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.

The potential of video games as storytelling media and the deep involvement that players feel when they are part of the story needs to be analysed vis-à-vis other narrative media. This book underscores the importance of video games as narratives and offers a framework for analysing the many-ended stories that often redefine real and virtual lives.

A guide to repurposing used books and pages into unique, accessible art projects—the perfect gift for artists, crafters and book lovers. In these pages, Jason Thompson has curated an extensive and artistic range of both achievable upcycled crafts made from books and book pages and an amazing gallery that contains thought-provoking and beautiful works that transform books into art. The content encompasses a wide range of techniques and step-by-step projects that deconstruct and rebuild books and their parts into unique, recycled objects. The book combines in equal measure bookbinding, woodworking, paper crafting, origami, and textile and decorative arts techniques, along with a healthy dose of experimentation and fun. The beautiful high-end presentation and stunning photography make this book a delightful, must-have volume for any book-loving artist or art-loving book collector.

Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.

The full eBook version of Bert Weedon's Play in a Day in fixed-layout format. Play in a Day remains the world's most successful guitar tutor. It is as much a legend as the stars who've learnt from it - Eric Clapton, Mike Oldfield, Paul McCartney, Steve Hillage, George Harrison, John Lennon, Sting, Brian May, Pete Townshend and dozens more. Play in a Day is easy to use, inexpensive and can help to turn you into a legendary performer too.

Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible. From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural innovation of the late twentieth century.

THE FUTURE OF GAME DESIGN IN THE AGE OF AI: Can games measure intelligence? And how will artificial intelligence inform games of the future? In Playing Smart, Julian Togelius explores the connections between games and intelligence to offer a new vision of future games and game design. Video games already depend on AI. We use games to test AI algorithms, challenge our thinking, and better understand both natural and artificial intelligence. In the future, Togelius argues, game designers will be able to create smarter games that make us smarter in turn, applying advanced AI to help design games. In this book, he tells us how. Games are the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence. In 1948, Alan Turing, one of the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence, handwrote a program for chess. Today we have IBM’s Deep Blue and DeepMind’s AlphaGo, and huge efforts go into developing AI that can play such arcade games as Pac-Man. Programmers continue to use games to test and develop AI, creating new benchmarks for AI while also challenging human assumptions and cognitive abilities. Game design is at heart a cognitive science, Togelius reminds us—when we play or design a game, we plan, think spatially, make predictions, move, and assess ourselves and our performance. By studying how we play and design games, Togelius writes, we can better understand how humans and machines think. AI can do more for game design than providing a skillful opponent. We can harness it to build game-playing and game-designing AI agents, enabling a new generation of AI-augmented games. With AI, we can explore new frontiers in learning and play.

When is a game not a game? Tyler MacCandless can’t focus, even when he takes his medication. He can’t focus on school, on his future, on a book, on much of anything other than taking care of his older brother, Brandon, who’s in rehab for heroin abuse… again. Tyler’s dad is dead and his mom has mentally checked out. The only person he can really count on is his Civilian Air Patrol Mentor, Rick. The one thing in life it seems he doesn’t suck at is playing video games and, well, thats probably not going to get him into college. Just when it seems like his future is on a collision course with a life sentence at McDonald’s, Rick asks him to test a video game. If his score’s high enough, it could earn him a place in flight school and win him the future he was certain that he could never have. And when he falls in love with the game’s designer, the legendary gamer Ani, Tyler thinks his life might finally be turning around. That is, until Brandon goes MIA from rehab and Tyler and Ani discover that the game is more than it seems. Now Tyler will have to figure out what’s really going on in time to save his brother… and prevent his own future from going down in flames.

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!

Thomas documents the lives, struggles, and triumphs of the players and coaches of Faith Christian School in Grapevine, Texas, following the team for a full season to record a story that is sure to inspire readers to understand that relationships are more important than winning.