Career Building Through Alternate Reality Gaming

Provides an overview of alternate reality gaming, and describes the knowledge, skills, education, and experience needed to pursue a career in this field.

Introduces readers to fan fiction writing, the creation of original stories based on characters and settings from popular fiction, television programs, films, or video games, and suggests ways that this creative activity might lead to a career in writing.

Introduces readers to skinning and modding, the practices of modifying the appearance or function of existing software, and suggests ways that these creative activities might lead to a career in web design or game programming.

Provides an overview of digital sound careers, including DJs, music producers, and recording engineers, and describes the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to pursue a career in these fields.

While formal training and communication are a foundational approach to developing employees in the workplace, alternate reality games (ARGs) provide a framework for increased and sustained engagement within business organizations. ARGs are transmedia experiences designed to generate engagement and immersive learning beyond what is achieved in formal and conventional training and communication approaches. Alternate Reality Games: Gamification for Performance leads you through the fundamentals of ARGs. It includes a discussion of what is and is not an ARG, citing examples and identifying business challenges that can be addressed through ARGs. It presents case studies that illustrate the variety of forms that ARGs take and the issues to which they can be applied, such as improving performance and critical communication situations. It also gives guidelines for creating your own ARGs, reviewing the process and technological tools and considerations relevant to their creation. Presenting a thorough examination of the beneficial roles ARGs can play in the business environment as well as methods for creating effective ARGs, Alternate Reality Games: Gamification for Performance is an ideal reference for those approaching or considering ARGs for the first time as well as the training professional or professional game designer. It presents a comprehensive overview of the advantages of applying ARGs to the workplace as well as methods for designing and using them.

Machinima, meaning "machine cinema," is the technology of using computers to create cinematic features. This book teaches readers, who may be hobbyists in the art, how to use their talents to produce lifelong careers from what they love.

This book provides an overview of the design and development of learning games using examples from those created by the authors over last decade. It provides lessons learned about processes, successful approaches, and pitfalls that befall developers of learning games and educational transmedia experiences. The book includes stories from the authors’ lives that give context to why and how they built these products to help the reader understand whether or not building a learning game is right for them and what challenges they might face. It also gives a framework for thinking ethically about design and research when it comes to designing complex digital systems like educational games. /div

Lost has received widespread acclaim as one of the most innovative, intelligent, and influential dramatic series in television history. Central to Lost's success has been its capacity to evoke audience interpretations of its mysteries, undiminished even with the series' definitive conclusion. This collection of fifteen essays by critics, academics, and philosophers examines the complete series from a diverse but interconnected array of perspectives. Complementary and occasionally conflicting interpretations of the show's major themes are presented, including the role of time, fate and determinism, masculinity, parenthood, and the threat of environmental apocalypse.