Culture S Engine

This collection explores the politics of game play and its cultural context by focusing on the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies to macro political economy analysis of techno-nationalisms and transcultural flows of cultural capital, it provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming.

An organizational "North Star," codifying valued behaviors for optimal performance The Culture Engine shows leaders how to create a high performing, values aligned culture through the creation of an organizational constitution. With practical step-by-step guidance, readers learn how to define their organization's culture, delineate the behaviors that contribute to greater performance and greater engagement, and draft a document that codifies those behaviors into a constitution that guides behavior towards an ideal: a safe, inspiring workplace. The discussion focuses on people, including who should be involved at the outset and how to engage employees from start to finish, while examples of effective constitutions provide guidance toward drafting a document that can actualize an organization's potential. Culture drives everything that happens in an organization day to day, including focus, priorities, and the treatment of employees and customers. A great culture drives great performance, and can help attract and retain great talent. But a great culture isn't something that evolves naturally. The Culture Engine is a guide to strategically planning a culture by compiling the company's guiding principles and behaviors into an organizational constitution. Decide which behaviors and attitudes are desired in the organization Secure leader commitment to planning, drafting, and implementing the document Learn the most effective way to socialize the draft statement and get everyone on board Model desired behaviors to boost employee engagement throughout the process Organizational culture is not an amorphous thing – it comes down from the top, inspired and exemplified by the leadership. It can steer a company up or down, keep it on mission or force it off-course. For an organization to fulfill its potential, the culture must be on-point, truly reflecting the heart of the company from leaders to team members across the company. The Culture Engine helps leaders define the playing field, pushing performance to the next level.

Culture’s Engine offers an insightful and penetrating analysis of the enduring relationship between technology and society. William Gosling explores in absorbing historical detail how humans have experienced change through a sequence of technological revolutions, each giving rise to new social organisation, which in turn influences the shape and timing of the next such revolution. Gosling argues that it is through this dialogue that successful technology sets the direction and pace of all cultural evolution. The state of technology at any time is the major influence on the world, and not just the material world. This book then is not a history of technology, still less of science. It fundamentally questions how technology and social forces interact, leading to these successive revolutions and their outcomes.

With its unique focus on video game engines, the data-driven architectures of game development and play, this innovative textbook examines the impact of software on everyday life and explores the rise of engine-driven culture. Through a series of case studies, Eric Freedman lays out a clear methodology for studying the game development pipeline, and uses the video game engine as a pathway for media scholars and practitioners to navigate the complex terrain of software practice. Examining several distinct software ecosystems that include the proprietary efforts of Amazon, Apple, Capcom, Epic Games and Unity Technologies, and the unique ways that game engines are used in non-game industries, Freedman illustrates why engines matter. The studies bind together designers and players, speak to the labors of the game industry, value the work of both global and regional developers, and establish critical connection points between software and society. Freedman has crafted a much-needed entry point for students new to code, and a research resource for scholars and teachers working in media industries, game development and new media.

Centred on the metaphor of bridges and knots, this volume investigates the dialogic and dialectical relationships between socially dissimilar and topographically distant cultures. The contributions here explore various methodological frameworks for discourses and theories that purport to conceptualize cultural spaces, which – as opposed to objective, geographical areas – are characterized by the propensity to bind topographical distances by means of symbolic ties and perimeters. The chapters address possible juxtapositions and intersections of spatial and temporal dimensions of cultural practice, religious and ethical “ties and knots” between lands and cultures, disconnections between historical, literary and cultural epochs, discourses of cultural entanglement and cultural ensnarement on individual and social levels, and the possibilities of raising aesthetic bridges between various cultures in music, poetry and visual arts, among other topics.

In this book, Miguel Basáñez presents a provocative look at the impact of culture on global development. Drawing on data from governments, NGOs, the World Values Survey and more addressing over one hundred countries, he argues that values, as the "building blocks" of culture, are directly related to the speed with which social, cultural and economic development occurs. Basáñez utilizes quantitative survey data to delineate three cultural hyperclusters across the globe: cultures of honor, which prioritize political authority; cultures of achievement, which emphasize economic advancement; and cultures of joy, which focus on social interactions. According to Basáñez, these cultures evolved chronologically, mirroring the development of agrarian, industrial and service societies. He argues that a country's developmental path is profoundly influenced by its people's values and culture, as crystallized through its formal and informal governing institutions. Culture is passed down over generations through families, schools, the media, religious institutions, leadership, and the law. Although culture and values are in a permanent state of evolution, leaders and policymakers can also push cultural change in order to promote desirable goals such as economic growth, democratization, and equality. Over the course of the book, Basáñez introduces two new measures of development: the Objective Development Index (which blends rubrics such as health, education, income, gender equality, political rights and civil liberties, and economic inequality) and the Subjective Development Index (which uses responses to the World Values Survey to classify countries according to their values).

In the United States, art has become a major industry, like health care, education, and defense. In the 1950s, however, arts policy was an area of public policy, in which the United States seemed to lag behind other countries. One of Daniel M. Fox's aims in writing Engines of Culture thirty years ago was to show why American social policy was incomplete with respect to the arts. While it was easy to garner support for government funding of hospital intensive care units or colleges of engineering, it was difficult to justify public subsidies for painting, sculpture, ballet, and music. Fox's own doubts informed the research that led to Engines of Culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, philanthropy became a focus of scholarship. Foundations, interested in the subject, made grants to study it; but also, many social scientists became increasingly dubious about the ability of the state to sustain certain sources of creativity and social reform. Engines of Culture argues that art museums are an instructive example of the accommodation of public and private interests. In his new introduction, Fox places Engines of Culture in its personal and intellectual contexts, assesses the book's strengths and weaknesses and its influence on subsequent scholarship, and comments on the present state of knowledge about museums and power in American communities. In the 1950s, research on the arts avoided political analysis. Although there is now substantial literature about the history, sociology, and economics of the arts and arts institutions, academics in this field still conventionally dismiss politics. Engines of Culture is one of the few historical studies of the political economy of art museums. It will be of interest to political scientists, policymakers, scholars of philanthropy, artists, and historians.

Videogames were once made with a vast range of tools and technologies, but in recent years a small number of commercially available 'game engines' have reached an unprecedented level of dominance in the global videogame industry. In particular, the Unity game engine has penetrated all scales of videogame development, from the large studio to the hobbyist bedroom, such that over half of all new videogames are reportedly being made with Unity. This book provides an urgently needed critical analysis of Unity as ‘cultural software’ that facilitates particular production workflows, design methodologies, and software literacies. Building on long-standing methods in media and cultural studies, and drawing on interviews with a range of videogame developers, Benjamin Nicoll and Brendan Keogh argue that Unity deploys a discourse of democratization to draw users into its ‘circuits of cultural software’. For scholars of media production, software culture, and platform studies, this book provides a framework and language to better articulate the increasingly dominant role of software tools in cultural production. For videogame developers, educators, and students, it provides critical and historical grounding for a tool that is widely used yet rarely analysed from a cultural angle.