Computer Gaming World

Download or read book Computer Gaming World written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Raising the Stakes written by T. L. Taylor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a form of play becomes a sport: players, agents, referees, leagues, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators, and the culture of professional computer game play. Competitive video and computer game play is nothing new: the documentary King of Kong memorably portrays a Donkey Kong player's attempts to achieve the all-time highest score; the television show Starcade (1982–1984) featured competitions among arcade game players; and first-person shooter games of the 1990s became multiplayer through network play. A new development in the world of digital gaming, however, is the emergence of professional computer game play, complete with star players, team owners, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators. In Raising the Stakes, T. L. Taylor explores the emerging scene of professional computer gaming and the accompanying efforts to make a sport out of this form of play. In the course of her explorations, Taylor travels to tournaments, including the World Cyber Games Grand Finals (which considers itself the computer gaming equivalent of the Olympics), and interviews participants from players to broadcasters. She examines pro-gaming, with its highly paid players, play-by-play broadcasts, and mass audience; discusses whether or not e-sports should even be considered sports; traces the player's path from amateur to professional (and how a hobby becomes work); and describes the importance of leagues, teams, owners, organizers, referees, sponsors, and fans in shaping the structure and culture of pro-gaming. Taylor connects professional computer gaming to broader issues: our notions of play, work, and sport; the nature of spectatorship; the influence of money on sports. And she examines the ongoing struggle over the gendered construction of play through the lens of male-dominated pro-gaming. Ultimately, the evolution of professional computer gaming illuminates the contemporary struggle to convert playful passions into serious play.

Download or read book Computer Gaming World's Why Won't This #@$! Game Work written by Denny Atkin and published by Bradygames. This book was released on 1997 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PC Gaming: Computer Gaming World's Instant Expert Guide covers everything new game players need to know, such as game genres, terminology, ratings, and new technology, as well as hardware needs, accessories, and how to troubleshoot the most common problems. The free CD includes hot game demos, such as Quake, Star Trek Generations and Command & Conquer Red Alert, which are attractive to avid players, but will also serve as a "try-before-you-buy" sampler for new gamers.

Download or read book Play Between Worlds written by T. L. Taylor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-02-13 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture. In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.

Download or read book Computer Games written by Blair Carter and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lists the most significant writings on computer games, including works that cover recent advances in gaming and the substantial academic research that goes into devising and improving computer games.

Download or read book StarCraft written by Simon Dor and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2024-02-28 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) is a real-time strategy video game, placing the player in command of three extraterrestrial races fighting against each other for strategic control of resources, terrain, and power. Simon Dor examines the game’s unanticipated effect by delving into the history of the game and the two core competencies it encouraged: decoding and foreseeing. Although StarCraft was not designed as an e-sport, its role in developing foreseeing skills helped give rise to one of the earliest e-sport communities in South Korea. Apart from the game’s clear landmark status, StarCraft offers a unique insight into changes in gaming culture and, more broadly, the marketability and profit of previously niche areas of interest. The book places StarCraft in the history of real-time strategy games in the 1990s—Dune II, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires—in terms of visual style, narrative tropes, and control. It shows how design decisions, technological infrastructures, and a strong contribution from its gaming community through Battle.net and its campaign editor were necessary conditions for the flexibility it needed to grow its success. In exploring the fanatic clusters of competitive players who formed the first tournaments and professionalized gaming, StarCraft shows that the game was key to the transition towards foreseeing play and essential to competitive gaming and e-sports.

Download or read book Intermedia Games—Games Inter Media written by Michael Fuchs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com While all media are part of intermedial networks, video games are often at the nexus of that network. They not only employ cinematics, embedded books, and in-world television screens for various purposes, but, in our convergence culture, video games also play a vital role in allowing players to explore transmedia storyworlds. At the same time, video games are frequently thematized and remediated in film, television, and literature. Indeed, the central role video games assume in intermedial networks provides testament to their significance in the contemporary media environment. In this volume, an international group of contributors discuss not only intermedial phenomena in video games, but also the intermedial networks surrounding them. Intermedia Games-Games Inter Media will deepen readers' understanding of the convergence culture of the early twenty-first century and video games' role in it.