A cultural history of digital gameplay that investigates a wide range of player behavior, including cheating, and its relationship to the game industry. The widely varying experiences of players of digital games challenge the notions that there is only one correct way to play a game. Some players routinely use cheat codes, consult strategy guides, or buy and sell in-game accounts, while others consider any or all of these practices off limits. Meanwhile, the game industry works to constrain certain readings or activities and promote certain ways of playing. In Cheating, Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games, and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups), examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating, describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating, and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI. She develops the concept of "gaming capital" as a key way to understand individuals' interaction with games, information about games, the game industry, and other players. Consalvo provides a cultural history of cheating in videogames, looking at how the packaging and selling of such cheat-enablers as cheat books, GameSharks, and mod chips created a cheat industry. She investigates how players themselves define cheating and how their playing choices can be understood, with particular attention to online cheating. Finally, she examines the growth of the peripheral game industries that produce information about games rather than actual games. Digital games are spaces for play and experimentation; the way we use and think about digital games, Consalvo argues, is crucially important and reflects ethical choices in gameplay and elsewhere.

Video games have entered the cultural mainstream and now rival established forms of entertainment such as film or television in terms of economic profits. As careers in video game development become more common, so do the stories about precarious working conditions and structural inequalities within the industry. In Game Production Studies, an international group of researchers takes a closer look at the everyday realities of video game production, ranging from commercial studios to independent creators. Across sixteen chapters, the authors deal with issues related to labour, production routines, or monetization, as well as local specificities. As the first edited collection dedicated solely to video game production, this volume provides a timely resource for anyone interested in how games are made and at what cost.

From Pong to Madden NFL to Wii Fit, Sports Videogames argues for the multiple ways that sports videogames-alongside televised and physical sports-impact one another, and how players and viewers make sense of these multiple forms of play and information in their daily lives. Through case studies, ethnographic explorations, interviews and surveys, and by analyzing games, players, and the sports media industry, contributors from a wide variety of disciplines demonstrate the depth and complexity of games that were once considered simply sports simulations. Contributors also tackle key topics including the rise of online play and its implications for access to games, as well as how regulations surrounding player likenesses present challenges to the industry. Whether you're a scholar or a gamer, Sports Videogames offers a grounded, theory-building approach to how millions make sense of videogames today.

From Pong to Madden NFL to Wii Fit, Sports Videogames argues for the multiple ways that sports videogames-alongside televised and physical sports-impact one another, and how players and viewers make sense of these multiple forms of play and information in their daily lives. Through case studies, ethnographic explorations, interviews and surveys, and by analyzing games, players, and the sports media industry, contributors from a wide variety of disciplines demonstrate the depth and complexity of games that were once considered simply sports simulations. Contributors also tackle key topics including the rise of online play and its implications for access to games, as well as how regulations surrounding player likenesses present challenges to the industry. Whether you're a scholar or a gamer, Sports Videogames offers a grounded, theory-building approach to how millions make sense of videogames today.