From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat
From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat

Author: Justine Cassell

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000-02-28

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780262531689

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Girls and computer games—and the movement to overcome the stereotyping that dominates the toy aisles. Many parents worry about the influence of video games on their children's lives. The game console may help to prepare children for participation in the digital world, but at the same time it socializes boys into misogyny and excludes girls from all but the most objectified positions. The new "girls' games" movement has addressed these concerns. Although many people associate video games mainly with boys, the girls games' movement has emerged from an unusual alliance between feminist activists (who want to change the "gendering" of digital technology) and industry leaders (who want to create a girls' market for their games). The contributors to From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat explore how assumptions about gender, games, and technology shape the design, development, and marketing of games as industry seeks to build the girl market. They describe and analyze the games currently on the market and propose tactical approaches for avoiding the stereotypes that dominate most toy store aisles. The lively mix of perspectives and voices includes those of media and technology scholars, educators, psychologists, developers of today's leading games, industry insiders, and girl gamers. Contributors Aurora, Dorothy Bennett, Stephanie Bergman, Cornelia Brunner, Mary Bryson, Lee McEnany Caraher, Justine Cassell, Suzanne de Castell, Nikki Douglas, Theresa Duncan, Monica Gesue, Michelle Goulet, Patricia Greenfield, Margaret Honey, Henry Jenkins, Cal Jones, Yasmin Kafai, Heather Kelley, Marsha Kinder, Brenda Laurel, Nancie Martin, Aliza Sherman, Kaveri Subrahmanyam

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat
Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat

Author: Yasmin B. Kafai

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13:

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Brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today.

Mass Collaboration and Education
Mass Collaboration and Education

Author: Ulrike Cress

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-08

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 3319135368

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Mass collaboration on Internet platforms like Wikipedia and Scratch, along with wider movements like the maker space and citizen science, are poised to have profound impacts on learning and education. Bringing together researchers from such fields as: psychology, education, information technology, and economics, the book offers a comprehensive overview of mass collaboration, novel, cross disciplinary, theoretical accounts, and methodological approaches for studying and improving these massively collaborative enterprises. The book is aimed to serve as an information source for researchers, educators, and designers of platforms and learning environments.

Virtual Gender
Virtual Gender

Author: Alison Adam

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-03

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1134570058

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As yet there has been relatively little published on women's activities in relation to new digital technologies. Virtual Gender brings together theoretical perspectives from feminist theory, the sociology of technology and gender studies with well designed empirical studies to throw new light on the impact of ICTs on contemporary social life. A line-up of authors from around the world looks at the gender and technology issues related to leisure, pleasure and consumption, identity and self. Their research is set against a backcloth of renewed interest in citizenship and ethics and how these concepts are recreated in an on-line situation, particularly in local settings. With chapters on subjects ranging from gender-switching on-line, computer games, and cyberstalking to the use of the domestic telephone, this stimulating collection challenges the stereotype of woman as a passive victim of technology. It offers new ways of looking at the many dimensions in which ICTs can be said to be gendered and will be a rich resource for students and teachers in this expanding field of study.

Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning
Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning

Author: Mary Hamilton

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-05-21

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1472587472

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Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning addresses two paradoxical currents that are sweeping through the contemporary educational field. The first is the opening up of possibilities for multimodal communication as a result of developments in digital technologies and the sensitivity to multiliteracies. The second is the increasing pressure from standardised testing, accountability and performance measurement which pull curricular and pedagogical practices out of alignment with the everyday informal practices and interests of teachers and learners and narrow opportunities for diverse expressions of literacy. Bringing together an international team of scholars to examine the tensions and struggles that result from the current educational climate, the book provides a much-needed discussion of the intersection of technologies of literacies, education and self. It does so through diverse approaches, including philosophical, theoretical and methodological treatments of multimodality and governmentality, and a range of literacies - early years, primary school, workplace, digital, middle school, secondary school, indigenous, adult and place. With examples taken from all stages of education and in several countries, the book allows readers to explore a range of multimodal practices and the ways in which governmentality plays out across them.

Game Usability
Game Usability

Author: Katherine Isbister

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2022-03-13

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 1000523489

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This book introduces the basics in game usability and overall game UX mindset and techniques, as well as looking at current industry best practices and trends. Fully updated for its second edition, it includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for UX and communicate results to higher-ups effectively. The book begins with an introduction to UX strategy considerations for games, and to UX design, before moving on to cover core user research and usability techniques as well as how to fit UX practices into the business process. It provides considerations of player differences and offers strategies for inclusion as well as chapters that give platform and context specific advice. With a wealth of new interviews with industry leaders and contributions from the very best in game UX, the book also includes brand new chapters on: Accessibility Mobile Game Usability Data Science Virtual and Augmented Reality Esports This book will be vital reading for all professional game developers and game UX advocates, as well as those students aspiring to work in game development and game UX.

The Machinima Reader
The Machinima Reader

Author: Henry Lowood

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-06-03

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0262294923

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The first critical overview of an emerging field, with contributions from both scholars and artist-practitioners. Over the last decade, machinima—the use of computer game engines to create movies—has emerged as a vibrant area in digital culture. Machinima as a filmmaking tool grew from the bottom up, driven by enthusiasts who taught themselves to deploy technologies from computer games to create animated films quickly and cheaply. The Machinima Reader is the first critical overview of this rapidly developing field. The contributors include both academics and artist-practitioners. They explore machinima from multiple perspectives, ranging from technical aspects of machinima, from real-time production to machinima as a performative and cinematic medium, while paying close attention to the legal, cultural, and pedagogical contexts for machinima. The Machinima Reader extends critical debates originating within the machinima community to a wider audience and provides a foundation for scholarly work from a variety of disciplines. This is the first book to chart the emergence of machinima as a game-based cultural production that spans technologies and media, forming new communities of practice on its way to a history, an aesthetic, and a market.

Learning Race and Ethnicity
Learning Race and Ethnicity

Author: Anna Everett

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0262550679

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An exploration of how issues of race and ethnicity play out in a digital media landscape that includes MySpace, post-9/11 politics, MMOGs, Internet music distribution, and the digital divide. It may have been true once that (as the famous cartoon of the 1990s put it) "Nobody knows you're a dog on the Internet," and that (as an MCI commercial of that era declared) on the Internet there is no race, gender, or infirmity, but today, with the development of web cams, digital photography, cell phone cameras, streaming video, and social networking sites, this notion seems quaintly idealistic. This volume takes up issues of race and ethnicity in the new digital media landscape. The contributors address this topic--still difficult to engage honestly, clearly, empathetically, and with informed understanding in twenty-first century America--with the goal of pushing consideration of a vexing but important subject from margin to center. Learning Race and Ethnicity explores the intersection of race and ethnicity with post 9/11 politics, online hate-speech practices, and digital youth and media cultures. It examines universal access and the racial and ethnic digital divide from the perspective of digital media learning and youth. The chapters treat such subjects as racial identity in the computer-mediated public sphere, minority technology innovators, new methods of music distribution, digital artist Judy Baca's work with youth, Native American digital media literacy, and minority youth technology access and the pervasiveness of online health information. Contributors Ambar Basu, Graham D. Bodie, Dara N. Byrne, Jessie Daniels, Mohan J. Dutta, Raiford Guins, Guisela Latorre, Antonio López, Chela Sandoval, Tyrone D. Taborn, Douglas Thomas

Games Girls Play
Games Girls Play

Author: Carolyn M. Cunningham

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1498554571

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Games Girls Play examines the role that video games play in girls’ lives, including how games structure girls’ leisure time, how playing video games constitutes different performances of femininity, and what influences girls to play or not play video games. Through interviews, focus groups, and qualitative content analyses, this book analyzes girls’ involvement with video games. It also examines different contexts in which discourses of girls and video games occur, including girl-oriented video games, activist efforts to change the video game industry, and informal education programs that teach girls video game design.