Fun Taste Games

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. "Fun" is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant Entertaining Silly A way to trick students into learning Fun also has baggage--it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games , John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games--the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues--from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst , from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. “Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. “Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.

Are mealtimes with your kids a source of frustration? Ever wonder how on earth to get them to eat the recommended five servings of fruits and veggies per day (or even per week)? Getting to YUM is a practical and engaging guide for parents eager to get past their children’s food resistance—or to avoid it altogether. It introduces 7 Secrets of Raising Eager Eaters. (Secret 1: Teach your child to eat, just like you teach them to read! Secret 6: “Teach me to do it myself.” Kid participation is every parent’s secret weapon.) Karen Le Billon, author of French Kids Eat Everything, coaches readers through the process of taste training, including strategies, games and experiments that will encourage even reluctant eaters to branch out. Over 100 delicious, kid-tested, age-appropriate recipes lead families step-by-step through the process of learning to love new foods, enabling kids to really enjoy the foods we know they should be eating. Wise and compelling, Getting to YUM is grounded in revolutionary new research on the science of taste. Packed full of observations from real-life families, it provides everything parents need to transform their children—from babies to toddlers to teens—into good eaters for life.

#1 New York Times Bestseller The creator of the 100 Days of Real Food blog draws from her hugely popular website to offer simple, affordable, family-friendly recipes and practical advice for eliminating processed foods from your family's diet. Inspired by Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, Lisa Leake decided her family's eating habits needed an overhaul. She, her husband, and their two small girls pledged to go 100 days without eating highly processed or refined foods—a challenge she opened to readers on her blog. Now, she shares their story, offering insights and cost-conscious recipes everyone can use to enjoy wholesome natural food—whole grains, fruits and vegetables, seafood, locally raised meats, natural juices, dried fruit, seeds, popcorn, natural honey, and more. Illustrated with 125 photographs and filled with step-by-step instructions, this hands-on cookbook and guide includes: Advice for navigating the grocery store and making smart purchases Tips for reading ingredient labels 100 quick and easy recipes for such favorites as Homemade Chicken Nuggets, Whole Wheat Pasta with Kale Pesto Cream Sauce, and Cinnamon Glazed Popcorn Meal plans and suggestions for kid-pleasing school lunches, parties, and snacks "Real Food" anecdotes from the Leakes' own experiences A 10-day mini starter-program, and much more.

Changing the Game is intended to provide the do-it-yourself sportsman with detailed guidance and proven, time-tested techniques that will optimize the enjoyment of his or her harvest, taking it from field to fork, and for home cooks who are hunting for new ways to up their food game. Author Craig Tomsky grew up in a traditional Italian household in Northern New Jersey, where he was accustomed to good food-really good food. He has coupled his uncompromising love of such fare with his passion for hunting for more than 30 years, and has identified key factors that will reduce and, in most cases, eliminate the undesirable "gamey" flavors that all too often result from inadequately processed and prepared game. He has also developed and refined with his personal flair many recipes from family and friends over the years to not only complement each game's most desirable flavors, but to help you truly transform your game meat into delicious finished dishes. Changing the Game is a total playbook that takes the reader from caring for the game after the harvest through Craig's "keys to changing the game"-specific techniques used during the butchering and preservation processes that will positively impact the flavor and tenderness of the meat. It also lays out a roadmap and recommends equipment the reader can use to expediently and efficiently process various types of game meat. Explanations that support the findings and preparation techniques are provided in relatable layman's terms via anecdotes that are sprinkled throughout the book.Changing the Game finishes with a multitude of delicious recipes-some new, many traditional-that reflect the many cultures that make up this great country of ours. They have been enhanced by game meat as well as Craig's selection and use of complementary ingredients to achieve complex yet delicate flavor profiles for each dish. Changing the Game also contains recipes for side dishes and desserts, along with wine pairing recommendations, to provide the reader with a complete game plan for an enjoyable evening that will leave your dinner guests asking, "Is this really wild game?"

"Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn't just create a world; they create who you will be in that world. They tell you what abilities to use and what goals to take on. In other words, they specify a form of agency. Games work in the medium of agency. And to play them, we take on alternate agencies and submerge ourselves in them. What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that we have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over. Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art - the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity. And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency."--

An exploration of the relationship between games and art that examines the ways that both gamemakers and artists create game-based artworks. Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes—to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art. Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. “Game Art,” which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. “Artgames,” created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, “Artists' Games”—with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman—represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.