Massy's Game
Massy's Game

Author: Jack Olsen

Publisher: Crime Rant Books

Published: 2020-06-17

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13:

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Massy was big, over 8’2”, and still growing, the biggest man in pro basketball. No one thought it possible a man that big could move – could run and jump and shoot and rebound. But, before his first year was out, he became a legend, as well as a threat to the game. No one likes a giant; no one roots for Goliath. Cursed by irate fans, elbowed and punched by competing players, he is universally despised. What drives him on? What is in his past that drives him to continue dragging himself up and down the court when he would rather be playing the piano? What about the father that won’t stay off the bottle? And the little girl with the flute? As the season nears its ultimate close, the fury and tension mount. No one can stop the big man even though he doesn’t have all the moves and shots. No one and nothing. Beating the backboards, pounding slam-dunks so hard the rim shakes, pulling down rebounds a yard above the rim, blocking shots from ten feet away. He is a one-man wrecking crew, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the fans hate him, the opposing team hates him, and the officials hate him. Massy obliterates the opposition almost single-handedly. But the more shots he blocks, the greater the national hysteria. The book surges on to a screaming apocalyptic ending as unexpected as it is inevitable. If opposing players can’t stop him there are other means available. An original and fast-breaking sports novel that makes a strong and provocative comment on our entire society.

Serious Games
Serious Games

Author: Ute Ritterfeld

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 643

ISBN-13: 1135848904

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Serious Games provides a thorough exploration of the claim that playing games can provide learning that is deep, sustained and transferable to the real world. "Serious games" is defined herein as any form of interactive computer-based game software for one or multiple players to be used on any platform and that has been developed to provide more than entertainment to players. With this volume, the editors address the gap in exisiting scholarship on gaming, providing an academic overview on the mechanisms and effects of serious games. Contributors investigate the psychological mechanisms that take place not only during gaming, but also in game selection, persistent play, and gaming impact. The work in this collection focuses on the desirable outcomes of digital game play. The editors distinguish between three possible effects -- learning, development, and change -- covering a broad range of serious games’ potential impact. Contributions from internationally recognized scholars focus on five objectives: Define the area of serious games Elaborate on the underlying theories that explain suggested psychological mechanisms elicited through serious game play, addressing cognitive, affective and social processes Summarize the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of serious games, Introduce innovative research methods as a response to methodological challenges imposed through interactive media Discuss the possibilities and limitations of selected applications for educational purposes. Anchored primarily in social science research, the reader will be introduced to approaches that focus on the gaming process and the users’ experiences. Additional perspectives will be provided in the concluding chapters, written from non-social science approaches by experts in academic game design and representatives of the gaming industry. The editors acknowledge the necessity for a broader interdisciplinary study of the phenomena and work to overcome the methodological divide in games research to look ahead to a more integrated and interdisciplinary study of digital games. This timely and singular volume will appeal to scholars, researchers, and graduate students working in media entertainment and game studies in the areas of education, media, communication, and psychology.

Computing Legacies
Computing Legacies

Author: Peter Krapp

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-12-03

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0262549832

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A media history of simulation that contextualizes our digital heritage and the history of computing. In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture. Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbolic work and foregrounding hypothetical literacy. Secondly, he positions simulation as crucial for the preservation of cultural memory, where modeling, emulation, and serious play are constitutive in how we relate to our mediated history. And lastly, despite suggestions that we may already live in a simulation, he interrogates how simulation can serve as critique of the computer age. In tracing our digital heritage, Computing Legacies elucidates inflection points where quantitative data becomes tractable for qualitative evaluations: modeling epidemics for scientific study or entertainment, emulating older devices, turning numerical calculations into music, conducting espionage in virtual worlds, and gamifying higher education. Simulation, this book demonstrates, is pivotal not only to high-tech research and to archives, museums, and the preservation of digital culture but also to our understanding of what it is to live and work under the technical conditions of computing.

How the University Works
How the University Works

Author: Marc Bousquet

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0814791123

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Uncovers the labor exploitation occurring in universities across the country As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce. Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education's corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

Sports around the World [4 volumes]
Sports around the World [4 volumes]

Author: John Nauright

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2012-04-06

Total Pages: 2668

ISBN-13:

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This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.