Title |
Publisher |
Price |
A follow up to 2007's Classic Home Video Games, 1972-1984, this reference work provides detailed descriptions and reviews of every U.S.-released game for the Nintendo NES, the Atari 7800, and the Sega Master System, all of which are considered among the most popular video game systems ever produced.
Organized alphabetically by console brand, each chapter includes a description of the game system... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$29.99
|
A Complete Guide to Sega Genesis, Neo Geo and TurboGrafx-16 Games
The third in a series about home video games, this detailed reference work features descriptions and reviews of every official U.S.-released game for the Neo Geo, Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16, which, in 1989, ushered in the 16-bit era of gaming.
Organized alphabetically by console brand, each chapter includes... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
|
" The word ""control"" has many implications for video games. On a basic level, without player control, there is no experience. Much of the video game industry focuses on questions of control and ways to improve play to make the gamer feel more connected to the virtual world.
The sixteen essays in this collection offer critical examinations of the issue of control in video... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|
While board games can appear almost primitive in the digital age, eurogames--also known as German-style board games--have increased in popularity nearly concurrently with the rise of video games. Eurogames have simple rules and short playing times and emphasize strategy over luck and conflict.
This book examines the form of eurogames, the hobbyist culture that surrounds them, and the way that hobbyists... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99 $9.59
|
In the past three decades Finland's video game industry has become the backbone of Finnish cultural export. Angry Birds and Clash of Clans are dominating sales around the world and the small Nordic nation has become a gaming superpower.
Drawing on more than 60 interviews, this book covers the Finnish video game phenomenon as told by the people behind its success. The history of the... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99 $11.99
|
An eleven-year-old boy strangled an elderly woman for the equivalent of five dollars in 2007, then buried her body under a thin layer of sand. He told the police that he needed the money to play online videogames. Just a month later, an eight-year-old Norwegian boy saved his younger sister's life by threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death when the moose attacked him--skills he said he... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$12.99
|
Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions about the process involved in creating a game from scratch, believing a "big idea" is all that is needed to get started. But game design requires action as well as thought, and proper training and practice to do so skillfully.
In this indispensible guide, a published commercial game designer and longtime teacher offers practical instruction... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
|
What does love have to do with gaming?
As games have grown in complexity, they have increasingly included narratives that seek to engage players with love in a variety of ways. While media attention often focuses on violent emotions and behavior in gaming, love has always been central to the experience. We love to play games, we have titles that we love, and sometimes we love too much or love terrible... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$18.99
|
The 14 essays in Game on, Hollywood! take on several points of game and film intersection.
They look at storylines, aesthetics, mechanics, and production. The book is about adaptation (video game to film, film to video game), but it is even more about narrative. The essays draw attention to the ways and possibilities of telling a story. They consider differences and similarities... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|
Librarians are beginning to see the importance of game based learning and incorporating games into library services to increase patron engagement and interaction. This book is written for librarians interested in using games to improve patron or student knowledge of library services and decrease patron anxiety of the library. This book provides practical suggestions and methods of incorporating games... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$26.99
|
This collection of all-new essays approaches the topic of immersion as a product of social and media relations. Examining the premises and aesthetics of live-action and tabletop role-playing games, reality television, social media apps and first-person shooters, the essays take both game rules and the media discourse that games produce as serious objects of study.
Scholars of social psychology, sociology,... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99 $9.59
|
The People, the Addiction and the Playing Experience
This book is about the fastest growing form of electronic game in the world--the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). The evolution of these self-contained three-dimensional virtual worlds, often inhabited by thousands of players, is described here. This work also delves into the psychology of the people who inhabit the game... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$14.99
|
From the text adventures of Zork, to the arcade game of Pac-Man, to the corridors of Doom, and on to the city streets of Grand Theft Auto IV, the maze has often been used as a space to trap and confuse players in their navigation of gameworlds. However, the maze as a construction on the landscape has a long history before the invention of the videogame.
By examining the change in the maze from the... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$13.99
|
This biographical dictionary is the first of its kind to document artists' contributions to one of the most popular and far-reaching of contemporary teenage social pastimes of the last quarter of the 20th century; that of role-playing games and collectible card games.
The book presents full information on 150 artists, both painters and cartographers, whose influence and illustrative contributions... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$49.99
|
The Digital Age has created massive technological and disciplinary shifts in tabletop role-playing, increasing the appreciation of games like Dungeons & Dragons. Millions tune in each week to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players across the world. Such shifts elicit new scholarly perspectives from a variety of disciplines.... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$45.00 $27.99
|
Essays on Words That Matter in Videogame Theory
This edited collection of new essays is devoted to the terminology used in the fields of videogame theory and videogame studies.
Videogame scholars provide theoretical critiques of existing terminology, mount arguments for the creation of new terminology, articulate terminological gaps in the current literature devoted to videogame... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|
This study takes an analytical approach to the world of role-playing games, providing a theoretical framework for understanding their psychological and sociological functions.
Sometimes dismissed as escapist and potentially dangerous, role-playing actually encourages creativity, self-awareness, group cohesion and "out-of-the-box" thinking.
The book also offers a detailed participant-observer ethnography... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$12.99
|
The immensely popular Grand Theft Auto game series has inspired a range of reactions among players and commentators, and a hot debate in the popular media. These essays from diverse theoretical perspectives expand the discussion by focusing scholarly analysis on the games, particularly Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (GTA:VC), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA).
Part... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
|
Featuring interviews with the creators of 39 popular video games--including Halo 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor and Metroid Prime--this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins of some of the most iconic shooter games. Interviewees recount endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega-publishers, the growth of the genre and the creative processes... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$35.95 $23.99
|
Since the emergence of digital game studies, a number of debates have engaged scholars. The debate between ludic (play) and narrative (story) paradigms remains the one that famously "never happened."
This collection of new essays critically frames that debate and urges game scholars to consider it central to the field. The contributors examine various digital games, assessing the applicability... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
|
This collection of essays situates the digital gaming phenomenon alongside broader debates in cultural and media studies. Contributors to this volume maintain that computer games are not simply toys, but rather circulate as commodities, new media technologies, and items of visual culture that are embedded in complex social practices.
Apart from placing games within longer arcs of cultural history... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$12.99
|
Since the release of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, role-playing games (RPGs) have spawned a vibrant industry and subculture whose characteristics and player experiences have been well explored. Yet little attention has been devoted to the ways RPGs have shaped society at large over the last four decades.
Role-playing games influenced video game design, have been widely represented in film, television... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|
1,000+ Arcade, Console and Computer Games, 1962-2012, 2d ed.
The Video Games Guide is the world's most comprehensive reference book on computer and video games. Presented in an A to Z format, this greatly expanded new edition spans fifty years of game design--from the very earliest (1962's Spacewar) through the present day releases on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.
Each... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$26.99
|
Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has sold over 48 million copies across all gaming platforms.
The premise of Minecraft is simple: destroy, collect, build and interact in a world made entirely of colored cubes. Unlike Lego blocks or other construction toys, Minecraft's digital play space allows for virtually limitless creation without the cost and limitations of physical building materials.... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$9.99
|
Resident Evil is a multidimensional as well as multimedia universe: various books, graphic novels, games and movies (the fifth one came out in 2012) all contribute to this enormous universe.
The essays written for this volume will focus on this particular zombie manifestation and its significance in popular culture. The essayists come from very different fields, so it was possible to cover a wide... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|
Can a video game make you cry? Why do you relate to the characters and how do you engage with the storyworlds they inhabit? How is your body engaged in play? How are your actions guided by sociocultural norms and experiences? Questions like these address a core aspect of digital gaming—the video game experience itself—and are of interest to many game scholars and designers. With psychological... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$19.99
|
Superhero adventure comics have a long history of commenting upon American public opinion and government policy, and the surge in the popularity of comics since the events of September 11, 2001, ensures their continued relevance.
This critical text examines the seventy-year history of comic book superheroes on film and in comic books and their reflections of the politics of their time.
Superheroes... [click here for more] |
McFarland |
$15.99
|