Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026236560X
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality by : Melanie Swalwell

Download or read book Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality written by Melanie Swalwell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The overlooked history of an early appropriation of digital technology: the creation of games though coding and hardware hacking by microcomputer users. From the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, low-end microcomputers offered many users their first taste of computing. A major use of these inexpensive 8-bit machines--including the TRS System 80s and the Sinclair, Atari, Microbee, and Commodore ranges--was the development of homebrew games. Users with often self-taught programming skills devised the graphics, sound, and coding for their self-created games. In this book, Melanie Swalwell offers a history of this era of homebrew game development, arguing that it constitutes a significant instance of the early appropriation of digital computing technology. Drawing on interviews and extensive archival research on homebrew creators in 1980s Australia and New Zealand, Swalwell explores the creation of games on microcomputers as a particular mode of everyday engagement with new technology. She discusses the public discourses surrounding microcomputers and programming by home coders; user practices; the development of game creators' ideas, with the game Donut Dilemma as a case study; the widely practiced art of hardware hacking; and the influence of 8-bit aesthetics and gameplay on the contemporary game industry. With Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality, Swalwell reclaims a lost chapter in video game history, connecting it to the rich cultural and media theory around everyday life and to critical perspectives on user-generated content.

Gaming the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026254928X
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Gaming the Iron Curtain by : Jaroslav Svelch

Download or read book Gaming the Iron Curtain written by Jaroslav Svelch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Game History and the Local

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030664228
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Game History and the Local by : Melanie Swalwell

Download or read book Game History and the Local written by Melanie Swalwell and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together essays on game history and historiography that reflect on the significance of locality. Game history did not unfold uniformly and the particularities of space and place matter, yet most digital game and software histories are silent with respect to geography. Topics covered include: hyper-local games; temporal anomalies in platform arrival and obsolescence; national videogame workforces; player memories of the places of gameplay; comparative reception studies of a platform; the erasure of cultural markers; the localization of games; and perspectives on the future development of ‘local’ game history. Chapters 1 and 12 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Replayed

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421445956
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Replayed by : Henry Lowood

Download or read book Replayed written by Henry Lowood and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading voice in technology studies shares a collection of essential essays on the preservation of software and history of games. Since the early 2000s, Henry Lowood has led or had a key role in numerous initiatives devoted to the preservation and documentation of virtual worlds, digital games, and interactive simulations, establishing himself as a major scholar in the field of game studies. His voluminous writings have tackled subject matter spanning the history of game design and development, military simulation, table-top games, machinima, e-sports, wargaming, and historical software archives and collection development. Replayed consolidates Lowood's far-flung and significant publications on these subjects into a single volume.

The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262374145
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist by : Brendan Keogh

Download or read book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist written by Brendan Keogh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The precarious reality of videogame production beyond the corporate blockbuster studios of North America. The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, freely available software platforms, and hoping, often in vain, to rise to stardom—in short, people working like artists. Aiming squarely at this disconnect between perception and reality, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work—a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice. Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Brendan Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes—all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production. A cultural intervention, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist challenges core assumptions about videogame production—ideas about creativity, professionalism, labor, diversity, education, globalization, and community. Its in-depth, complex portrayal suggests new ways of seeing, and engaging in, the videogame industry that really does exist.

Arcade Britannia

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262372355
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Arcade Britannia by : Alan Meades

Download or read book Arcade Britannia written by Alan Meades and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the British amusement arcade from the 1800s to the present. Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions of them tend to be based on American models. Alan Meades, who spent his childhood happily playing in British seaside arcades, presents the history of the arcade from its origins in traveling fairs of the 1800s to the present. Drawing on firsthand accounts of industry members and archival sources, including rare photographs and trade publications, he tells the story of the first arcades, the people who made the machines, the rise of video games, and the legislative and economic challenges spurred by public fears of moral decline. Arcade Britannia highlights the differences between British and North American arcades, especially in terms of the complex relationship between gambling and amusements. He also underlines Britain’s role in introducing coin-operated technologies into Europe, as well as the industry’s close links to America and, especially, Japan. He shows how the British arcade is a product of centuries of public play, gambling, entrepreneurship, and mechanization. Examining the arcade’s history through technological, social, cultural, biographic, and legislative perspectives, he describes a pendulum shift between control and liberalization, as well as the continued efforts of concerned moralists to limit and regulate public play. Finally, he recounts the impact on the industry of legislative challenges that included vicious taxation, questions of whether copyright law applied to video-game code, and the peculiar moment when every arcade game in Britain was considered a cinema.

Too Much Fun

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262549514
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Too Much Fun by : Jesper Juul

Download or read book Too Much Fun written by Jesper Juul and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-12-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But while it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, like the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun, Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years. First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64’s design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. With interviews of Commodore engineers and with its insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, from Summer Games to International Karate to Simons’ BASIC, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer.

Playing at the World, 2E, Volume 1

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262548771
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing at the World, 2E, Volume 1 by : Jon Peterson

Download or read book Playing at the World, 2E, Volume 1 written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of two in a new, updated edition of the 2012 book Playing at the World, which charts the vast and complex history of role-playing games. This new edition of Playing at the World is the first of two volumes that update the 720-page original tome of the same name from 2012. This first volume is The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, which explores the publication of that iconic game. (The second volume is The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D & D.) In this first volume, Jon Peterson distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s seminal role-playing game, D & D. It augments the research of the original editions with new insights into the crucial period in 1972–3 when D & D began to take shape. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World explores the origins of wargames and roleplaying through the history of conflict simulations and the eccentric characters who drove the creation of a signature cultural innovation in the late twentieth century. Filled with unparalleled archival research (from obscure fanzines to letters, drafts, and other ephemera), this new edition of Playing at the World is the ultimate geek’s guide to the original RPG. As such, it is an indispensable resource for academics and game fans exploring the origins of the hobby.

Building SimCity

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262547481
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Building SimCity by : Chaim Gingold

Download or read book Building SimCity written by Chaim Gingold and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deep dive into the trailblazing simulation game SimCity, situating it in the history of games, simulation, and computing. Building SimCity explores the history of computer simulation by chronicling one of the most influential simulation games ever made: SimCity. As author Chaim Gingold explains, Will Wright, the visionary designer behind the urban planning game, created SimCity in part to learn about cities, appropriating ideas from traditions in which computers are used as tools for modeling and thinking about the world as a complex system. As such, SimCity is a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation that engages with questions, themes, and representational techniques that reach back to the earliest computer simulations. Gingold uses SimCity to explore a web of interrelated topics in the history of technology, software, and simulation, taking us far and wide—from the dawn of programmable computers to miniature cities made of construction paper and role-play. An unprecedented history of Maxis, the company founded to bring SimCity to market, the book reveals Maxis’s complex relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute, which shaped the evolution of Will Wright’s career; Maxis’s failure to back The Sims to completion; and the company’s sale to Electronic Arts. A lavishly visual book, Building SimCity boasts a treasure trove of visual matter to help bring its wide-ranging subjects to life, including painstakingly crafted diagrams that explain SimCity’s operation, the Kodachrome photographs taken by Charles Eames of schoolchildren making model cities, and Nintendo’s manga-style “Dr. Wright” character design, just to name a few.

The Game That Never Ends

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262549395
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Game That Never Ends by : Julien Mailland

Download or read book The Game That Never Ends written by Julien Mailland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers. Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game, from French shelves in 2014? Why was Vodka Drunkenski, a character in Nintendo-Japan’s Punch-Out!, renamed Soda Popinski in the US and then in Western Europe, where the pun made no sense? Why was a Dutch-American company barred by US courts from distributing a clone of Pac-Man? Julien Mailland answers all these questions and more in The Game That Never Ends, an inside look at the legal history that undergirds our favorite videogames. Drawing on a series of case studies as vignettes of the human comedy, Mailland sheds light on why and how the role of lawyers is key for understanding the videogame industry. Each chapter in The Game That Never Ends is a mini-puzzle that pieces together how an important legal issue arose, was resolved, and impacted the industry and the experience of gamers in real time. These chapters are interspersed with shorter chapters called “The Lawyer’s Corner,” opportunities to dive deeper into individual cases. Lightly footnoted, these interludes connect the previous chapters together by providing a conceptual meta-analysis. Offering a comprehensive overview of the global legal history of videogames, The Game That Never Ends will leave readers with a nuanced, in-depth, and more global understanding of the videogame industry.

Game Wizards

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262366738
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Game Wizards by : Jon Peterson

Download or read book Game Wizards written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators. When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies. Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the "Satanic Panic" accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR's reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax's losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D. With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.

The Media and Communications in Australia

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000996883
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis The Media and Communications in Australia by : Bridget Griffen-Foley

Download or read book The Media and Communications in Australia written by Bridget Griffen-Foley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-17 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the traditional media have been reshaped by digital technologies and audiences have fragmented, people are using mediated forms of communication to manage all aspects of their daily lives as well as for news and entertainment. The Media and Communications in Australia offers a systematic introduction to this dynamic field. Fully updated and expanded, this fifth edition outlines the key media industries – from print, sound and television to film, gaming and public relations – and explains how communications technologies have changed the ways in which they now operate. It offers an overview of the key approaches to the field, including a consideration of Indigenous communication, and features a ‘hot topics’ section with contributions on issues including diversity, misinformation, algorithms, COVID-19, web series and national security. With chapters from Australia’s leading researchers and teachers in the field, The Media and Communications in Australia remains the most comprehensive and reliable introduction to media and communications from an Australian perspective. It is an ideal student text and a key resource for teachers, lecturers, media practitioners and anyone interested in understanding these influential industries.

The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000886026
Total Pages : 832 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by : Mark J.P. Wolf

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies written by Mark J.P. Wolf and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive guide to contemporary video game studies, this second edition has been fully revised and updated to address the ongoing theoretical and methodological development of game studies. Expertly compiled by well-known video game scholars Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, the Companion includes comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing video games, new perspectives on video games both as an art form and cultural phenomenon, explorations of the technical and creative dimensions of video games, and accounts of the political, social, and cultural dynamics of video games. Brand new to this second edition are chapters examining topics such as preservation; augmented, mixed, and virtual reality; eSports; disability; diversity; and identity, as well as a new section that specifically examines the industrial aspects of video games including digital distribution, game labor, triple-A games, indie games, and globalization. Each essay provides a lively and succinct summary of its target area, quickly bringing the reader up-to-date on the pertinent issues surrounding each aspect of the field, including references for further reading. A comprehensive overview of the present state of video game studies that will undoubtedly prove invaluable to students, scholars, and game designers alike.

Video Games and Comedy

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030883388
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Video Games and Comedy by : Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone

Download or read book Video Games and Comedy written by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-26 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games. Chapter “Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031283228
Total Pages : 1254 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality by : Jørgen Bruhn

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality written by Jørgen Bruhn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 1254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides an extensive overview of traditional and emerging research areas within the field of intermediality studies, understood broadly as the study of interrelations among all forms of communicative media types, including transmedial phenomena. Section I offers accounts of the development of the field of intermediality - its histories, theories and methods. Section II and III then explore intermedial facets of communication from ancient times until the 21st century, with discussion on a wide range of cultural and geographical settings, media types, and topics, by contributors from a diverse set of disciplines. It concludes in Section IV with an emphasis on urgent societal issues that an intermedial perspective might help understand.

Fans and Videogames

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317191900
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Fans and Videogames by : Melanie Swalwell

Download or read book Fans and Videogames written by Melanie Swalwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-03 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology addresses videogames long history of fandom, and fans’ important role in game history and preservation. In order to better understand and theorize video games and game playing, it is necessary to study the activities of gamers themselves. Gamers are active creators in generating meaning; they are creators of media texts they share with other fans (mods, walkthroughs, machinima, etc); and they have played a central role in curating and preserving games through activities such as their collective work on: emulation, creating online archives and the forensic archaeology of code. This volume brings together essays that explore game fandom from diverse perspectives that examine the complex processes at work in the phenomenon of game fandom and its practices. Contributors aim to historicize game fandom, recognize fan contributions to game history, and critically assess the role of fans in ensuring that game culture endures through the development of archives.

Future Gaming

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 1906897557
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis Future Gaming by : Paolo Ruffino

Download or read book Future Gaming written by Paolo Ruffino and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sophisticated critical take on contemporary game culture that reconsiders the boundaries between gamers and games. This book is not about the future of video games. It is not an attempt to predict the moods of the market, the changing profile of gamers, the benevolence or malevolence of the medium. This book is about those predictions. It is about the ways in which the past, present, and future notions of games are narrated and negotiated by a small group of producers, journalists, and gamers, and about how invested these narrators are in telling the story of tomorrow. This new title from Goldsmiths Press by Paolo Ruffino suggests the story could be told another way. Considering game culture, from the gamification of self-improvement to GamerGate's sexism and violence, Ruffino lays out an alternative, creative mode of thinking about the medium: a sophisticated critical take that blurs the distinctions among studying, playing, making, and living with video games. Offering a series of stories that provide alternative narratives of digital gaming, Ruffino aims to encourage all of us who study and play (with) games to raise ethical questions, both about our own role in shaping the objects of research, and about our involvement in the discourses we produce as gamers and scholars. For researchers and students seeking a fresh approach to game studies, and for anyone with an interest in breaking open the current locked-box discourse, Future Gaming offers a radical lens with which to view the future.