100 Greatest Video Game Characters

Though in existence for only a few decades, video games are now firmly established in mainstream culture all around the planet. Every year new games are produced, and every year new favorites emerge. But certain characters have become so iconic that they withstand both time and the shifting interests of players. Such creations permeate other elements of popular culture—from graphic novels to film—and are known not only to dedicated gamers but to the general public as well. In 100 Greatest Video Game Characters, readers can learn about some of the most popular and influential figures that have leapt from computer monitors and television screens and into the public consciousness. The entries in this volume provide general facts about the characters as well as explore their cultural significance. The entries include the following information: Game developer Year character was established Video game franchise In addition, the book examines the commonalities of various video game characters to help readers better understand their popularity and how they operate within the video games and the industry itself. Whether casually looking up information on video game characters or researching what these icons says about society, readers will enjoy this entertaining and informative volume. Comprehensive and engaging, 100 Greatest Video Game Characters will appeal to fans and scholars alike.

Video games take players on a trip through ancient battlefields, to mythic worlds, and across galaxies. They provide players with a way to try on new identities and acquire vast superpowers. Video games also give people the chance to hit reset – to play again and again until they achieve a desired outcome. Their popularity has enabled them to grow far beyond their humble origins and to permeate other forms of popular culture, from comic books and graphic novels to films and television programs. Video games are universal. In 100 Greatest Video Game Franchises, editors Robert Mejia, Jaime Banks, and Aubrie Adams have assembled essays that identify, assess, and reveal the most important video games of all-time. Each entry makes a case for the game’s cultural significance and why it deserves to be on the list, from its influence on other games to its impact on an international scale. In addition to providing information about the game developer and when the franchise was established, these entries explore the connections between the different video games, examining them across genre, theme, and content. This accessible collection of essays gives readers an opportunity to gauge their favorite video game franchises against the best of all time and argue how they each fit among the 100 greatest ever created. Whether casually looking up information on these games or eager to learn how franchises evolved over the years, readers will enjoy this entertaining and informative volume. Comprehensive and engaging, 100 Greatest Video Game Franchises will appeal to fans and scholars alike.

The world of video games has long revolved around a subset of its player base: straight, white males aged 18-25. Highly gendered marketing in the late 1990s and early 2000s widened the gap between this perceived base and the actual diverse group who buy video games. Despite reports from the Entertainment Software Association that nearly half of gamers identify as female, many developers continue to produce content reflecting this imaginary audience. Many female gamers are in turn modifying the games. "Modders" alter the appearance of characters, rewrite scenes and epilogues, enhance or add love scenes and create fairy tale happy endings. This is a collection of new essays on the phenomenon of women and modding, focusing on such titles as Skyrim, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Sims. Topics include the relationship between modders and developers, the history of modding, and the relationship between modding and disability, race, sexuality and gender identity.

Read professional, fair reviews by practicing academic, public, and school librarians and subject-area specialists that will enable you to make the best choices from among the latest reference resources. This newest edition of American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) provides librarians with insightful, critical reviews of print and electronic reference resources released or updated in 2017-2018, as well as some from 2019 that were received in time for review in the publication. By using this invaluable guide to consider both the positive and negative aspects of each resource, librarians can make informed decisions about which new reference resources are most appropriate for their collections and their patrons' needs. Collection development librarians who are working with limited budgets—as is the case in practically every library today—will be able to maximize the benefit from their monetary resources by selecting what they need most for their collection, while bypassing materials that bring limited value to their specific environment.

Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic expression. Well-known titles such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter and Katamari Damacy are evaluated in detail, showing how ideology and critique are conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. This book also considers how ‘Japan’ has been packaged for domestic and overseas consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. Placing each title in its historical context, Hutchinson ultimately shows that videogames are a relatively recent but significant site where cultural identity is played out in modern Japan. Comparing Japanese videogames with their American counterparts, as well as other media forms, such as film, manga and anime, Japanese Culture Through Videogames will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, as well as Game Studies, Media Studies and Japanese Studies more generally.

MS-DOS games encompassed the 1980s and 1990s and are regarded to be a golden era for home gaming. How could it not be a golden era with games like Doom, Quake, The Secret of Monkey Island, Star Wars: X-Wing, and so on? The DOS era left behind enough happy gaming memories to last a lifetime. So let's go ahead now and explore the 100 greatest games of the beloved DOS era!

This volume puts forth an original theoretical framework, the ludonarrative model, for studying video games which foregrounds the empirical study of the player experience. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to and description of the model, which draws on theoretical frameworks from multimodal discourse analysis, game studies, and social semiotics, and its development out of participant observation and qualitative interviews from the empirical study of a group of players. The volume then applies this approach to shed light on how players’ experiences in a game influence how they understand and make use of game components in order to progress its narrative. The book concludes with a frame by frame analysis of a popular game to demonstrate the model’s principles in action and its subsequent broader applicability to analyzing video game interaction and design. Offering a new way forward for video game research, this volume is key reading for students and scholars in multimodality, discourse analysis, game studies, interactive storytelling, and new media.

This volume of VGAR critically analyzes video game art as a means of survival. Though "survival strategy" exists as a defined gaming genre, all video games--as unique, participatory artworks--model both individual and collaborative means of survival through play. Video games offer opportunities to navigate both historical and fictional conflicts, traverse landscapes devastated by climate change or nuclear holocaust, and manage the limited resources of individuals or even whole civilizations on earth and beyond. They offer players a dizzying array of dystopian scenarios in which to build and invent, cooperate with others (through other players, NPCs, or AI) to survive another day. Contributors show how video games focus attention, hone visuospatial skills, and shape cognitive control and physical reflexes and thus have the power to participate in the larger context of radical, activist artworks that challenge destructive hegemonic structures as methods of human conditioning, coping, and creating. Contributions by Anna Anthropy , Andrew Bailey, Michael Anthony DeAnda, Luisa Salvador Dias, Tiffany Funk, Elizabeth LaPensée, Treva Michelle Legassie, Michael Paramo, and Martin Zeilinger.