Ethnographies Of The Videogame

Author : Dr Helen Thornham
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1409494373
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ethnographies of the Videogame written by Dr Helen Thornham and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographies of the Videogame uses the medium of the videogame to explore wider significant sociological issues around new media, interaction, identity, performance, memory and mediation. Addressing questions of how we interpret, mediate and use media texts, particularly in the face of claims about the power of new media to continuously shift the parameters of lived experience, gaming is employed as a 'tool' through which we can understand the gendered and socio-culturally constructed phenomenon of our everyday engagement with media. The book is particularly concerned with issues of agency and power, identifying strong correlations between perceptions of gaming and actual gaming practices, as well as the reinforcement, through gaming, of established (gendered, sexed, and classed) power relationships within households. As such, it reveals the manner in which existing relations re-emerge through engagement with new technology. Offering an empirically grounded understanding of what goes on when we mediate technology and media in our everyday lives Ethnographies of the Videogame is more than a timely intervention into game studies. It provides pertinent and reflexive commentary on the relationship between text and audience, highlighting the relationships of gender and power in gaming practice. As such, it will appeal to scholars interested in media and new media, gender and class, and the sociology of leisure.

Author : Helen Thornham
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317140656
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ethnographies of the Videogame written by Helen Thornham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographies of the Videogame uses the medium of the videogame to explore wider significant sociological issues around new media, interaction, identity, performance, memory and mediation. Addressing questions of how we interpret, mediate and use media texts, particularly in the face of claims about the power of new media to continuously shift the parameters of lived experience, gaming is employed as a 'tool' through which we can understand the gendered and socio-culturally constructed phenomenon of our everyday engagement with media. The book is particularly concerned with issues of agency and power, identifying strong correlations between perceptions of gaming and actual gaming practices, as well as the reinforcement, through gaming, of established (gendered, sexed, and classed) power relationships within households. As such, it reveals the manner in which existing relations re-emerge through engagement with new technology. Offering an empirically grounded understanding of what goes on when we mediate technology and media in our everyday lives Ethnographies of the Videogame is more than a timely intervention into game studies. It provides pertinent and reflexive commentary on the relationship between text and audience, highlighting the relationships of gender and power in gaming practice. As such, it will appeal to scholars interested in media and new media, gender and class, and the sociology of leisure.

Author : Christoph Bareither
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108873782
Total Pages : 75 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Playful Virtual Violence written by Christoph Bareither and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence in video games has been a controversial object of public discourse for several decades. The question of what kind of emotional experiences players enact when playing with representations of physical violence in games has been largely ignored however. Building upon an extensive ethnographic study of players' emotional practices in video games, including participant observation in online games, qualitative interviews, an analysis of YouTube videos and gaming magazines since the 1980s, this Element provides new insights into the complexity and diversity of player experiences and the pleasures of playful virtual violence. Instead of either defending or condemning the players, it contributes foundational, unprejudiced knowledge for a societal and academic debate on a critical aspect of video gaming. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author : Larissa Hjorth
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030599086
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exploring Minecraft written by Larissa Hjorth and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-04 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book directs critical attention to one of the most ubiquitous and yet under-analyzed games, Minecraft. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork into mobile games in Australian homes, the authors seek to take Minecraft seriously as a cultural practice. The book examines how Minecraft players engage in a form of gameplay that is uniquely intergenerational, creative, and playful, and which moves ambivalently throughout everyday life. At the intersection of digital media, quotidian literacy, and ethnography, the book situates interdisciplinary debates around mundane play through the lens of Minecraft. Ultimately, Exploring Minecraft seeks to coalesce the discussion between formal and informal learning, fostering new forms of digital media creativity and ethnographic innovation around the analysis of games in everyday life.

Author : Casey O'Donnell
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262028190
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Developer's Dilemma written by Casey O'Donnell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of work—including the organization of work and the market forces that surround it—through the lens of the collaborative practice of game development. Rank-and-file game developers bring videogames from concept to product, and yet their work is almost invisible, hidden behind the famous names of publishers, executives, or console manufacturers. In this book, Casey O’Donnell examines the creative collaborative practice of typical game developers. His investigation of why game developers work the way they do sheds light on our understanding of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that shape (and are shaped by) media industries. O’Donnell shows that the ability to play with the underlying systems—technical, conceptual, and social—is at the core of creative and collaborative practice, which is central to the New Economy. When access to underlying systems is undermined, so too is creative collaborative process. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in game studios in the United States and India, O’Donnell stakes out new territory empirically, conceptually, and methodologically. Mimicking the structure of videogames, the book is divided into worlds, within which are levels; and each world ends with a boss fight, a “rant” about lessons learned and tools mastered. O’Donnell describes the process of videogame development from pre-production through production, considering such aspects as experimental systems, “socially mandatory” overtime, and the perpetual startup machine that exhausts young, initially enthusiastic workers. He links work practice to broader systems of publishing, manufacturing, and distribution; introduces the concept of a privileged “actor-intra-internetwork”; and describes patent and copyright enforcement by industry and the state.

Author : Tom Boylston
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520968972
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Stranger at the Feast written by Tom Boylston and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Stranger at the Feast is a pathbreaking ethnographic study of one of the world’s oldest and least-understood religious traditions. Based on long-term ethnographic research on the Zege peninsula in northern Ethiopia, the author tells the story of how people have understood large-scale religious change by following local transformations in hospitality, ritual prohibition, and feeding practices. Ethiopia has undergone radical upheaval in the transition from the imperial era of Haile Selassie to the modern secular state, but the secularization of the state has been met with the widespread revival of popular religious practice. For Orthodox Christians in Zege, everything that matters about religion comes back to how one eats and fasts with others. Boylston shows how practices of feeding and avoidance have remained central even as their meaning and purpose has dramatically changed: from a means of marking class distinctions within Orthodox society, to a marker of the difference between Orthodox Christians and other religions within the contemporary Ethiopian state.

Author : Alexander Styhre
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030455459
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Indie Video Game Development Work written by Alexander Styhre and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a study of so-called indie video game developers that are widely regarded as the creative and innovative fringe of the video game industry. The video game industry is an exemplary entrepreneurial high growth industry that combines digital media, cinematographic representations and interactive gaming technologies, and uses global digital distribution channels to reach local gaming communities. The study examines a number of issues, concerns, challenges, and opportunities that indie developers are handling as part of their development work. The love of gaming and video games more specifically is the shared and unifying force of both so-called Triple-A developers and the indie developer community. Still, issues such as how to raise financial capital or otherwise fund the development work, or how to optimize the return on investment when video games are released on digital platforms are issues that indie developers need to cope with. The study is theoretically framed as a case of an innovation-led sector of the economy, yet being anchored in the Swedish welfare state model, wherein e.g., free tertiary education and social insurances and health case at low cost are provided and supportive of enterprising. This book will be valuable reading for academics working in the fields of knowledge management, innovation, and the creative economy.

Author : Tom Boellstorff
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691264864
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ethnography and Virtual Worlds written by Tom Boellstorff and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide to the ethnographic study of online cultures, and beyond 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. Written by leading ethnographers of virtual worlds, and focusing on the key method of participant observation, the book provides invaluable advice, tips, guidelines, and principles to aid researchers through every stage of a project, from choosing an online fieldsite to writing and publishing the results. Provides practical and detailed techniques for ethnographic research customized to reflect the specific issues of online virtual worlds, both game and nongame Draws on research in a range of virtual worlds, including Everquest, Second Life, There.com, and World of Warcraft Provides suggestions for dealing with institutional review boards, human subjects protocols, and ethical issues Guides the reader through the full trajectory of ethnographic research, from research design to data collection, data analysis, and writing up and publishing research results Addresses myths and misunderstandings about ethnographic research, and argues for the scientific value of ethnography

Author : Daniel Muriel
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317223926
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Video Games as Culture written by Daniel Muriel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video games are becoming culturally dominant. But what does their popularity say about our contemporary society? This book explores video game culture, but in doing so, utilizes video games as a lens through which to understand contemporary social life. Video games are becoming an increasingly central part of our cultural lives, impacting on various aspects of everyday life such as our consumption, communities, and identity formation. Drawing on new and original empirical data – including interviews with gamers, as well as key representatives from the video game industry, media, education, and cultural sector – Video Games as Culture not only considers contemporary video game culture, but also explores how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, late modernity, and contemporary political rationalities. This book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such Video Games, Sociology, and Media and Cultural Studies. It will also be useful for those interested in the wider role of culture, technology, and consumption in the transformation of society, identities, and communities.

Author : Raiford Guins
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262019981
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Game After written by Raiford Guins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural study of video game afterlife, whether as emulation or artifact, in an archival box or at the bottom of a landfill. We purchase video games to play them, not to save them. What happens to video games when they are out of date, broken, nonfunctional, or obsolete? Should a game be considered an “ex-game” if it exists only as emulation, as an artifact in museum displays, in an archival box, or at the bottom of a landfill? In Game After, Raiford Guins focuses on video games not as hermetically sealed within time capsules of the past but on their material remains: how and where video games persist in the present. Guins meticulously investigates the complex life cycles of video games, to show how their meanings, uses, and values shift in an afterlife of disposal, ruins and remains, museums, archives, and private collections. Guins looks closely at video games as museum objects, discussing the recontextualization of the Pong and Brown Box prototypes and engaging with curatorial and archival practices across a range of cultural institutions; aging coin-op arcade cabinets; the documentation role of game cartridge artwork and packaging; the journey of a game from flawed product to trash to memorialized relic, as seen in the history of Atari's infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; and conservation, restoration, and re-creation stories told by experts including Van Burnham, Gene Lewin, and Peter Takacs. The afterlife of video games—whether behind glass in display cases or recreated as an iPad app—offers a new way to explore the diverse topography of game history.