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"Video games Design History."
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Works of Game
Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes -- to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. InWorks of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art.Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. \"Game Art,\" which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. \"Artgames,\" created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, \"Artists' Games\" -- with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman -- represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.
eBook
Real games : what's legitimate and what's not in contemporary videogames
\"Real Games is an exploration of how the discourses surrounding videogames shapes what games get made and played as well as who is invited to play them. By making appeals to 'real games,' players and developers center certain kinds of experiences and marginalize others. The authors argue that this process emerges dynamically out of discussions about videogames and has changed over time to center on a handful of key elements, namely a game's developer, it's payment model, and elements of the game itself including its length and perceived difficulty (among others). Dozens of games are referenced in this book, many of which are not widely studied. That gives the manuscript an ability to connect with more potential readers and the ability to speak more broadly about the state of videogames than efforts that are focused on an individual genre or game\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Aesthetic of Play
The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions (\"Why is this battle boring?\") than big ones (\"What does this game mean?\"). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play -- how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.Upton also examines the broader epistemological implications of such a framework, exploring the role of play in the construction of meaning and what the existence of play says about the relationship between our thoughts and external reality. He considers the making of meaning in play and in every aspect of human culture, and he draws on findings in pragmatic epistemology, neuroscience, and semiotics to describe how meaning emerges from playful engagement. Upton argues that play can also explain particular aspects of narrative; a play-based interpretive stance, he proposes, can help us understand the structure of books, of music, of theater, of art, and even of the process of critical engagement itself.
eBook
Players unleashed!
It has been ten years since video game giant Electronic Arts first releasedThe Sims, the best-selling game that allows its players to create a household and then manage every aspect of daily life within it. And since its debut, gamers young and old have found ways to \"mod\"The Sims, a practice in which gamers manipulate the computer code of a game, and thereby alter it to add new content and scenarios.
InPlayers Unleashed!-the first study of its kind-Tanja Sihvonen provides a fascinating examination of modding, tracing its evolution and detailing its impact onThe Simsand the game industry as a whole. Along the way, Sihvonen shares insights into specific modifications and the cultural contexts from which they emerge.
eBook
Thinking about Video Games
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.
eBook
Video Games and Youth Violence: A Prospective Analysis in Adolescents
The potential influence of violent video games on youth violence remains an issue of concern for psychologists, policymakers and the general public. Although several prospective studies of video game violence effects have been conducted, none have employed well validated measures of youth violence, nor considered video game violence effects in context with other influences on youth violence such as family environment, peer delinquency, and depressive symptoms. The current study builds upon previous research in a sample of 302 (52.3% female) mostly Hispanic youth. Results indicated that current levels of depressive symptoms were a strong predictor of serious aggression and violence across most outcome measures. Depressive symptoms also interacted with antisocial traits so that antisocial individuals with depressive symptoms were most inclined toward youth violence. Neither video game violence exposure, nor television violence exposure, were prospective predictors of serious acts of youth aggression or violence. These results are put into the context of criminological data on serious acts of violence among youth.
Journal Article