructing a counternarrative. The proposed ‘Cosmic Person’ as alternative, non-dualised human legal subject forges a pathway for transforming the Western cultural understanding of the human–earth relationship from mastery and control to ideal co-habitation. Finally, the book details a case study, highlighting the practical application of the proposed reconceptualisation of the human legal subject to contemporary environmental issues. This original and important analysis of the legal status of the human in the Anthropocene will be of great interest to those working in legal theory, jurisprudence, environmental law and the environmental humanities; as well as those with relevant interests in gender studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy.

Now the Chips Are Down

Download Now the Chips Are Down PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262034034
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Now the Chips Are Down by : Alison Gazzard

Download or read book Now the Chips Are Down written by Alison Gazzard and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a pioneering microcomputer: its beginnings as part of a national Computer Literary Project, its innovative hardware, and its creative uses. In 1982, the British Broadcasting Corporation launched its Computer Literacy Project, intended “to introduce interested adults to the world of computers and computing.” The BBC accompanied this initiative with television programs, courses, books, and software—an early experiment in multi-platform education. The BBC, along with Acorn Computers, also introduced the BBC Microcomputer, which would be at the forefront of the campaign. The BBC Micro was designed to meet the needs of users in homes and schools, to demystify computing, and to counter the general pessimism among the media in Britain about technology. In this book, Alison Gazzard looks at the BBC Micro, examining the early capabilities of multi-platform content generation and consumption and the multiple literacies this approach enabled—not only in programming and software creation, but also in accessing information across a range of media, and in “do-it-yourself” computing. She links many of these early developments to current new-media practices. Gazzard looks at games developed for the BBC Micro, including Granny's Garden, an educational game for primary schools, and Elite, the seminal space-trading game. She considers the shift in focus from hardware to peripherals, describing the Teletext Adapter as an early model for software distribution and the Domesday Project (which combined texts, video, and still photographs) as a hypermedia-like experience. Gazzard's account shows the BBC Micro not only as a vehicle for various literacies but also as a user-oriented machine that pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved in order to produce something completely new.

Video Games as Culture

Download Video Games as Culture PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317223926
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Video Games as Culture by : Daniel Muriel

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.

Thinking about Video Games

Download Thinking about Video Games PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253017181
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Thinking about Video Games by : David S. Heineman

Download or read book Thinking about Video Games written by David S. Heineman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growth in popularity and complexity of video games has spurred new interest in how games are developed and in the research and technology behind them. David Heineman brings together some of the most iconic, influential, and interesting voices from across the gaming industry and asks them to weigh in on the past, present, and future of video games. Among them are legendary game designers Nolan Bushnell (Pong) and Eugene Jarvis (Defender), who talk about their history of innovations from the earliest days of the video game industry through to the present; contemporary trailblazers Kellee Santiago (Journey) and Casey Hudson (Mass Effect), who discuss contemporary relationships between those who create games and those who play them; and scholars Ian Bogost (How to Do Things With Videogames) and Edward Castronova (Exodus to the Virtual World), who discuss how to research and write about games in ways that engage a range of audiences. These experts and others offer fascinating perspectives on video games, game studies, gaming culture, and the game industry more broadly.

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries

Download The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317533984
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries by : Kate Oakley

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries written by Kate Oakley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries is collection of contemporary scholarship on the cultural industries and seeks to re-assert the importance of cultural production and consumption against the purely economic imperatives of the ‘creative industries’. Across 43 chapters drawn from a wide range of geographic and disciplinary perspectives, this comprehensive volume offers a critical and empirically-informed examination of the contemporary cultural industries. A range of cultural industries are explored, from videogames to art galleries, all the time focussing on the culture that is being produced and its wider symbolic and socio-cultural meaning. Individual chapters consider their industrial structure, the policy that governs them, their geography, the labour that produces them, and the meaning they offer to consumers and participants. The collection also explores the historical dimension of cultural industry debates providing context for new readers, as well as critical orientation for those more familiar with the subject. Questions of industry structure, labour, place, international development, consumption and regulation are all explored in terms of their historical trajectory and potential future direction. By assessing the current challenges facing the cultural industries this collection of contemporary scholarship provides students and researchers with an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field.

Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters

Download Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 081565569X
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (156 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters by : David Scott Diffrient

Download or read book Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters written by David Scott Diffrient and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contradictory to its core, the sitcom—an ostensibly conservative, tranquilizing genre—has a long track record in the United States of tackling controversial subjects with a fearlessness not often found in other types of programming. But the sitcom also conceals as much as it reveals, masking the rationale for socially deviant or deleterious behavior behind figures of ridicule whose motives are rarely disclosed fully over the course of a thirty-minute episode. Examining a broad range of network and cable TV shows across the history of the medium, from classic, working-class comedies such as The Honeymooners, All in the Family, and Roseanne to several contemporary cult series, animated programs, and online hits that have yet to attract much scholarly attention, this book explores the ways in which social imaginaries related to “bad behavior” have been humorously exploited over the years. The repeated appearance of socially wayward figures on the small screen—from raging alcoholics to brainwashed cult members to actual monsters who are merely exaggerated versions of our own inner demons—has the dual effect of reducing complex individuals to recognizable “types” while neutralizing the presumed threats that they pose. Such representations not only provide strangely comforting reminders that “badness” is a cultural construct, but also prompt audiences to reflect on their own unspoken proclivities for antisocial behavior, if only in passing.

Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan

Download Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1387438808
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (874 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan by : Martin Roth

Download or read book Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan written by Martin Roth and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-01-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers videogames as spaces of political philosophy. Emerging from a negotiation between designers, player and computer, they prompt us to rethink life in common and imagine alternatives to the status quo. Several case studies on science fictional videogames from Japan serve to demonstrate this potential for thought-provoking play.

Global Games

Download Global Games PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135114641
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (351 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Global Games by : Aphra Kerr

Download or read book Global Games written by Aphra Kerr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade our mobile phones have been infiltrated by angry birds, our computers by leagues of legends and our social networks by pleas for help down on the farm. As digital games have become networked, mobile and casual they have become a pervasive cultural form. Based on original empirical work, including interviews with workers, virtual ethnographies in online games and analysis of industry related documents, Global Games provides a political, economic and sociological analysis of the growth and restructuring of the digital games industry over the past decade. Situating the games industry as both cultural and creative and examining the relative growth of console, PC, online and mobile, Aphra Kerr analyses the core production logics in the industry, and the expansion of circulation processes as game services have developed. In an industry dominated by North American and Japanese companies, Kerr explores the recent success of companies from China and Europe, and the emergent spatial politics as countries, cities, companies and communities compete to reshape digital games in the networked age.

The Gamification of Digital Journalism

Download The Gamification of Digital Journalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429667043
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (296 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Gamification of Digital Journalism by : David O. Dowling

Download or read book The Gamification of Digital Journalism written by David O. Dowling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the brief yet accelerated evolution of newsgames, a genre that has emerged from puzzles, quizzes, and interactives augmenting digital journalism into full-fledged immersive video games from open-world designs to virtual reality experiences. Critics have raised questions about the credibility and ethics of transforming serious news stories of political consequence into entertainment media, and the risks of trivializing grave and catastrophic events into mere games. Dowling explores both the negatives of newsgames, and how the use of entertainment media forms and their narrative methods mainly associated with fiction can add new and potentially more powerful meaning to news than traditional formats allow. The book also explores how industrial and cultural shifts in the digital publishing industry have enabled newsgames to evolve in a manner that strengthens certain core principles of journalism, particularly advocacy on behalf of marginalized and oppressed groups. Cutting-edge and thoughtful, The Gamification of Digital Journalism is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in multimedia journalism and immersive storytelling.

The Formation of Gaming Culture

Download The Formation of Gaming Culture PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 113730510X
Total Pages : 139 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (373 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Formation of Gaming Culture by : G. Kirkpatrick

Download or read book The Formation of Gaming Culture written by G. Kirkpatrick and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-13 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses gaming magazines published in Britain in the 1980s to provide the first serious history of the bedroom coding culture that produced some of the most important video games ever played.

War Games

Download War Games PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501351168
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis War Games by : Philip Hammond

Download or read book War Games written by Philip Hammond and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of today's most commercially successful videogames, from Call of Duty to Company of Heroes, are war-themed titles that play out in what are framed as authentic real-world settings inspired by recent news headlines or drawn from history. While such games are marketed as authentic representations of war, they often provide a selective form of realism that eschews problematic, yet salient aspects of war. In addition, changes in the way Western states wage and frame actual wars makes contemporary conflicts increasingly resemble videogames when perceived from the vantage point of Western audiences. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from games studies, media and cultural studies, politics and international relations, and related fields to examine the complex relationships between military-themed videogames and real-world conflict, and to consider how videogames might deal with history, memory, and conflict in alternative ways. It asks: What is the role of videogames in the formation and negotiation of cultural memory of past wars? How do game narratives and designs position the gaming subject in relation to history, war and militarism? And how far do critical, anti-war/peace games offer an alternative or challenge to mainstream commercial titles?

Esport Play

Download Esport Play PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501359339
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Esport Play by : Veli-Matti Karhulahti

Download or read book Esport Play written by Veli-Matti Karhulahti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weaving the author's own lived experience with theoretical insights from the fields of game studies, psychology, and anthropology, Esport Play probes and advances current gaming topics such as addiction, skill development, and toxicity. With a focus on League of Legends – one of the flagship esports of our time – Karhulahti explicates what esport play is: documenting and identifying competitive play as a present-day means to satisfy basic human needs. Ultimately, the book presents a theory of psycholudic development that explains and organizes the development of player-play relationships that may last for years.

Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity

Download Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1315390930
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (153 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity by : Rob Gallagher

Download or read book Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity written by Rob Gallagher and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Digital Subjects: Videogames, Technology and Identity -- 2 Datafied Subjects: Profiling and Personal Data -- 3 Private Subjects: Secrecy, Scandal and Surveillance -- 4 Beastly Subjects: Bodies and Interfaces -- 5 Synthetic Subjects: Horror and Artificial Intelligence -- 6 Mobile Subjects: Framing Selves and Spaces -- 7 Productive Subjects: Time, Value and Gendered Feelings -- Index