This collection of books, published from 2004 to the present, are authored by UCI faculty and they discuss Computer Games, Gaming, and related topics.
Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject by In Against Flow, Braxton Soderman takes a step back and offers a critical assessment of flow's historical, theoretical, political, and ideological contexts in relation to video games. With close readings of games that implement and represent flow, Soderman not only evaluates the concept of flow in terms of video games but also presents a general critique of flow and its sibling, play.
Anxious Creativity: When Imagination Fails by Anxious Creativity: When Imagination Fails examines this conceptual mess, while focusing on how America’s current edginess dampens creativity in everyone. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Anxious Creativity draws on current ideas in the social sciences, economics, and the arts. Discussion centers on the knotty problem of reconciling the expressive potential in all people with the nation’s tendency to reward only a few.
Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method by Ethnography and Virtual Worlds is the only book of its kind—a concise, comprehensive, and practical guide for students, teachers, designers, and scholars interested in using ethnographic methods to study online virtual worlds, including both game and nongame environments.
The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology by The Game Design Reader is a one-of-a-kind collection on game design and criticism, from classic scholarly essays to cutting-edge case studies. A companion work to Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's textbook Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, The Game Design Reader is a classroom sourcebook, a reference for working game developers, and a great read for game fans and players.
Games, Learning, and Society: Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age by This volume is the first reader on video games and learning of its kind. Covering game design, game culture and games as twenty-first-century pedagogy, it demonstrates the depth and breadth of scholarship on games and learning to date. The chapters represent some of the most influential thinkers, designers and writers in the emerging field of games and learning - including James Paul Gee, Soren Johnson, Eric Klopfer, Colleen Macklin, Thomas Malaby, Bonnie Nardi, David Sirlin and others.
Games in the Philosophy of Biology by This is an Element surveying the most important literature using game theory and evolutionary game theory to shed light on questions in the philosophy of biology. There are two branches of literature that the book focuses on. It begins with a short introduction to game theory and evolutionary game theory. It then turns to working using signaling games to explore questions related to communication, meaning, language, and reference.
Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism by In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process. An exploration of a new division of labor between machines and humans, in which people provide value to the economy with little or no compensation.
My life as a night elf priest: An anthropological account of World of Warcraft by "World of Warcraft rapidly became one of the most popular online world games on the planet, amassing 11.5 million subscribers -- officially making it an online community of gamers that had more inhabitants than the state of Ohio and was almost twice as populous as Scotland.
Nonverbal Communication in Virtual Worlds by In this book, we begin the work of articulating the challenges and possibilities for non-verbal communication in virtual worlds. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, we consider the past, present, and future of human communication online.
Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics by In the last two decades, both the conception and the practice of participatory culture have been transformed by the new affordances enabled by digital, networked, and mobile technologies. This exciting new book explores that transformation by bringing together three leading figures in conversation. Jenkins, Ito, and Boyd examine the ways in which our personal and professional lives are shaped by experiences interacting with and around emerging media.
The Pleasure of Playing Less: A Study of Incremental Games through the Lens of Kittens by In this book, we explore the pleasure of playing less through a collective experience of playing the Kittens Game – a self-described “Dark Souls of incremental gaming”. We draw on techniques of close reading and hermeneutics to ground our analysis and supplement our individual reflections on how these games incentivize players to play less and plan more.
Power, Equity, and (Re)design: Bridging Learning and Critical Theories in Learning Ecologies for Youth by This volume brings together design thinking, critical social theory, and learning sciences to describe promising learning innovations that foster rights, dignity, and social justice for youth. The contributors are emerging scholars who are leading voices working at the intersections of theory and practice for educational equity.
The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LBGTQ Game Makers by In The Queer Games Avant-Garde, Bonnie Ruberg presents twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers whose radical, experimental, vibrant, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. Speaking with insight and candor about their creative practices as well as their politics and passions, these influential and innovative game makers tell stories about their lives and inspirations, the challenges they face, and the ways they understand their places within the wider terrain of video game culture.
Queer Game Studies by Video games have developed into a rich, growing field at many top universities, but they have rarely been considered from a queer perspective. Immersion in new worlds, video games seem to offer the perfect opportunity to explore the alterity that queer culture longs for, but often sexism and discrimination in gamer culture steal the spotlight.
The Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing and Rhetoric by This handbook brings together scholars from around the globe who here contribute to our understanding of how digital rhetoric is changing the landscape of writing. Increasingly, all of us must navigate networks of information, compose not just with computers but an array of
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games.
Short Circuits. Crafting e-Puppets with DIY Electronics by Short Circuits offers students opportunities to undertake physical computing projects, providing tools and methods for creating electronic puppets. Students learn how to incorporate microprocessors into everyday materials and use them to enhance their language and writing skills with shadow puppet shows featuring their own DIY flashlights.
Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age (Technology, Education–Connections) by Can we learn socially and academically valuable concepts and skills from video games? How can we best teach the 'gamer generation"? This accessible book describes how educators and curriculum designers can harness the participatory nature of digital media and play. The author presents a comprehensive model of games and learning that integrates analysis of games, game culture, and educational game design.
Video Games Have Always Been Queer by While popular discussions about queerness in video games often focus on big-name, mainstream games that feature LGBTQ characters, like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, Bonnie Ruberg pushes the concept of queerness in games beyond a matter of representation, exploring how video games can be played, interpreted, and designed queerly, whether or not they include overtly LGBTQ content.