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"Ringbearers" collects together essays by established and
leading figures within Game Studies, each focused on different
aspects of the Massively Multiplayer Online game "The Lord of the
Rings Online."
The authors played the game extensively, yet they each come to it
with different questions. Some essays focus on what players do with
and in the game, whether that means asking about the opportunities
provided for role-play or asking how the knowledge that fans bring
to the game informs their experience of it. Others focus on the
design of the game: for example the handling of narrative and its
temporal dimensions, the articulation of core themes into ludic
form, or the representational and aural strategies used. Moral
rhetorics solicit discussion from various perspectives, as does the
treatment of horror and the 'other'. Particular game mechanics are
analysed in detail such as the game's crafting economy, or, more
generally, the development of improbable conventions that players
have learned to accept as the grammar of games.
As well as Design, Media and Game Studies students and scholars,
"Ringbearers" will also prove of interest to those studying
adaptation and to scholar-fans of JRR Tolkein's massively
influential and popular fictional work.
This book explores the ways in which contemporary writers, artists,
directors, producers and fans use the opportunities offered by
popular fantasy to exceed or challenge norms of gender and
sexuality, focusing on a range of media, including television
episodes and series, films, video games and multi-player online
role-play games, novels and short stories, comics, manga and
graphic novels, and board games. Engaging directly with an
enormously successful popular genre which is often overlooked by
literary and cultural criticism, contributors pay close attention
to the ways in which the producers of fantasy texts, whether
visual, game, cinematic, graphic or literary texts, are able to
play with gender and sexuality, to challenge and disrupt received
notions and to allow and encourage their audiences to imagine ways
of being outside of the constitutive constraints of socialized
gender and sexual identity. With rich case studies from the US,
Australia, UK, Japan and Europe, all concentrating not on the
critique of fantasy texts which duplicate or reinforce existing
prejudices about gender and sexuality, but on examining the
exploration of or attempt to make possible non-normative gendered
and sexual identities, this volume will appeal to scholars across
the social sciences and humanities, with interests in popular
culture, fantasy, media studies and gender and sexualities.
This book explores the ways in which contemporary writers, artists,
directors, producers and fans use the opportunities offered by
popular fantasy to exceed or challenge norms of gender and
sexuality, focusing on a range of media, including television
episodes and series, films, video games and multi-player online
role-play games, novels and short stories, comics, manga and
graphic novels, and board games. Engaging directly with an
enormously successful popular genre which is often overlooked by
literary and cultural criticism, contributors pay close attention
to the ways in which the producers of fantasy texts, whether
visual, game, cinematic, graphic or literary texts, are able to
play with gender and sexuality, to challenge and disrupt received
notions and to allow and encourage their audiences to imagine ways
of being outside of the constitutive constraints of socialized
gender and sexual identity. With rich case studies from the US,
Australia, UK, Japan and Europe, all concentrating not on the
critique of fantasy texts which duplicate or reinforce existing
prejudices about gender and sexuality, but on examining the
exploration of or attempt to make possible non-normative gendered
and sexual identities, this volume will appeal to scholars across
the social sciences and humanities, with interests in popular
culture, fantasy, media studies and gender and sexualities.
Online gaming is changing. It is no longer enough to analyse one
type of online community in order to understand the phenomenon of
players who take part in online worlds, or to generalise about
their behaviour by looking at one single type of online gaming.
This book looks at different types of games in the online gaming
genre. MacCallum-Stewart studies the different ways in which online
games create social environments, and how players choose to
interpret these. These games vary from the immensely popular social
networking games on Facebook such as Farmville to Massively
Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games to "Free to Play" online
gaming and to console communities such as players of Xbox Live and
PS3 games. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of social
gaming online, examining how it is changing the way that players
respond to games. This is one of the central issues that
MacCallum-Stewart explores: When are games social, and what
narrative devices make them so?
Despite the advent and explosion of video games, boardgames--from
fast-paced party games to intensely strategic titles--have in
recent years become more numerous and more diverse in terms of
genre, ethos and content. The growth of gaming events and
conventions such as Essen Spiel, Gencon and the UK Games EXPO, as
well as crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter, has
diversified the evolution of game development, which is
increasingly driven by fans, and boardgames provide an important
glue to geek culture. In academia, boardgames are used in a
practical sense to teach elements of design and game mechanics.
Game studies is also recognizing the importance of expanding its
focus beyond the digital. As yet, however, no collected work has
explored the many different approaches emerging around the critical
challenges that boardgaming represents. In this collection, game
theorists analyze boardgame play and player behavior, and explore
the complex interactions between the sociality, conflict,
competition and cooperation that boardgames foster. Game designers
discuss the opportunities boardgame system designs offer for
narrative and social play. Cultural theorists discuss boardgames'
complex history as both beautiful physical artifacts and special
places within cultural experiences of play.
What does love have to do with games? As games have developed in
complexity, they have increasingly started to include narratives
that seek to engage with love in a variety of ways. Whilst media
attention often seems to focus on more violent emotions and
behavior in games, love has always been a central part of the
gaming experience. We love to play games, we have titles that we
experience love towards, and sometimes we love too much, or love
terrible games for their mistakes. Love in games therefore, is
rather like love in life - it can be complicated, unexpected and
difficult but also fun, enlightening and powerful. The authors of
this collection aim for the first time to unpack the meaning and
role of love in games by examining some of these aspects. Love is
hard to reproduce in games, and we trace a number of ways - from
coding to cosplay, in which love can be expressed in, for and
around games. Investigating how games can start to think about love
in exciting, in-depth ways is also key to understanding the growing
importance of games and gamers as important cultural markers, since
it points to gaming as growing in maturity in its attempt to
address such a varied subject.
The study of online gaming is changing. It is no longer enough to
analyse one type of online community in order to understand the
plethora of players who take part in online worlds and the
behaviours they exhibit. MacCallum-Stewart studies the different
ways in which online games create social environments and how
players choose to interpret these. These games vary from the
immensely popular social networking games on Facebook such as
Farmville to Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games to
"Free to Play" online gaming and console communities such as
players of Xbox Live and PS3 games. Each chapter deals with a
different aspect of social gaming online, breaking down when games
are social and what narrative devices make them so. This
cross-disciplinary study will appeal to those interested in
cyberculture, the evolution of gaming technology, and sociologies
of media.
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