World Of Warcraft And Philosophy

Download or read book World of Warcraft and Philosophy written by Luke Cuddy and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "World of Warcraft is the most popular ever MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), with over twelve million subscribers and growing every day." "WoW is everywhere - from episodes of South Park and The Simpsons, to online series like Watch the Guild, accolades and awards from game critics, prime-time commercials with William Shatner and Mr. T., and even criminal and civil courts in the real world. People marry and divorce individuals they have met in the game, realworld financial markets thrive in virtual WoW property, parents have their kids 'treated' for Warcraft addiction, and real-world lawsuits, vendettas, and murders have been provoked by the game." "Since identities are known to be assumed, is it okay to totally misrepresent yourself in the game? Does the Corrupted Blood epidemic warn us of future public health catastrophes? How can it be wrong to steal something which doesn't exist or torture characters who don't feel pain? Is warfare really essential to the world of Warcraft? What can our own world learn from Azeroth's blend of primitivism and high-tech?" "A specially commissioned guild of philosophers tackle these and other hard questions in World of Warcraft and Philosophy." -- Book Cover.

Download or read book World of Warcraft and Philosophy written by Luke Cuddy and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in videogame history, World of Warcraft is everywhere — from episodes of South Park and The Simpsons, to online series like Watch the Guild, accolades and awards from game critics, and prime-time commercials with Mr. T. Inevitably, such a cultural phenomenon triggers deeper questions. When does an assumed identity become real? Does the Corrupted Blood epidemic warn us of future public health catastrophes? What are the dangers when real life is invaded by events in the game? What can our own world learn from Azeroth’s blend of primitivism and high-tech? In these lively essays, a specially commissioned guild of philosophers, including Yara Mitsuishi, Monica Evans, Tim Christopher, and Anna Janssen, tackles these and other complex questions arising from WoW.

Download or read book The WoW Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development [Second Edition] written by John Staats and published by Source Point Press. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The WoW (World of Warcraft) Diary offers a rare, unfiltered look inside the gaming industry written by the game's first level designer, John Staats. The World of Warcraft Diary offers a rare, unfiltered look inside the gaming industry. It was written by the game's first level designer, John Staats, from notes he took during WoW's creation. The WoW Diary explains why developers do things and debunks popular myths about the games industry. In great detail he covers the what it took to finish the project; the surprises, the arguments, the mistakes, and Blizzard's formula for success. The author includes anecdotes about the industry, the company, the dev team; how they worked together, and the philosophy behind their decisions. The WoW Diary is a story made from notes taken during the dev team’s four-year journey. It is a timeline of Vanilla WoW’s development cycle, a time-capsule with an exhausting amount of details that also looks at the anatomy of computer game studio. In order to illustrate how all the parts of computer game company work together, he interviewed everyone from the company’s founders to his former teammates; and the supporting departments who helped make WoW a reality.

Download or read book Philosophy Through Video Games written by Jon Cogburn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can Wii Sports teach us about metaphysics? Can playing World of Warcraft lead to greater self-consciousness? How can we learn about aesthetics, ethics and divine attributes from Zork, Grand Theft Auto, and Civilization? A variety of increasingly sophisticated video games are rapidly overtaking books, films, and television as America's most popular form of media entertainment. It is estimated that by 2011 over 30 percent of US households will own a Wii console - about the same percentage that owned a television in 1953. In Philosophy Through Video Games, Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox - philosophers with game industry experience - investigate the aesthetic appeal of video games, their effect on our morals, the insights they give us into our understanding of perceptual knowledge, personal identity, artificial intelligence, and the very meaning of life itself, arguing that video games are popular precisely because they engage with longstanding philosophical problems. Topics covered include: * The Problem of the External World * Dualism and Personal Identity * Artificial and Human Intelligence in the Philosophy of Mind * The Idea of Interactive Art * The Moral Effects of Video Games * Games and God's Goodness Games discussed include: Madden Football, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Sims Online, Second Life, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls, Zork, EverQuest Doom, Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, Mortal Kombat, Rome: Total War, Black and White, Aidyn Chronicles

Download or read book The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy written by Luke Cuddy and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chapters address philosophical aspects of the video game The Legend of Zelda and video game culture in general"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Games written by C. Thi Nguyen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be in games and what to care about; they designate the player's in-game abilities and motivations. In other words, designers create alternate agencies, and players submerge themselves in those agencies. Games let us explore alternate forms of agency. The fact that we play games demonstrates something remarkable about the nature of our own agency: we are capable of incredible fluidity with our own motivations and rationality. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication. They are the technology that allows us to write down and transmit forms of agency. Thus, the body of games forms a "library of agency" which we can use to help develop our freedom and autonomy. Nguyen also presents a new theory of the aesthetics of games. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. They are unlike traditional artworks in that they are designed to sculpt activities - and to promote their players' aesthetic appreciation of their own activity.

Download or read book Leet Noobs written by Mark Chen and published by New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leet Noobs documents, for over 10 months, a group of players in the online game World of Warcraft engaged in a 40-person joint activity known as raiding. Initially, the group was informal, a «family» that wanted to «hang out and have fun.» Before joining, each player had been recognized as expert in the game; within the group they had to adapt their expertise for the new joint task and align themselves to new group goals. Through their shared activity, members successfully established communication and material practices that changed as they had to renegotiate roles and responsibilities with new situations and as the larger gaming community evolved. Players learned to reconfigure their play spaces, enrolling third-party game mods and other resources into their activity. Once-expert players became novices or «noobs» to relearn expert or «leet» gameplay. They became «leet noobs» who needed to reconfigure their expertise for new norms of material practice. Ultimately, these norms also changed what it meant to play World of Warcraft; some group members no longer wanted to just hang out and have fun, and eventually the group died in an online fiery meltdown.