Computer Games And Virtual Worlds

This book explores and discusses how to obtain traditional intellectual property law rights in the non-traditional settings of video game and virtual world environments, and serves as a primer for researching these emerging legal issues. Each chapter addresses: end user license agreements; copyrights, patents, trademarks; and trade secrets, as addressed by U.S. law. It also covers international legal issues stemming from the multi-national user-base and foreign operation of many virtual worlds.

"This book explains how digital environments can easily become familiar and beneficial for educational and professional development, with the implementation of games into various aspects of our environment"--Provided by publisher.

The strong psychological power of games can have both positive and negative consequences for the workplace. That's why it's important to put them into practice correctly from the beginning--and Reeves and Read explain how by showing which good design principles are a powerful antidote to the addictive and stress-inducing potential of games.

William Sims Bainbridge Virtual worlds are persistent online computer-generated environments where people can interact, whether for work or play, in a manner comparable to the real world. The most prominent current example is World of Warcraft (Corneliussen and Rettberg 2008), a massively multiplayer online game with 11 million s- scribers. Some other virtual worlds, notably Second Life (Rymaszewski et al. 2007), are not games at all, but Internet-based collaboration contexts in which people can create virtual objects, simulated architecture, and working groups. Although interest in virtual worlds has been growing for at least a dozen years, only today it is possible to bring together an international team of highly acc- plished authors to examine them with both care and excitement, employing a range of theories and methodologies to discover the principles that are making virtual worlds increasingly popular and may in future establish them as a major sector of human-centered computing.

This text provides a comprehensive treatment of virtual world design from one of its pioneers. It covers everything from MUDs to MOOs to MMORPGs, from text-based to graphical VWs.

Gaming the System takes philosophical traditions out of the ivory tower and into the virtual worlds of video games. In this book, author David J. Gunkel explores how philosophical traditions—put forth by noted thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, and Žižek—can help us explore and conceptualize recent developments in video games, game studies, and virtual worlds. Furthermore, Gunkel interprets computer games as doing philosophy, arguing that the game world is a medium that provides opportunities to model and explore fundamental questions about the nature of reality, personal identity, social organization, and moral conduct. By using games to investigate and innovate in the area of philosophical thinking, Gunkel shows how areas such as game governance and manufacturers' terms of service agreements actually grapple with the social contract and produce new postmodern forms of social organization that challenge existing modernist notions of politics and the nation state. In this critically engaging study, Gunkel considers virtual worlds and video games as more than just "fun and games," presenting them as sites for new and original thinking about some of the deepest questions concerning the human experience.

Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds Strategies for Online Instruction Clark Aldrich Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds The infusion of games, simulations, and virtual worlds into online learning can be a transforming experience for both the instructor and the student. This practical guide, written by education game expert Clark Aldrich, shows faculty members and instructional designers how to identify opportunities for building games, simulations, and virtual environments into the curriculum; how to successfully incorporate these interactive environments to enhance student learning; and how to measure the learning outcomes. It also discusses how to build institutional support for using and financing more complex simulations. The book includes frameworks, tips, case studies and other real examples, and resources. Praise for Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds "Clark Aldrich provides powerful insights into the dynamic arena of games, simulations, and virtual worlds in a simultaneously entertaining and serious manner as only he can. If you are involved with educating anyone, from your own children to classrooms full of students, you need to devour this book." — Karl Kapp, assistant director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University "At a time when the technologies for e-learning are evolving faster than most people can follow, Aldrich successfully bridges the perceptual gap between virtual worlds, digital games, and educational simulations, and provides educators with all they really need to use this technology to enhance and enrich their e-learning experiences." — Katrin Becker, instructor, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Mount Royal College, and adjunct professor of education, University of Calgary "I consider this a must-read for anyone engaged in or contemplating using these tools in their classrooms or designing their own tools." — Rick Van Sant, professor of learning and technology, Ferris State University