Overview

Worlds in Play, a map of the state of play in digital games research today, illustrates the great variety and extreme contrasts in the landscape cleft by contemporary digital games research. The chapters in this volume are the work of an international review board of seventy game-study specialists from fields spanning social sciences, arts, and humanities to the physical and applied sciences and technologies. A wellspring of inspiring concepts, models, protocols, data, methods, tools, critical perspectives, and directions for future work, Worlds in Play will support and assist in reading not only within, but across fields of play - disciplinary, temporal, and geographical - and encourage all of us to widen our focus to encompass the omni-dimensional phenomenon of worlds in play.

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9780820486437

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Reviews

«'Worlds in Play' engages the newest of human media applied to one of the oldest human practices. The chapters in this volume advance our understanding of the expressive potential of digital games, their social context and politics, and their potential for education. They mark a deepening of focus, a closer application of analysis to particular artifacts and practices, a clearer differentiation of methodologies and assumptions, and a wider recognition of the need for multiple frameworks of investigation. They increase our critical vocabulary for analyzing and designing digital games, and perhaps most importantly for the future of research in this field, they display an increased understanding of the experience of the gamer and of the depth and diversity of pleasures that attract us to this compelling new medium.

'Worlds in Play' engages the newest of human media applied to one of the oldest human practices. The chapters in this volume advance our understanding of the expressive potential of digital games, their social context and politics, and their potential for education. They mark a deepening of focus, a closer application of analysis to particular artifacts and practices, a clearer differentiation of methodologies and assumptions, and a wider recognition of the need for multiple frameworks of investigation. They increase our critical vocabulary for analyzing and designing digital games, and perhaps most importantly for the future of research in this field, they display an increased understanding of the experience of the gamer and of the depth and diversity of pleasures that attract us to this compelling new medium. (Janet H. Murray, Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Digital Media & Information Design and Technology Programs, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Tech) This collection brings together fascinating work in game studies and also highlights one of the most exciting aspects of the field, its multidisciplinarity. Covering everything from narrative to player-created content, this is sure to be a book those researching games regularly turn to. (T.L. Taylor, Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen; Author of 'Play Between Worlds' (2006))

Author Information

The Editors: Suzanne de Castell is Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University, where she researches literacies, media studies, and game-based educational technologies. She is completing a three-year study of new attentional economies for learning, and chaired the DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) 2005 International Conference, from which this collection of papers was drawn. Jennifer Jenson is Associate Professor of Pedagogy and Technology in the Faculty of Education at York University. Working with Suzanne de Castell and a team of students, she is co-designing an educational game, Contagion, and she is completing a three-year study of gender and digital gameplay.

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