The Nature Of The Game

The evocative paintings of Ben Hoskyns capture the beauty and variety of quarry species worldwide, from Great Britain and Europe to the wide variety of North American birds and animals.

What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.

Using game theory and examples of actual games people play, Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler show how the elements of chance and rules underlie all that happens in the universe, from genetic behavior through economic growth to the composition of music. To illustrate their argument, the authors turn to classic games--backgammon, bridge, and chess--and relate them to physical, biological, and social applications of probability theory and number theory. Further, they have invented, and present here, more than a dozen playable games derived from scientific models for equilibrium, selection, growth, and even the composition of RNA.

An ex-CIA operative is on the run from his former employers in this “brutal, moving” thriller from the author of Six Days of the Condor (James Ellroy). Jud is not too drunk to recognize the assassin. How the hit man found him in this hard-bitten roadhouse, Jud isn’t sure, but he’s not going down without a fight. His hands shaking too much for close combat, Jud perches himself on the bar’s roof and drops onto the assassin as he steps out into the darkness. Though Jud only meant to stun, the man is dead. Jud doesn’t care. Quitting the CIA hasn’t been easy. Once one of the agency’s top killers, Jud’s skills have been dulled by civilian life, and his only chance of survival is to go into hiding. But before disappearing completely, he calls one of the few people he can trust, DC journalist Nick Kelley. Together, they’re about to take on the deadly rot at the heart of the CIA. James Grady revolutionized the thriller genre with his CIA analyst codenamed Condor, immortalized by Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, and currently portrayed by Max Irons in the all-new TV series Condor. In The Nature of the Game, Grady introduces another complex hero in a “brooding, ambitious” thriller that offers a “wrap-up of everything awful in the spy business” (Kirkus Reviews).

Essential reading for every golfer from the sport’s most acclaimed course developer—a comprehensive, firsthand account of restoring the inherent satisfactions of this centuries-old game, from the beauty of natural courses to the joys of walking the course “Mike Keiser is the best thing to happen to golf since the Big Bertha. He’s the guy who single-handedly saved us from the Fake 100-foot Waterfall Era. He gave us back nature, walking and buddy trips. This is a fascinating read on how in the world he did it.”—Rick Reilly, golf writer An avid golfer with a demanding career in the greeting card business, Mike Keiser found a new calling on the authentic links courses of Scotland and Ireland. Seized by the beauty of the landscape and the holes running through it, he determined this was how golf was meant to be: inclusive, not private; played on foot, not riding a cart; the courses natural, neither lavish nor contrived. Vowing to transplant this experience to the States, Keiser entered the golf business and, ignoring the advice of experts, built a true links course in Oregon. Bandon Dunes has redefined the game here and become a destination for golfers everywhere. Those same convictions have now produced other top-ranked courses by Keiser—in Wisconsin, Nova Scotia, Tasmania, and elsewhere—whose magical allure demonstrates what the world’s most gifted golf course architects can accomplish by working on designs that hew to the natural landscape. Keiser’s further commitments—to the caddies, greens crews, and staff at his resorts; to the communities in which they’re located; and to deep environmental stewardship—enhance the singular appeal of these immensely popular courses. At once an account of inventing a new, life-changing business, a guide to historic course design, and a paean to the sport that has recently experienced a surge of growth, The Nature of the Game is essential reading for every golfer.

In 1999, a short video of a solitary boy kicking an empty bottle up a hill in Mexico City became the first instalment of Children’s Games, a series of works by artist Francis Alÿs (b. Antwerp, 1959). The ongoing project, which now numbers around thirty-five works, has gradually given shape to an extensive collection of videos of children at play. For almost twenty-five years, Alÿs and his collaborators Félix Blume, Julien Devaux, and Rafael Ortega have been travelling around the world to document the distinctive ways in which children interact with each other and their physical environment. They have gone from remote villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Nepal to the mountains of Switzerland and metropoles like Hong Kong and Paris, but have also visited the war-torn city of Mosul in Iraq, the border between Mexico and the United States, and the strait of Gibraltar that divides Africa and Europe. The resulting images are standing proof of the seriousness of play and of children’s stunning powers of resilience in the face of conflict. This volume provides a multidisciplinary perspective to the many layers of Children’s Games. It includes an interview with Francis Alÿs and Rafael Ortega, a series of essays by well-known scholars and art critics, curatorial statements, and a logbook related to the presentation of Children’s Games at the Venice Biennale of 2022.

In this classic thriller, presented with a new introduction by the author, a down-and-out ex-CIA operative runs from his former masters and propels us like a bullet through the secret spy history of America Jud is not too drunk to recognize the assassin. How the hit man found him in this hard-bitten roadhouse, Jud isn’t sure, but he’s not going to go down without a fight. His hands shaking too much for close combat, Jud perches himself on the bar’s roof and drops on the assassin when he steps into the darkness. Though Jud only meant to stun, the man is dead. Jud doesn’t care. Quitting the CIA has not proven as easy as he hoped. Once one of the Agency’s top killers, Jud’s skills have been dulled by civilian life, and his only chance is to go into hiding. Before he disappears off the grid, he makes a call to Nick Kelley, a D.C. journalist who is one of the only men Jud can trust. Between the two of them, they have a shot atstopping the rot at the heart of the CIA. That is, if the rot doesn’t kill them first.

A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.