How To Win At Video Games

Describes techniques and strategies for achieving high scores at a variety of video games, including Pac-Man, Asteroids, Missile Command, Defender, and Donkey Kong

Winning at competitive games requires a results-oriented mindset that many players are simply not willing to adopt. This book walks players through the entire process: how to choose a game and learn basic proficiency, how to break through the mental barriers that hold most players back, and how to handle the issues that top players face. It also includes a complete analysis of Sun Tzu's book The Art of War and its applications to games of today. These foundational concepts apply to virtually all competitive games, and even have some application to "real life." Trade paperback. 142 pages.

In this era of big media franchises, sports branding has crossed platforms, so that the sport, its television broadcast, and its replication in an electronic game are packaged and promoted as part of the same fan experience. Editors Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates trace this development back to the unexpected success of Atari's Pong in the 1970s, which provoked a flood of sport simulation games that have had an impact on every sector of the electronic game market. From golf to football, basketball to step aerobics, electronic sports games are as familiar in the American household as the televised sporting events they simulate. This book explores the points of convergence at which gaming and sports culture merge.

An avid gamer and sharp media critic explains meritocracy's negative contribution to video game culture--and what can be done about it Video games have brought entertainment, education, and innovation to millions, but gaming also has its dark sides. From the deep-bred misogyny epitomized by GamerGate to the endemic malice of abusive player communities, gamer culture has had serious real-world repercussions, ranging from death threats to sexist industry practices and racist condemnations. In The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, new media critic and longtime gamer Christopher A. Paul explains how video games' focus on meritocracy empowers this negative culture. Paul first shows why meritocracy is integral to video-game design, narratives, and values. Games typically valorize skill and technique, and common video-game practices (such as leveling) build meritocratic thinking into the most basic premises. Video games are often assumed to have an even playing field, but they facilitate skill transfer from game to game, allowing certain players a built-in advantage. The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games identifies deep-seated challenges in the culture of video games--but all is not lost. As Paul argues, similarly meritocratic institutions like professional sports and higher education have found powerful remedies to alleviate their own toxic cultures, including active recruiting and strategies that promote values such as contingency, luck, and serendipity. These can be brought to the gamer universe, Paul contends, ultimately fostering a more diverse, accepting, and self-reflective culture that is not only good for gamers but good for video games as well.

Destroy the competition on game night with this seriously funny guide packed with handy strategy, tricks, and tips from the experts Games are way more fun to play when you win—especially when you crush your friends and family! In How to Win Games and Beat People, Times science editor Tom Whipple explores inside tips, strategy, and advice from a ridiculously overqualified array of experts that will help you dominate the competition when playing a wide range of classic games—from Hangman to Risk to Trivial Pursuit and more. A mathematician explains how to approach Connect 4; a racecar driver guides you through the corners in slot car racing; a mime shares trade secrets for performing the best Charades; a Scrabble champion reveals his secret strategies; and a game theorist teaches you to become a real estate magnate, recommending the Monopoly properties to acquire that will bankrupt and embarrass your opponents (sorry, Mom and Dad). Funny, smart, and endlessly useful, this is a must-read for anyone who takes games too seriously, and the bible for sore losers everywhere.