Kategoria BISAC: Games & Activities >> Role Playing & Fantasy

"Ever since the creators of the animated television show South Park turned their lovingly sardonic gaze on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft for an entire episode, WoW's status as an icon of digital culture has been secure. My Life as a Night Elf Priest digs deep beneath the surface of that icon to explore the rich particulars of the World of Warcraft player's experience."
--Julian Dibbell, Wired

"World of Warcraft is the best representative of a significant new technology, art form, and sector of society: the...

From flight simulators and first-person shooters to MMPOG and innovative strategy games like 2008's Spore, computer games owe their development to computer simulation and imaging produced by and for the military during the Cold War. To understand their place in contemporary culture, Patrick Crogan argues, we must first understand the military logics that created and continue to inform them. Gameplay Mode situates computer games and gaming within the contemporary technocultural moment, connecting them to developments in the conceptualization of pure war since the Second World...

From flight simulators and first-person shooters to MMPOG and innovative strategy games like 2008's Spore, computer games owe their development to computer simulation and imaging produced by and for the military during the Cold War. To understand their place in contemporary culture, Patrick Crogan argues, we must first understand the military logics that created and continue to inform them. Gameplay Mode situates computer games and gaming within the contemporary technocultural moment, connecting them to developments in the conceptualization of pure war since the Second World...

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...

In eGods, a leading scholar in the study of virtual gameworlds takes an in-depth look at the fantasy religions of 41 games and arrives at some surprising conclusions. William Sims Bainbridge investigates all aspects of the gameworlds' religious dimensions: the focus on sacred spaces; the prevalence of magic; the fostering of a tribal morality by both religion...

In eGods, a leading scholar in the study of virtual gameworlds takes an in-depth look at the fantasy religions of 41 games and arrives at some surprising conclusions. William Sims Bainbridge investigates all aspects of the gameworlds' religious dimensions: the focus on sacred spaces; the prevalence of magic; the fostering of a tribal morality by both religion...

* Filled with never-before-seen art by the creators of the games

* New Dragon Age game coming in 2013

* From the writers and artists of the Dragon Age games.

The definitive guide

Fantasy sport has become big business. Recent estimates suggest that there as many as 27 million fantasy sport participants in the US alone, spending $1.5bn annually, with many millions more around the world. This is the first in-depth study of fantasy sport as a cultural and social phenomenon and a significant and growing component of the contemporary sports economy.

This book presents an overview of the history of fantasy sport and its close connection to innovations in sports media. Drawing on extensive empirical research, it offers an analysis of the demographics of fantasy sport,...

Game Studies is a rapidly growing area of contemporary scholarship, yet volumes in the area have tended to focus on more general issues. With Playing with the Past, game studies is taken to the next level by offering a specific and detailed analysis of one area of digital game play -- the representation of history. The collection focuses on the ways in which gamers engage with, play with, recreate, subvert, reverse and direct the historical past, and what effect this has on the ways in which we go about constructing the present or imagining a future.

What can World War Two...

Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values and moral choice. In game worlds players can take on the role of antagonists; they allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal or immoral if it happened outside of the game sphere. While contemporary games have always handled certain problematic topics, such as war, disasters, human decay, post-apocalyptic futures, cruelty and betrayal, lately even the most playful of genres are introducing situations in which players are presented with difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. This volume is an...

Fantasy sport has become big business. Recent estimates suggest that there as many as 27 million fantasy sport participants in the US alone, spending $1.5bn annually, with many millions more around the world. This is the first in-depth study of fantasy sport as a cultural and social phenomenon and a significant and growing component of the contemporary sports economy.

This book presents an overview of the history of fantasy sport and its close connection to innovations in sports media. Drawing on extensive empirical research, it offers an analysis of the demographics of...

The realm is yours to conquer and control, though your opponent will believe the same. It is up to you, your strategy, and the effectiveness of your troops to achieve victory.

With each character having their own hit points, armor, weapons, accuracy, spells, and unique abilities, a story is created with every match as you fight to protect your kingdom and conquer the realm of battle... The Chess Board.

Warriors of Chaos, orcs, dwarfs, gunfighters, streetwalkers, zombies, mutants, Soldiers of the Apocalypse, and vampires--in his photobook LARP, the Duesseldorf-based photographer Boris Leist transports us into the world of Live Action Role Playing. The players in this book create characters, which, ideally, have the power to blend out the modern world and one's own social surroundings. Liberated from customary structures, rules, and conditions, they immerse themselves and move about in an alien world. The integration of facets of their own real personalities often plays a great role...