This book is an important collection for scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of digital games, and will be of interest across several disciplines including game studies, game design and development, internet studies, visual studies, cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies, as well as disability studies The book explores the opportunities and challenges people with disabilities experience in the context of digital games from the perspective of three related areas: representation, access and inclusion, and community Drawing on key concerns in disability media studies, the book brings together scholars from disability studies and game studies, alongside game developers, educators, and disability rights activists, to reflect upon the increasing visibility of disabled characters in digital games Chapters explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability on platforms such as Twitch, Minecraft, and Tingyou, while also addressing future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities within gaming given the rise of virtual reality applications, and augmented games such as Pokemon Go The book also asks how game developers can attempt to represent diverse abilities, taking games such as BlindSide and Overwatch as examples

All games are potentially transformative experiences because they engage the player in dynamic action. When repurposed in an educational context, even highly popular casual games played online to pass the time can engage players in a way that deepens learning. Games as Transformative Experiences for Critical Thinking, Cultural Awareness, and Deep Learning: Strategies & Resources examines the learning value of a wide variety of games across multiple disciplines. Organized just like a well-made game, the book is divided into four parts highlighting classroom experiences, community and culture, virtual learning, and interdisciplinary instruction. The author crosses between the high school and college classroom and addresses a range of disciplines, both online and classroom practice, the design of curriculum, and the transformation of assessment practices. In addition to a wealth of practical exercises, resources, and lesson ideas, the book explains how to use a wide and diverse range of games from casual to massively multiplayer online games for self-improvement as well as classroom situations.

Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting "social games" for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.

This book is an important collection for scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of digital games, and will be of interest across several disciplines including game studies, game design and development, internet studies, visual studies, cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies, as well as disability studies The book explores the opportunities and challenges people with disabilities experience in the context of digital games from the perspective of three related areas: representation, access and inclusion, and community Drawing on key concerns in disability media studies, the book brings together scholars from disability studies and game studies, alongside game developers, educators, and disability rights activists, to reflect upon the increasing visibility of disabled characters in digital games Chapters explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability on platforms such as Twitch, Minecraft, and Tingyou, while also addressing future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities within gaming given the rise of virtual reality applications, and augmented games such as Pokemon Go The book also asks how game developers can attempt to represent diverse abilities, taking games such as BlindSide and Overwatch as examples

Esports have attracted considerable attention over the past few years and become an industry that is projected to continue to increase rapidly. Intersecting with the esports industry are organizations and businesses that develop and support the esports game experience. Included is the entrepreneurial spirit of gamers, who are interested in creating their own career paths through capturing and posting gaming microassists on different public venues that are driven by advertising dollars, invitational competition monetary winnings, and other forms of marketing their expertise for financial gain. All these organizations and industries form satellites of career opportunities as well as opportunities for research and enhanced forward-leaning study. Such career opportunities can be explicitly addressed within the structure of university degree and micro-credential certificate programs, some of which have begun to offer esports-directed degrees, but most of which have not yet moved from esports clubs into a recognition of the business and industry monetization of esports. The Handbook of Research on Pathways and Opportunities Into the Business of Esports addresses the intersection of esports gaming and the business and industry of esports, rather than an exploration of the video games themselves. It is the supporting and intersecting industry driven by esports and the vast opportunities this brings that are the foci of this book. Covering topics including digital learning, esport marketing curriculum, and gaming culture, this text is essential for business professionals, industry analysts, entrepreneurs, managers, coaches, marketers, advertisers, brand managers, university and college administrators, faculty and researchers, students, professors, and academicians.

Game AI Pro2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals presents cutting-edge tips, tricks, and techniques for artificial intelligence (AI) in games, drawn from developers of shipped commercial games as well as some of the best-known academics in the field. It contains knowledge, advice, hard-earned wisdom, and insights gathered from across the community of developers and researchers who have devoted themselves to game AI. In this book, 47 expert developers and researchers have come together to bring you their newest advances in game AI, along with twists on proven techniques that have shipped in some of the most successful commercial games of the last few years. The book provides a toolbox of proven techniques that can be applied to many common and not-so-common situations. It is written to be accessible to a broad range of readers. Beginners will find good general coverage of game AI techniques and a number of comprehensive overviews, while intermediate to expert professional game developers will find focused, deeply technical chapters on specific topics of interest to them. Covers a wide range of AI in games, with topics applicable to almost any game Touches on most, if not all, of the topics necessary to get started in game AI Provides real-life case studies of game AI in published commercial games Gives in-depth, technical solutions from some of the industry's best-known games Includes downloadable demos and/or source code, available at http://www.gameaipro.com

Architecture for the Commons dives into an analysis of how the tectonics of a building is fundamentally linked to the economic organizations that allow them to exist. By tracing the origins and promises of current technological practices in design, the book provides an alternative path, one that reconsiders the means of achieving complexity through combinatorial strategies. This move requires reconsidering serial production with crowdsourcing and user content in mind. The ideas presented will be explored through the design research developed within Plethora Project, a design practice that explores the use of video game interfaces as a mechanism for participation and user design. The research work presented throughout the book seeks to align with a larger project that is currently taking place in many different fields: The Construction of the Commons. By developing both the ideological and physical infrastructure, the project of the Commons has become an antidote to current economic practices that perpetuate inequality. The mechanisms of the production and governance of the Commons are discussed, inviting the reader to get involved and participate in the discussion. The current political and economic landscape calls for a reformulation of our current economic practices and alternative value systems that challenge the current market monopolies. This book will be of great interest not only to architects and designers studying the impact of digital technologies in the field of design but also to researchers studying novel techniques for social participation and cooperating of communities through digital networks. The book connects principles of architecture, economics and social sciences to provide alternatives to the current production trends.

From early classics like Contact to marvels like High Speed, gaming publisher Williams dazzled arcade goers with its diverse range of quality pinball games. The age of video games catapulted the company into legend with blockbusters like Defender and Joust, and by the end of the 1980s it was the largest coin-op publisher in North America. Its acquisition of Bally/Midway began a period of hits that included Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, as well as the best-selling pinball machine of all time, The Addams Family. The history of Williams spans nearly six decades and is filled with great games, huge gambles and technical innovations that impacted every aspect of pinball and arcade video games. With interviews from over 40 former designers and executives from Williams/Bally/Midway, as well as information from hundreds of contemporaneous news reports and documents, this book presents a never-before-seen chronology of how the small company became a coin-op juggernaut. Thirty pinball and 26 video game classics are examined in depth with direct input from the people who made them, along with the story of the events that made and shaped one of gaming's greatest publishing houses.

Analyses a variety of approaches to development and publishing, across a multitude of platforms and genres, to provide a new vision for the next twenty years of game development. Considers technical advances in adjacent markets and how they will impact the games industry over the next twenty years. Includes insightful interviews from leading game and entertainment industry figures.

Analyses a variety of approaches to development and publishing, across a multitude of platforms and genres, to provide a new vision for the next twenty years of game development. Considers technical advances in adjacent markets and how they will impact the games industry over the next twenty years. Includes insightful interviews from leading game and entertainment industry figures.

Role-play as a Heritage Practice is the first book to examine physically performed role-enactments, such as live-action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and hobbyist historical reenactment (RH), from a combined game studies and heritage studies perspective. Demonstrating that non-digital role-plays, such as TRPG and LARP, share many features with RH, the book contends that all three may be considered as heritage practices. Studying these role-plays as three distinct genres of playful, participatory and performative forms of engagement with cultural heritage, Mochocki demonstrates how an exploration of the affordances of each genre can be valuable. Showing that a player's engagement with history or heritage material is always multi-layered, the book clarifies that the layers may be conceptualised simultaneously as types of heritage authenticity and as types of in-game immersion. It is also made clear that RH, TRPG and LARP share commonalities with a multitude of other media, including video games, historical fiction and film. Existing within, and contributing to, the fiction and non-fiction mediasphere, these role-enactments are shaped by the same large-scale narratives and discourses that persons, families, communities, and nations use to build memory and identity. Role-play as a Heritage Practice will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, memory, nostalgia, role-playing, historical games, performance, fans and transmedia narratology.

How can we make sure that our children are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition - and what does that mean for the future of education in the digital age? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach children to build successful futures - but only if we think in new ways about education itself. Shaffer shows how computer and video games can help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, How Computer Games Help Children Learn revolutionizes the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning.

This book explores hybrid play as a site of interdisciplinary activity-one that is capable of generating new forms of mobility, communication, subjects, and artistic expression as well as new ways of interacting with and understanding the world. The chapters in this collection explore hybrid making, hybrid subjects, and hybrid spaces, generating interesting conversations about the past, current and future nature of hybrid play. Together, the authors offer important insights into how place and space are co-constructed through play; how, when, and for what reasons people occupy hybrid spaces; and how cultural practices shape elements of play and vice versa. A diverse group of scholars and practitioners provides a rich interdisciplinary perspective, which will be of great interest to those working in the areas of games studies, media studies, communication, gender studies, and media arts.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.

The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues. This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music. In the course of developing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing game music it explicitly considers other critical issues including the distinction between game play and music play, how notions of diegesis are complicated by video game interactivity, the importance of cinema aesthetics in game music, the technicalities of game music production and the relationships between game music and art music traditions. This collection is accessible, yet theoretically substantial and complex. It draws upon a diverse array of perspectives and presents new research which will have a significant impact upon the way that game music is studied. The volume represents a major development in game musicology and will be indispensable for both academic researchers and students of game music.

a balanced blend of theoretical and practical information that enables readers to develop 3D worlds quickly and efficiently.

Locating Imagination in Popular Culture offers a multi-disciplinary account of the ways in which popular culture, tourism and notions of place intertwine in an environment characterized by ongoing processes of globalization, digitization and an increasingly ubiquitous nature of multi-media. Centred around the concept of imagination, the authors demonstrate how popular culture and media are becoming increasingly important in the ways in which places and localities are imagined, and how they also subsequently stimulate a desire to visit the actual places in which people's favourite stories are set. With examples drawn from around the globe, the book offers a unique study of the role of narratives conveyed through media in stimulating and reflecting desire in tourism. This book will have appeal in a wide variety of academic disciplines, ranging from media and cultural studies to fan- and tourism studies, cultural geography, literary studies and cultural sociology.

This book offers critical perspectives on the digital 'iconic', exploring how the notion of the iconic is re-appropriated and re-made online, and the consequences for humanity and society. Examining cross-cultural case studies of iconic images in digital spaces, the author offers original and critical analyses, theories and perspectives on the notion of the 'iconic', and on its movement, re-appropriation and meaning making on digital platforms. A carefully curated selection of case studies illustrates topics such as phantom memory; martyrdom; denigration and pornographic recoding; digital games as simulacra; and memes as 'artification'. Situating the notion of the iconic firmly within contemporary cultures, the author takes a thematic approach to investigate the iconic as an unstable and unfinished phenomenon online as it travels through platforms temporally and spatially. The book will be an important resource for academics and students in the areas of media and communications, digital culture, cultural studies, visual communication, visual culture, journalism studies and digital humanities.

Artificial Intelligence Techniques in IoT Sensor Networks is a technical book which can be read by researchers, academicians, students and professionals interested in artificial intelligence (AI), sensor networks and Internet of Things (IoT). This book is intended to develop a shared understanding of applications of AI techniques in the present and near term. The book maps the technical impacts of AI technologies, applications and their implications on the design of solutions for sensor networks. This text introduces researchers and aspiring academicians to the latest developments and trends in AI applications for sensor networks in a clear and well-organized manner. It is mainly useful for research scholars in sensor networks and AI techniques. In addition, professionals and practitioners working on the design of real-time applications for sensor networks may benefit directly from this book. Moreover, graduate and master's students of any departments related to AI, IoT and sensor networks can find this book fascinating for developing expert systems or real-time applications. This book is written in a simple and easy language, discussing the fundamentals, which relieves the requirement of having early backgrounds in the field. From this expectation and experience, many libraries will be interested in owning copies of this work.

- The first book dedicated to exploring key video games from the 1970s to present day. - Provides a highly accessible overview of the history of video games from PONG, Pac-Man and Tetris to Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Assassin's Creed. - The selection covers a range of historical periods and platforms, genres, commercial impact, artistic choices, contexts of play, typical and atypical representations, uses of games for specific purposes, uses of materials or techniques, specific subcultures, repurposing, transgressive aesthetics, interfaces, moral or ethical impacts, and more.

Expert advice from several industrial professionals who have worked for some of the world's biggest tech and interactive companies. Best practices that not only prepare writers on how to apply their craft to new fields, but also prepare them for the common ambiguity they will find in corporate and start-up environments. Breakdown of platforms that shows how tech capabilities can fulfill content expectations and how content can fulfill tech expectations. Basic storytelling mechanics customized to today's popular technologies and traditional gaming platforms.

a balanced blend of theoretical and practical information that enables readers to develop 3D worlds quickly and efficiently.

From school lunchrooms to the White House press room, video games are an integral part of our popular culture, and the industry behind them touches all aspects of our lives, gamer and non-gamer alike. Business and entertainment, health and medicine, politics and war, social interaction and education, all fall under its influence. Virtual Ascendance tells the story of a formerly fringe enterprise that, when few were paying attention, exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry affecting the very way we live. Griffiths paints a thorough and vivid picture of the video game industry, illuminating the various, and often bizarre, ways it's changing how we work, play and live. He brings readers along on his own journey of discovery, from the back room of a small Irish pub where members of the second-largest industry enclave meet each month, to a university clinic where the Wii is being used to treat Parkinson's sufferers - and everywhere in between. Virtual Ascendance is more than just a story about video games, though. It's the story of an awakening, of a realization that a childhood pastime has exploded into a thriving enterprise - one rooted in entertainment but whose tendrils reach into virtually all aspects of life and society.