An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

A BEST CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Globe and Mail, Horn Book, and Boston Globe STARRED Reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, The Horn Book, School Library Journal A 2022 Best Book for Babies From Julie Flett, the beloved author and illustrator of Birdsong, comes a joyous new book about playtime for babies, toddlers, and kids up to age 7. Animals and kids love to play! This wonderful book celebrates playtime and the connection between children and the natural world. Beautiful illustrations show: birds who chase and chirp! bears who wiggle and wobble! whales who swim and squirt! owls who peek and peep! and a diverse group of kids who love to do the same, shouting: We play too! / kimêtawânaw mîna At the end of the book, animals and children gently fall asleep after a fun day of playing outside, making this book a great bedtime story. A beautiful ode to the animals and humans we share our world with, We All Play belongs on every bookshelf. This book also includes: A glossary of Cree words for wild animals in the book A pronunciation guide and link to audio pronunciation recordings

For fans of Press Here, this new interactive picture book invites readers to touch and move and "play" with the book. To start our show we need a band--maybe you can lend a hand! There are lots of ways little hands can make music. Each page of this interactive book invites readers to strum the guitar, slide the trombone, crash the cymbals, and more--no instruments required! With a delightful rhyming text and engaging illustrations, this book is full of instruments waiting to share their sounds. The only thing this band needs is YOU! Just use your imagination, turn the pages, and Play This Book! Pair with Pet This Book, another title by author Jessica Young and illustrator Daniel Wiseman that comes printed on heavy-duty card stock pages to stand up to all kinds of play!

The phenomenal growth of gaming has inspired plenty of hand-wringing since its inception--from the press, politicians, parents, and everyone else concerned with its effect on our brains, bodies, and hearts. But what if games could be good, not only for individuals but for the world? In Power Play, Asi Burak and Laura Parker explore how video games are now pioneering innovative social change around the world. As the former executive director and now chairman of Games for Change, Asi Burak has spent the last ten years supporting and promoting the use of video games for social good, in collaboration with leading organizations like the White House, NASA, World Bank, and The United Nations. The games for change movement has introduced millions of players to meaningful experiences around everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the US Constitution. Power Play looks to the future of games as a global movement. Asi Burak and Laura Parker profile the luminaries behind some of the movement's most iconic games, including former Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O’Connor and Pulitzer-Prize winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They also explore the promise of virtual reality to address social and political issues with unprecedented immersion, and see what the next generation of game makers have in store for the future.

A brand-new standalone novel in the New York Times bestselling Briar U series! What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things. But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie—my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her. Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound. And she’s making a play for me. Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts. Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body—and my heart.

An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill--waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. We are digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds.

Play is one of humanity's straightforward yet deceitful ideas: though the notion is unanimously agreed upon to be universal, used for man and animal alike, nothing defines what all its manifestations share, from childish playtime to on stage drama, from sporting events to market speculation. Within the author's anthropological field of work (Mongolia and Siberia), playing holds a core position: national holidays are called "Games," echoing in that way the circus games in Ancient Rome and today's Olympics. These games convey ethical values and local identity. Roberte Hamayon bases her analysis of the playing spectrum on their scrutiny. Starting from fighting and dancing, encompassing learning, interaction, emotion and strategy, this study heads towards luck and belief as well as the ambiguity of the relation to fiction and reality. It closes by indicating two features of play: its margin and its metaphorical structure. Ultimately revealing its consistency and coherence, the author displays play as a modality of action of its own. "Playing is no 'doing' in the ordinary sense" once wrote Johan Huizinga. Isn't playing doing something else, elswhere and otherwise ?

In this interactive video-game-inspired picture book perfect for fans of Press Here and Tap the Magic Tree, Blip needs to reach the bar to win his game—but he needs the reader’s help. If he wins, he gets a surprise! Tap, tickle, and shake Blip. Tilt, turn, and bounce Blip. Help Blip win the game in this spirited interactive book, perfect for reading—and playing—again and again!

A lively, deeply reported tour of the science and strategies helping athletes like Tom Brady, Serena Williams, Carli Lloyd, and LeBron James redefine the notion of “peak age.” Season after season, today’s sports superstars seem to defy the limits of physical aging that inevitably sideline their competitors. How much of the difference is genetic destiny and how much can be attributed to better training, medicine, and technology? Is athletic longevity a skill that can be taught or a mental discipline that can be mastered? Can career-ending injuries be predicted and avoided? Journalist Jeff Bercovici spent extensive time with professional and Olympic athletes, coaches, and doctors to find the answers to these questions. His quest led him to training camps, tournaments, hospitals, antiaging clinics, and Silicon Valley startups, where he tried cutting-edge treatments and technologies firsthand and investigated the realities behind health fads like alkaline diets, high-intensity interval training, and cryotherapy. Through fascinating profiles and first-person anecdotes, Bercovici illuminates the science and strategies extending the careers of elite older athletes, uncovers the latest advances in fields from nutrition to brain science to virtual reality, and offers empowering insights about how the rest of us can find peak performance at any age.

"Bam and Jam are big dogs with even bigger hearts. All they want in life is to make friends and be happy, but life isn't always easy... Join Bam and Jam on their adventures as they face the many daily struggles of being a little bit different." There are a great many activities and social settings or requirements that are inaccessible to some, either through their own fears or factors out of their control. Now though, we're living in a moment where kindness, empathy and inclusion are being talked about more than ever before; but it's important that these conversations lead to change. Even if that's just within our own home or school environments at first. While on the surface "The Adventures of Bam and Jam" may only appear to deliver a simple lesson, there's a message in each story that runs deeper and is widely transferrable to many aspects of our lives. I try to shed light on situations great and small that we will all be faced with - or have faced previously - as seen in "You Can't Play With Us!" Something as seemingly straightforward as making friends is often quite the opposite, emphasising the importance of understanding inclusion from an early age. Books can be an excellent tool for teaching and building a basic understanding of larger issues. However more than that, children - and parents - often find comfort within their pages. I hope these stories (most based on genuine experience) will serve as both entertaining and educational. Not just for children but dog owners too!