The Most Relaxing Video Games

Video games are so much more than just full throttle blasts of gunfights, violence and white-knuckle competition. They can also be beautiful, cosy and even emotionally uplifting journeys too. The ideal escapism after a day you’d sooner forget or the perfect sedative following a particularly stress-filled afternoon. The Most Relaxing Video Games will walk you through a selection of gaming experiences sure to help you unwind. From the familiar warmth of sitting down with a good classic board game (51 of them to be exact) through to the solving of hundreds of puzzles on a mysterious island using nothing but lines, there’s a world of delightfully comforting video games just waiting to sooth your gaming soul. Covering over 50 video games and spanning nearly thirty years, this comprehensive guide includes detailed explanations of every peaceful entry along with full-color screenshots, standout moments, fascinating facts and of course what it is that makes them such a relaxing alternative. Whether you’re a fan of racers, management sims, puzzles or platformers, there’s something here for everyone. So trade in your firearms for farming gear and punching fists for puzzles. Sit back, get comfy and discover the relaxing side that video games have to offer.

The world of gaming has changed a lot since the days of Pong and PacMan. Asking Questions about Video Games gives young readers a look at the technology behind today's games, the messages they send, and what they say about our values as a culture. Case studies prompt inquiry, further thinking, and close examination of specific issues. Additional text features and search tools, including a glossary and an index, help students locate information and learn new words.

There’s no such thing as a bad kid. That’s what a lifetime of experience has taught Dr. Stuart Shanker. No matter how difficult, out of control, distracted, or exhausted a child might seem, there’s a way forward: self-regulation. Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, this radical new technique allows children and the adults who care for them to regain their composure and peace of mind. Self-Reg is a groundbreaking book that presents an entirely new understanding of your child’s emotions and behavior and a practical guide for parents to help their kids engage calmly and successfully in learning and life. Grounded in decades of research and working with children and parents by Dr. Shanker, Self-Reg realigns the power of the parent-child relationship for positive change. Self-regulation is the nervous system’s way of responding to stress. We are seeing a generation of children and teens with excessively high levels of stress, and, as a result, an explosion of emotional, social, learning, behavior, and physical health problems. But few parents recognize the “hidden stressors” that their children are struggling with: physiological as well as social and emotional. An entrenched view of child rearing sees our children as lacking self-control or willpower, but the real basis for these problems lies in excessive stress. Self-regulation can dramatically improve a child’s mood, attention, and concentration. It can help children to feel empathy, and to cultivate the sorts of virtues that most parents know are vital for their child’s long-term wellbeing. Self-regulation brings about profound and lasting transformation that continues throughout life. Dr. Shanker translates decades of his findings from working with children into practical, prescriptive advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop their self-regulation skills and teach their children to do the same and engage successfully with life for optimal learning, social, and emotional growth.

In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.

In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center. Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books, music, and movies. They are increasingly used for purposes other than entertainment, yet debates about videogames still fork along one of two paths: accusations of debasement through violence and isolation or defensive paeans to their potential as serious cultural works. In How to Do Things with Videogames, Ian Bogost contends that such generalizations obscure the limitless possibilities offered by the medium’s ability to create complex simulated realities. Bogost, a leading scholar of videogames and an award-winning game designer, explores the many ways computer games are used today: documenting important historical and cultural events; educating both children and adults; promoting commercial products; and serving as platforms for art, pornography, exercise, relaxation, pranks, and politics. Examining these applications in a series of short, inviting, and provocative essays, he argues that together they make the medium broader, richer, and more relevant to a wider audience. Bogost concludes that as videogames become ever more enmeshed with contemporary life, the idea of gamers as social identities will become obsolete, giving rise to gaming by the masses. But until games are understood to have valid applications across the cultural spectrum, their true potential will remain unrealized. How to Do Things with Videogames offers a fresh starting point to more fully consider games’ progress today and promise for the future.

"Did you know that every time you pick up the controller to your PlayStation or Xbox, you are entering a game world steeped in mathematics? Power-Up reveals the hidden mathematics in many of today's most popular video games and explains why mathematical learning doesn't just happen in the classroom or from books--you're doing it without even realizing it when you play games on your cell phone. In this lively and entertaining book, Matthew Lane discusses how gamers are engaging with the traveling salesman problem when they play Assassin's Creed, why it is mathematically impossible for Mario to jump through the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros., and how The Sims teaches us the mathematical costs of maintaining relationships. He looks at mathematical pursuit problems in classic games like Missile Command and Ms. Pac-Man, and how each time you play Tetris, you're grappling with one of the most famous unsolved problems in all of mathematics and computer science. Along the way, Lane discusses why Family Feud and Pictionary make for ho-hum video games, how realism in video games (or the lack of it) influences learning, what video games can teach us about the mathematics of voting, the mathematics of designing video games, and much more. Power-Up shows how the world of video games is an unexpectedly rich medium for learning about the beautiful mathematical ideas that touch all aspects of our lives--including our virtual ones."--Dust jacket.

A lot of work has been done talking about what masculinity is and what it does within video games, but less has been given to considering how and why this happens, and the processes involved. This book considers the array of daily relationships involved in producing masculinity and how those actions and relationships translate to video games. Moreover, it examines the ways the actual play of the games maps onto the stories to create contradictory moments that show that, while toxic masculinity certainly exists, it is far from inevitable. Topics covered include the nature of masculine apprenticeship and nurturing, labor, fatherhood, the scapegoating of women, and reckoning with mortality, among many others.

This book is a potted history of video games, telling all the rollercoaster stories of this fascinating young industry that’s now twice as big globally than the film and music industries combined. Each chapter explores the history of video games through a different lens, giving a uniquely well-rounded overview. Packed with pictures and stats, this book is for video gamers nostalgic for the good old days of gaming, and young gamers curious about how it all began. If you’ve ever enjoyed a video game, or you just want to see what all the fuss is about, this book is for you. There are stories about the experimental games of the 1950s and 1960s; the advent of home gaming in the 1970s; the explosion – and implosion – of arcade gaming in the 1980s; the console wars of the 1990s; the growth of online and mobile games in the 2000s; and we get right up to date with the 2010s, including such cultural phenomena as twitch.tv, the Gamergate scandal, and Fortnite. But rather than telling the whole story from beginning to end, each chapter covers the history of video games from a different angle: platforms and technology, people and personalities, companies and capitalism, gender and representation, culture, community, and finally the games themselves.