Video Gaming

Video games have come a long way since Atari launched Pong back in 1971. The Innovation Library helps expose students to the important concept of innovation. With the pace of change in the video game industry, even the youngest student has seen the impact of innovation on games that they enjoy.

​This book examines gender attitudes in Reddit’s popular video gaming community subreddit, r/gaming. Video gaming has long been understood as a masculinised social space and, while increasing numbers of girls and women now engage in the pastime, boys and men remain the predominant social actors. Furthermore, the gaming community has been widely identified as a prime case study in broader concerns around ‘toxic’ masculinity and gendered online harassment. However, there is also underexamined evidence of a growing movement in the community coming forward to voice its collective opposition. Utilising an innovative combination of computational and qualitative methods, the research undertaken here exposes this fuller picture, revealing significant contestation and a spectrum of attitudes that mark out this popular gaming community as a battleground for gender (in)equality. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology, games studies and computer sciences, will find this book of interest.

Game studies has been an understudied area within the emerging field of digital media and religion. Video games can reflect, reject, or reconfigure traditionally held religious ideas and often serve as sources for the production of religious practices and ideas. This collection of essays presents a broad range of influential methodological approaches that illuminate how and why video games shape the construction of religious beliefs and practices, and also situates such research within the wider discourse on how digital media intersect with the religious worlds of the 21st century. Each chapter discusses a particular method and its theoretical background, summarizes existing research, and provides a practical case study that demonstrates how the method specifically contributes to the wider study of video games and religion. Featuring contributions from leading and emerging scholars of religion and digital gaming, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars in the areas of digital culture, new media, religious studies, and game studies across a wide range of disciplines.

Videogamers will find all they need to know in this collection of reviews of the top 150 games. Includes a roundup of monthly magazines and e-zines and Web site contact information for all hardware manufacturers, game developers, and publishers mentioned in the guide. Screen shots.

Video games are becoming culturally dominant. But what does their popularity say about our contemporary society? This book explores video game culture, but in doing so, utilizes video games as a lens through which to understand contemporary social life. Video games are becoming an increasingly central part of our cultural lives, impacting on various aspects of everyday life such as our consumption, communities, and identity formation. Drawing on new and original empirical data – including interviews with gamers, as well as key representatives from the video game industry, media, education, and cultural sector – Video Games as Culture not only considers contemporary video game culture, but also explores how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, late modernity, and contemporary political rationalities. This book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such Video Games, Sociology, and Media and Cultural Studies. It will also be useful for those interested in the wider role of culture, technology, and consumption in the transformation of society, identities, and communities.

This book addresses the ongoing scientific debates regarding video games and their effects on players. The book features opposing perspectives and offers point and counterpoint exchanges in which researchers on both sides of a specific topic make their best case for their findings and analysis. Chapters cover both positive and negative effects of video games on players’ behavior and cognition, from contributing to violence and alienation to promoting therapeutic outcomes for types of cognitive dysfunction. The contrasting viewpoints model presents respectful scientific debate, encourages open dialogue, and allows readers to come to informed conclusions. Key questions addressed include: · Do violent video games promote violence? · Does video game addiction exist? · Should parents limit children’s use of interactive media? · Do action video games promote visual attention? · Does sexist content in video games promote misogyny in real life? · Can video games slow the progress of dementia? · Are video games socially isolating? Video Game Influences on Aggression, Cognition, and Attention is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals as well as graduate students in developmental psychology, social work, educational policy and politics, criminology/criminal justice, child and school psychology, sociology, media law, and other related disciplines.

This book is a multidisciplinary study of the translation and localisation of video games. It offers a descriptive analysis of the industry – understood as a global phenomenon in entertainment – and aims to explain the norms governing present industry practices, as well as game localisation processes. Additionally, it discusses particular translation issues that are unique to the multichannel nature of video games, in which verbal and nonverbal signs must be cohesively combined with interactivity to achieve maximum playability and immerse players in the game’s virtual world. Although positioned within the theoretical framework of descriptive translation studies, Bernal-Merino incorporates research from audiovisual translation, software localisation, computer assisted translation, comparative literature, and video game production. Moving beyond this framework, Translation and Localisation in Video Games challenges some of the basic tenets of translation studies and proposes changes to established and unsatisfactory processes in the video game and language services industries.

The Internet has become an indispensable tool for communications, research and commerce. But this report addresses the growing public concern at the Internet's dark side: the easy availability of hardcore pornography, which people may find offensive, the uploading by ordinary people of film of real fights, bullying or alleged rape, or the setting up of websites encouraging others to follow extreme diets, or self-harm, or even commit suicide. In particular, there is increasing anxiety among parents about the use of social networking sites and chatrooms for grooming and sexual predation. The Committee welcomes the Government-commissioned report by Dr Tanya Byron on the risks posed by the Internet to children, and agrees that a UK Council for Child Internet Safety should be established. Sites which host user-generated content-typically photos and videos uploaded by members of the public-have taken some steps to set minimum standards for that content. The Committee recommends that proactive review of content should be standard practice for such sites, and calls for provision of high profile facilities for reporting abuse or unwelcome behaviour directly to law enforcement and support organisations. There is a distinct issue about labelling of video games to indicate the nature of their content. Two systems currently exist side by side: the industry awards its own ratings, and the British Board of Film Classification awards classifications to a small number of games which feature content unsuitable for children. The dual system is confusing, and BBFC should have responsibility for rating games with content appropriate for adults or teenagers.