Play Matters
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Why play is a productive, expressive way of being, a form of understanding, and a fundamental part of our well-being.
Playful ThinkingSeries
This series delves into the captivating world of games, exploring their profound connections across diverse fields of human knowledge. Each volume focuses on a distinct topic, revealing how games intersect with art, architecture, music, and history. Authors, including leading scholars and industry luminaries, present their insights in an accessible and engaging manner. It's perfect for anyone seeking to look beyond the surface of gaming and discover its broader cultural and societal implications.
Recommended Reading Order
Play like a Feminist.
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
An important new voice provides an empowering look at why video games need feminism—and why all of us should make space for more play in our lives. You play like a girl: It’s meant to be an insult, accusing a player of subpar, un-fun playing. If you’re a girl, and you grow up, do you “play like a woman”—whatever that means? In this provocative and enlightening book, Shira Chess urges us to play like feminists. Playing like a feminist is empowering and disruptive—it exceeds the boundaries of gender yet still advocates for gender equality. Roughly half of all players identify as female, and “Gamergate” galvanized many of gaming’s disenfranchised voices. Chess argues games are in need of a creative platform-expanding, metaphysical explosion—and feminism can take us there. She reflects on the importance of play, playful protest, and how feminist video games can help us rethink the ways that we tell stories. Feminism needs video games as much as video games need feminism. Play and games can be powerful. Chess’s goal is for all of us—regardless of gender orientation, ethnicity, ability, social class, or stance toward feminism—to spend more time playing as a tool of radical disruption.
Uncertainty in Games
- 152 pages
- 6 hours of reading
How uncertainty in games-from Super Mario Bros. to Rock/Paper/Scissors-engages players and shapes play experiences.
Playing Smart
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A new vision of the future of games and game design, enabled by AI.
Achievement Relocked
- 152 pages
- 6 hours of reading
How game designers can use the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion to shape player experience. Getting something makes you feel good, and losing something makes you feel bad. But losing something makes you feel worse than getting the same thing makes you feel good. So finding $10 is a thrill; losing $10 is a tragedy. On an “intensity of feeling” scale, loss is more intense than gain. This is the core psychological concept of loss aversion, and in this book game creator Geoffrey Engelstein explains, with examples from both tabletop and video games, how it can be a tool in game design. Loss aversion is a profound aspect of human psychology, and directly relevant to game design; it is a tool the game designer can use to elicit particular emotions in players. Engelstein connects the psychology of loss aversion to a range of phenomena related to games, exploring, for example, the endowment effect—why, when an object is ours, it gains value over an equivalent object that is not ours—as seen in the Weighted Companion Cube in the game Portal; the framing of gains and losses to manipulate player emotions; Deal or No Deal’s use of the utility theory; and regret and competence as motivations, seen in the context of legacy games. Finally, Engelstein examines the approach to loss aversion in three games by Uwe Rosenberg, charting the designer’s increasing mastery.
Real Games
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
How we talk about games as real or not-real, and how that shapes what games are made and who is invited to play them.
Ambient Play
- 200 pages
- 7 hours of reading
"Games have becomes embedded in our daily activities and Ambient Play shows how this affects our creative and ludic practices in everyday life"-- Provided by publisher
How Games Move Us
- 186 pages
- 7 hours of reading
This is a renaissance moment for video games - in the variety of genres they represent, and the range of emotional territory they cover. But how do games create emotion? In How Games Move Us, Katherine Isbister takes the reader on a timely and novel exploration of the design techniques that evoke strong emotions for players. She counters arguments that games are creating a generation of isolated, emotionally numb, antisocial loners. Games, Isbister shows us, can actually play a powerful role in creating empathy and other strong, positive emotional experiences; they reveal these qualities over time, through the act of playing. She offers a nuanced, systematic examination of exactly how games can influence emotion and social connection, with examples - drawn from popular, indie, and art games - that unpack the gamer's experience.
Works of Game
- 146 pages
- 6 hours of reading
"Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes--to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art. Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. 'Game Art, ' which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. 'Artgames, ' created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, 'Artists' Games'--with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman--represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities."--Publisher description
The Art of Failure
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
An exploration of why we play video games despite the fact that we are almost certain to feel unhappy when we fail at them.
Fun, Taste, & Games
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play.