Role-playing, war games and fantasy sports Books

Book SynopsisDiscover new and exciting Minecraft builds made easy, broken down into manageable pieces—written in official partnership with the experts at game-creator Mojang.Learn how to design, build and customize 20 mini-projects in Minecraft, from firefighter planes and deep-sea submarines to hidden bunkers and mini arcade games. There's even a superhero flying school! Each build is accompanied by exploded views and step-by-step, fully-illustrated guides and detailed instructions to show you how to complete each build from start to finish. Informative text will help you with your construction understanding and encourage you to use your new knowledge to create your very own builds.

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Book SynopsisLearn how to survive and thrive in Minecraft with this brand-new guide! With insider info and tips from the experts at game-creator Mojang on how to defeat mobs and defend your base, this is a must-have, fully illustrated guide to combat. Don your armor, pick up your sword and charge headfirst into Minecraft: Guide to Combat—the only book you need to take your game to the next level. Read how to craft the deadliest weapons and enchant them with mystical powers, discover the vicious mobs that you’ll go toe-to-toe with, and learn crafty strategies that will help you best your friends in PVP. With so much to explore, there’s sure to be something for ’crafters of every level.

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Book SynopsisLearn how to design, build and customize 20 mini-projects in Minecraft, from firefighter planes and deep-sea submarines to hidden bunkers and arcade games. There’s even a superhero flying school! With detailed instructions, block hacks and build tips, this book will teach you new tricks and help you practice old skills as you create bite-size builds to impress your friends in Minecraft.

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Book SynopsisThe next book in the popular Bite-Size Builds series, following Bite-Size Builds and Amazing Bite-Size Builds.  It’s time for another bite-size adventure! Build over 20 new mini-projects in Minecraft, from pig hot-air balloons and carousels to monster-truck school buses and skull coves! There’s even a giant grandfather clock that dispenses chickens!With illustrated step-by-step instructions and tips throughout, this book will have you creating loads of fun builds to impress your friends with!

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Book SynopsisThis book represents cutting-edge research that addresses major issues of social exclusion, power and liberatory fantasies in virtual play. Specifically, the scope of the book examines three areas of concern: social psychological implications of virtual gameplay; reproduction and contestation of social inequality in virtual realms.Trade ReviewSocial Exclusion, Power, and Video Game Play is a timely collection of essays on virtual worlds and online games. The contributors challenge sociologists (and others) to take these spaces of social interaction seriously, as both revealing and shaping broader cultural dynamics. By exploring issues including the psychology of online identity, the impact of racism and sexism, and relationships between design, play, and fandom, this book helps bring questions of power and inequality to the fore in debates over the impact of online games in virtual-world and physical-world contexts, both very 'real.' -- Tom Boellstorff, University of California, Irvine and author of Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually HumanTable of ContentsPart I. Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Exclusion, Power and Video Game Play David G. Embrick, J. Talmadge Wright and Andras Lukacs Part II. Social-Psychological Implications of Virtual Play Chapter 2: Marking the Territory: Grand Theft Auto IV as a Playground for Masculinities Elena Bertozzi Chapter 3: Discursive Engagements in World of Warcraft: A Semiotic Analysis of Player Relationships Elizabeth ErkenBrack Chapter 4: The Intermediate Ego – The Location of the Mind at Play Vanessa Long Chapter 5: Producing the Social in Virtual Realms J. Talmadge Wright Part III. Social Inequalities in Video Game Spaces: Race, Gender, and Virtual Play Chapter 6: Racism in Gaming: Connecting Extremist and Mainstream Expressions of White Supremacy Jessie Daniels and Nick LaLone Chapter 7: Worlds of Whiteness: Race and Character Creation in Online Games David Dietrich Chapter 8: Gendered Pleasures: The Wii, Embodiment and Technological Desire Adrienne Massanari Chapter 9: Sincere Fictions of Whiteness in Virtual Worlds: How Fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Games Perpetuate Colorblind, White Supremacist Ideology Joel Ritsema and Bhoomi Thakore Chapter 10: The Goddess Paradox: Hyper-resonance Shaping Gender Experiences in MMORPGs Zek Cypress Valkyrie Part IV. Game Fans Speak Out Chapter 11: To Play is to Design: An Analysis of Player/Designer Interactions in World of Warcraft Sean C. Duncan Chapter 12: Western Otaku: Games Crossing Cultures Mia Consalvo Chapter 13: Beyond the Virtual Realm: Fallout fans, Producers, and the Troublesome Issue of Ownership in Videogame Fandom R.M. Milner Part V. Summary and Conclusions Chapter 14: Conclusion Andras Lukacs, David G. Embrick, and J. Talmadge Wright

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Book SynopsisA visually stunning exploration of a legendary fantasy worldThe Forgotten Realms offer D&D players an endless array of secrets to uncover, foes to fight, and treasures to be taken. But there is one name that has always stood out from the rest: Drizzt. Drizzt Do’urden.This legendary drow elf ranger has been adventuring across the Forgotten Realms for decades, whether through New York Times bestselling fantasy novels or award-winning video games. Now Drizzt will take readers on a spectacular journey through his world.This book showcases Drizzt and his travels through the Forgotten Realms in never-before-seen detail, with the glorious artwork produced by Wizards of the Coast put center stage. From the glaciers of Icewind Dale to the teeming cities of the Sword Coast, and the sinister shadows of the Underdark to the chambers of Mithral Hall, fans can explore the Realms through Drizzt’s eyes as never before with this immersive, extraordinary guide

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Book SynopsisPhilip Hammond is Professor of Media and Communications at London South Bank University, UK. His previous publications include Media, War and Postmodernity (2007) and Screens of Terror (2011). Holger Pötzsch is Associate Professor in Media and Documentation Studies at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. He publishes widely in such journals as Games & Culture, Game Studies, and New Media and Society.Trade ReviewThe volume is separated into three interrelated thematic sections: 'Militarism and the Gaming Subject' addresses players’ situatedness within military-themed games; 'Playing War, History, and Memory' looks at the role of games in influencing military history and cultural memory; and 'Wargames/Peacegames' focuses on how conceptual frameworks are embedded in military-themed games. Though the volume addresses both analog and digital games, it focuses on events in Europe and European games. This is a boon not a limitation in that it adds depth, richness, and specificity to the study of both games and the cultural/historical perspectives addressed. The game This War of Mine, which is based on the living conditions and atrocities civilians endured during the Siege of Sarajevo, is treated in more than one essay … Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. * CHOICE *The impressive range of perspectives in this collection bring new insight and nuance to the expanding field of war and games. * Debra Ramsay, Lecturer in Film, University of Exeter, UK *Beginning with the predominant tension, and indeed contradiction, between war and games, Hammond and Pötzsch have put together a remarkable collection of essays which at turns surprises, challenges and even provokes the reader into engaging with a core theme running through historical and military themed video games. Namely, how can games (a theoretically ludic and playful medium) deal with war (a vicious and destructive phenomenon which is anything but playful)? The answers to this core question vary from one contributor to another. Some offer approaches from the perspectives of historical enquiry and critical theory. Others are involved in questions of player identification, empathy and collective or public memory. Still others use reception methods like participant observation and empirical fieldwork to understand what players take away from this fundamentally interactive medium of games. What all of the responses in this carefully and cleverly edited collection do offer, however, is a sustained and thoughtful meditation on the centrality of conflict to ludology, ludology to conflict, and the effects of wargaming on players, games, society and the industry. An excellent compendium for an era dominated by war and mediated simulacra of warfare, War Games has brought together some of the cutting-edge scholars working in the emerging discipline of historical gaming to produce a meaningful and important discussion of how war and games are critically and culturally enmeshed in twenty-first-century society. * Dr. Andrew B.R. Elliott, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Lincoln, UK *Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Studying War and Games Philip Hammond (London South Bank University, UK) and Holger Pötzsch (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) I: Militarism and the Gaming Subject 1. Reality Check: Videogames as Propaganda for Inauthentic War Philip Hammond (London South Bank University, UK) 2. Playing in the End Times: Wargames, Resilience and the Art of Failure Kevin McSorley (University of Portsmouth, UK) 3. The Political Economy of Wargames: The Production of History and Memory in Military Video Games Emil Lundedal Hammar (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) and Jamie Woodcock (University of Oxford, UK) 4. Understanding War Game Experiences: Applying Multiple Player Perspectives to Game Analysis Kristine Jørgensen (University of Bergen, Norway) II: Playing War, History, and Memory 5. Playing the Historical Fantastic: Zombies, Mecha-Nazis and Making Meaning about the Past Through Metaphor Adam Chapman (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) 6. Machine(s) of Narrative Security: Mnemonic Hegemony and Polish Games about Violent Conflicts Piotr Sterczewski (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland) 7. National Memories and the First World War: The Many Sides of Battlefield 1 Chris Kempshall (the Imperial War Museum, UK) 8. Let’s Play War: Cultural Memory, Celebrities and Appropriations of the Past Stephanie de Smale (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) III: Wargames/Peacegames 9. The Wargame Legacy: How Wargames Shaped the Roleplaying Experience from Tabletop to Digital Games Dimitra Nikolaidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) 10. Critical War Game Development: Lessons Learned from Attentat 1942 Vít Šisler (Charles University, Czech Republic) 11. Simulating War Dynamics: A Case Study of the Game-based Learning Exercise Mission Z: One Last Chance Joakim Arnøy (Narvik War and Peace Centre, Norway) 12. Positioning Players as Political Subjects: Forms of Estrangement and the Presentation of War in This War of Mine and Spec Ops: The Line Holger Pötzsch (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) Afterword: War/Game Matthew Thomas Payne (University of Notre Dame, USA) Index

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