Understanding Counterplay In Video Games

Author : Alan F. Meades
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-05
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781317618799

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Understanding Counterplay in Video Games by Alan F. Meades Pdf

This book offers insight into one of the most problematic and universal issues within multiplayer videogames: antisocial and oppositional play forms such as cheating, player harassment, the use of exploits, illicit game modifications, and system hacking, known collectively as counterplay. Using ethnographic research, Alan Meades not only to gives voice to counterplayers, but reframes counterplay as a complex practice with contradictory motivations that is anything but reducible to simply being hostile to play, players, or commercial videogames. The book offers a grounded and pragmatic exploration of counterplay, framing it as an unavoidable by-product of interaction of mass audiences with compelling and culturally important texts.

Author : Alan F. Meades
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2015-06-05
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781317618805

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Understanding Counterplay in Video Games by Alan F. Meades Pdf

This book offers insight into one of the most problematic and universal issues within multiplayer videogames: antisocial and oppositional play forms such as cheating, player harassment, the use of exploits, illicit game modifications, and system hacking, known collectively as counterplay. Using ethnographic research, Alan Meades not only to gives voice to counterplayers, but reframes counterplay as a complex practice with contradictory motivations that is anything but reducible to simply being hostile to play, players, or commercial videogames. The book offers a grounded and pragmatic exploration of counterplay, framing it as an unavoidable by-product of interaction of mass audiences with compelling and culturally important texts.

Author : Sascha Pöhlmann
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1155562328

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Alan F. Meades: Understanding Counterplay in Video Games by Sascha Pöhlmann Pdf

Author : Tom Apperley
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2011-06-16
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9789081602112

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Gaming Rhythms by Tom Apperley Pdf

"Global gaming networks are heterogenous collectives of localized practices, not unified commercial products. Shifting the analysis of digital games to local specificities that build and perform the global and general, Gaming Rhythms employs ethnographic work conducted in Venezuela and Australia to account for the material experiences of actual game players. This book explores the materiality of digital play across diverse locations and argues that the dynamic relation between the everyday life of the player and the experience of digital game play can only be understood by examining play-practices in their specific situations." -- Website.

Author : Martin Lorber,Felix Zimmermann
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783839454206

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History in Games by Martin Lorber,Felix Zimmermann Pdf

Where do we end up when we enter the time machine that is the digital game? One axiomatic truth of historical research is that the past is the time-space that eludes human intervention. Every account made of the past is therefore only an approximation. But how is it that strolling through ancient Alexandria can feel so real in the virtual world? Claims of authenticity are prominent in discussions surrounding the digital games of our time. What is historical authenticity and does it even matter? When does authenticity or the lack thereof become political? By answering these questions, the book illuminates the ubiquitous category of authenticity from the perspective of historical game studies.

Author : Torill Elvira Mortensen,Jonas Linderoth,Ashley ML Brown
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2015-06-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317574460

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The Dark Side of Game Play by Torill Elvira Mortensen,Jonas Linderoth,Ashley ML Brown Pdf

Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values and moral choice. In game worlds players can take on the role of antagonists; they allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal or immoral if it happened outside of the game sphere. While contemporary games have always handled certain problematic topics, such as war, disasters, human decay, post-apocalyptic futures, cruelty and betrayal, lately even the most playful of genres are introducing situations in which players are presented with difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. This volume is an investigation of "dark play" in video games, or game play with controversial themes as well as controversial play behaviour. It covers such questions as: Why do some games stir up political controversies? How do games invite, or even push players towards dark play through their design? Where are the boundaries for what can be presented in a games? Are these boundaries different from other media such as film and books, and if so why? What is the allure of dark play and why do players engage in these practices?

Author : Melanie Swalwell,Angela Ndalianis,Helen Stuckey
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317191902

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Fans and Videogames by Melanie Swalwell,Angela Ndalianis,Helen Stuckey Pdf

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.

Author : Dietmar Meinel
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2022-02-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110675184

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Video Games and Spatiality in American Studies by Dietmar Meinel Pdf

While video games have blossomed into the foremost expression of contemporary popular culture over the past decades, their critical study occupies a fringe position in American Studies. In its engagement with video games, this book contributes to their study but with a thematic focus on a particularly important subject matter in American Studies: spatiality. The volume explores the production, representation, and experience of places in video games from the perspective of American Studies. Contributions critically interrogate the use of spatial myths ("wilderness," "frontier," or "city upon a hill"), explore games as digital borderlands and contact zones, and offer novel approaches to geographical literacy. Eventually, Playing the Field II brings the rich theoretical repertoire of the study of space in American Studies into conversation with questions about the production, representation, and experience of space in video games.

Author : Rob Gallagher
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781315390925

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Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity by Rob Gallagher Pdf

This book argues that games offer a means of coming to terms with a world that is being transformed by digital technologies. As blends of software and fiction, videogames are uniquely capable of representing and exploring the effects of digitization on day-to-day life. By modeling and incorporating new technologies (from artificial intelligence routines and data mining techniques to augmented reality interfaces), and by dramatizing the implications of these technologies for understandings of identity, nationality, sexuality, health and work, games encourage us to playfully engage with these issues in ways that traditional media cannot.

Author : Steven Conway,Jennifer deWinter
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2015-10-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317607229

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Video Game Policy by Steven Conway,Jennifer deWinter Pdf

This book analyzes the effect of policy on the digital game complex: government, industry, corporations, distributors, players, and the like. Contributors argue that digital games are not created nor consumed outside of the complex power relationships that dictate the full production and distribution cycles, and that we need to consider those relationships in order to effectively "read" and analyze digital games. Through examining a selection of policies, e.g. the Australian government’s refusal (until recently) to allow an R18 rating for digital games, Blizzard’s policy in regards to intellectual property, Electronic Arts’ corporate policy for downloadable content (DLC), they show how policy, that is to say the rules governing the production, distribution and consumption of digital games, has a tangible effect upon our understanding of the digital game medium.

Author : Stephen J. Webley,Peter Zackariasson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2019-07-17
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781351716512

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The Playful Undead and Video Games by Stephen J. Webley,Peter Zackariasson Pdf

This book explores the central role of the zombie in contemporary popular culture as they appear in video games. Moving beyond traditional explanations of their enduring appeal – that they embody an aesthetic that combines horror with a mindless target; that lower age ratings for zombie games widen the market; or that Artificial Intelligence routines for zombies are easier to develop – the book provides a multidisciplinary and comprehensive look at this cultural phenomenon. Drawing on detailed case studies from across the genre, contributors from a variety of backgrounds offer insights into how the study of zombies in the context of video games informs an analysis of their impact on contemporary popular culture. Issues such as gender, politics, intellectual property law, queer theory, narrative storytelling and worldbuilding, videogame techniques and technology, and man’s relation to monsters are closely examined in their relation to zombie video games. Breaking new ground in the study of video games and popular culture, this volume will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including media, popular culture, video games, and media psychology.

Author : Rebecca Bushnell
Publisher : Springer
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2016-11-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781137585264

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Tragic Time in Drama, Film, and Videogames by Rebecca Bushnell Pdf

This book explores how classical and Shakespearean tragedy has shaped the temporality of crisis on the stage and in time-travel films and videogames. In turn, it uncovers how performance and new media can challenge common assumptions about tragic causality and fate. Traditional tragedies may present us with a present when a calamity is staged, a decisive moment in which everything changes. However, modern performance, adaptation and new media can question the premises of that kind of present crisis and its fatality. By offering replays or alternative endings, experimental theatre, adaptation, time travel films and videogames reinvent the tragic experience of irreversible present time. This book offers the reader a fresh understanding of tragic character and agency through these new media’s exposure of the genre’s deep structure.

Author : Larissa Hjorth,Heather Horst,Anne Galloway,Genevieve Bell
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2017-01-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317377788

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The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography by Larissa Hjorth,Heather Horst,Anne Galloway,Genevieve Bell Pdf

With the increase of digital and networked media in everyday life, researchers have increasingly turned their gaze to the symbolic and cultural elements of technologies. From studying online game communities, locative and social media to YouTube and mobile media, ethnographic approaches to digital and networked media have helped to elucidate the dynamic cultural and social dimensions of media practice. The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, and conceptually cutting-edge guide to this emergent and diverse area. Features include: a comprehensive history of computers and digitization in anthropology; exploration of various ethnographic methods in the context of digital tools and network relations; consideration of social networking and communication technologies on a local and global scale; in-depth analyses of different interfaces in ethnography, from mobile technologies to digital archives.

Author : Liam Mitchell
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2018-12-14
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781785354892

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Ludopolitics by Liam Mitchell Pdf

What can videogames tell us about the politics of contemporary technoculture, and how are designers and players responding to its impositions? To what extent do the technical features of videogames index our assumptions about what exists and what is denied that status? And how can we use games to identify and shift those assumptions without ever putting down the controller? Ludopolitics responds to these questions with a critique of one of the defining features of modern technology: the fantasy of control. Videogames promise players the opportunity to map and master worlds, offering closed systems that are perfect in principle if not in practice. In their numerical, rule-bound, and goal-oriented form, they express assumptions about both the technological world and the world as such. More importantly, they can help us identify these assumptions and challenge them. Games like Spec Ops: The Line, Braid, Undertale, and Bastion, as well as play practices like speedrunning, theorycrafting, and myth-making provide an aesthetic means of mounting a political critique of the pursuit and valorization of technological control.

Author : Andrew Reinhard
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781785338748

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Archaeogaming by Andrew Reinhard Pdf

Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. Video games also serve as archaeological sites in the traditional sense as a place, in which evidence of past activity is preserved and has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology, and which represents a part of the archaeological record. This book serves as a general introduction to "archaeogaming"; it describes the intersection of archaeology and video games and applies archaeological method and theory into understanding game-spaces as both site and artifact.