Overview

Ready Player One meets Foreign Affairs—everything your students need to know about international relations through the lens of video games! The Gamer’s Guide to International Relations uses massively popular video games as a stepping stone to learning about international relations. The study of international relations concerns itself with critical topics like war, civil war, terrorism, human rights, trade, monetary policy, and the environment. Each of these areas of human need, crisis, and response can be difficult to understand. However, gamers already implicitly understand the international world through the games they play. Drawing upon lessons gamers learn through gameplay, this volume guides readers as to how their existing knowledge can help untangle some of the most complicated topics facing humanity. The book progresses by introducing readers to how scholars use the scientific method in international relations. Readers will encounter pivotal international relations theories that explain why war occurs, like realism, liberalism, and constructivism, as well as understanding concepts like the bargaining model of war. The book discusses how we learn about international politics and guides the reader through how we can research world politics and gaming. Finally, the book focuses on key interest areas like international political economy, human rights, the environment, and civil war.

Full Product Details

9781538196854

Table of Contents

Reviews

In The Gamer's Guide to International Relations, Michael Allen provides an incredibly comprehensive and highly accessible overview of international relations topics. Seamlessly blending insights from gaming and historical examples, this book will help readers to better understand some of the most important issues and concepts in international relations. It's incredibly informative, but also incredibly fun to read. --Michael Flynn, Kansas State University Should you cooperate with allies, or confront your adversaries? From World of Warcraft and League of Legends to Minecraft and Fortnite, The Gamer's Guide shows how some of the most popular games are great teachers of international relations and represent real-world political dynamics and strategy. It's sure to be an exciting read for political scientists and gamers alike! --Oliver Kaplan, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver

One of the ways that international relations instructors can help students learn about concepts and theories is to make them more tangible to students. This can be challenging as many students, especially many in the Global North, have not ""experienced"" these concepts and theories in practice. Allen's The Gamer's Guide to International Relations combines international relations concepts, theories, and methods with video games, including popular titles with which many students are already familiar or can play for an international relations class (such as WoW, Civ, Minecraft, and others). In doing so, this book offers an approach to teaching international relations that is tangible and engaging to students, which is when they learn best. --Charmaine N. Willis, University at Albany, SUNY In The Gamer's Guide to International Relations, Michael Allen provides an incredibly comprehensive and highly accessible overview of international relations topics. Seamlessly blending insights from gaming and historical examples, this book will help readers to better understand some of the most important issues and concepts in international relations. It's incredibly informative, but also incredibly fun to read. --Michael Flynn, Kansas State University Should you cooperate with allies, or confront your adversaries? From World of Warcraft and League of Legends to Minecraft and Fortnite, The Gamer's Guide shows how some of the most popular games are great teachers of international relations and represent real-world political dynamics and strategy. It's sure to be an exciting read for political scientists and gamers alike! --Oliver Kaplan, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver

Author Information

Michael A. Allen is a professor of political science in the School of Public Service at Boise State University. His books include Beyond the Wire: US Military Deployments and Host Country Public Opinion and Poli Sci Fi: An Introduction to Political Science through Science Fiction. His work focuses on conflict, asymmetry, and foreign policy with a particular interest in the positive and negative externalities of US troop deployments overseas. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Foreign Policy Analysis. The games he played the most while writing this book were Balatro, Helldivers 2, and Fallout 76.

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