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Author: Matthew McCaffrey Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108839711 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
Studies the economic order that governs virtual worlds and ways individuals work together to govern social relations in the digital space.
Author: Matthew McCaffrey Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108967159 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
Video games aren't merely casual entertainment: they are the heart of one of the fastest-growing media industries in the world, and a cultural phenomenon in their own right. Gaming has evolved from a niche pastime into a global business that rivals film and television, creating, in the process, new art forms and social arenas and have become the subject of endless public debate. This book shows that games also provide a unique space in which to study economic behavior. Games, more than any other form of media, demonstrate the power and creative potential of human choice - an idea that's also the foundation of economic thinking. Whether it's developing trade relations, or the use of money, or even complex legal institutions, virtual worlds provide a captivating and entertaining arena for studying economic behavior in its most dynamic forms. The overarching theme of the volume is the economic order that governs virtual worlds, and the many ways individuals work together, often without knowing it, to govern their social relations in digital space.
Author: Matthew McCaffrey Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108839711 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
Studies the economic order that governs virtual worlds and ways individuals work together to govern social relations in the digital space.
Author: Adrian, Angela Publisher: IGI Global ISBN: 1615207961 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
"This book examines the legal realities which are emerging from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPGs) or virtual worlds that demonstrate many of the traits we associate with the Earth world: interpersonal relationships, economic transactions, and organic political institutions"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Woody Evans Publisher: Elsevier ISBN: 1780632746 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
Presents a broad examination of the nature of virtual worlds and the potential they provide in managing and expressing information practices through that medium, grounding information professionals and students of new media in the fundamental elements of virtual worlds and online gaming. The book details the practical issues in finding and using information in virtual environments and presents a general theory of librarianship as it relates to virtual gaming worlds. It is encompassed by a set of best practice methods that libraries can effectively execute in their own environments, meeting the needs of this new generation of library user, and explores ways in which information literacy can be approached in virtual worlds. Final chapters examine how conventional information evaluation skills work falls short in virtual worlds online. Maps out areas of good practice and technique for information professionals and librarians serving in virtual communities Provides a clear foundation with appropriate theory for understanding information in virtual worlds Treats virtual worlds as ‘real environments’ and observes the behaviour of actors within them
Author: Thomas Malaby Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801457750 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online. Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created. Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens"—as the Linden Lab employees call themselves—found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions. Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab.
Author: Don Heider Publisher: Peter Lang ISBN: 9781433101304 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
Virtual worlds are most often three dimensional locales, where people create virtual personae (called avatars) who come to play, socialize, and work. This edited collection of groundbreaking research on virtual worlds offers a wide-ranging look at the sociology, politics, and communication practices in virtual worlds from a group of scholars in the United States and abroad.
Author: Matthew E. Gladden Publisher: Mnemoclave ISBN: 1944373195 Category : Games & Activities Languages : en Pages : 36
Book Description
Whether it’s adding a night-vision cybereye or acquiring a full cyborg body, the process of cyborgization reshapes the way in which an individual relates to the physical environment around her. But how does it transform her ability to dive – or to be pulled – into virtual worlds? Cyborgization and Virtual Worlds: Portals to Altered Reality is a resource for designing campaigns grounded in near-future hard-SF settings in which synthetic bodies and VR cyberware offer characters entirely new ways of perceiving, interpreting, and manipulating the analog and digital worlds… It’s easy to know when you enter a virtual environment if the tools you’re using are a VR headset and haptic feedback gloves. If the virtual experience is too much for you, you can always just rip off the headset: the digital illusions instantly vanish, and you know that you’re back in the ‘real’ world. But what if the VR gear that you’re employing consists of cranial neural implants that directly stimulate your brain to create artificial sensory experiences? Or what if you’re wielding dual-purpose artificial eyes and roboprosthetic limbs that can either supply you with authentic sense data from the external environment or switch into iso mode, cut off all sensations from the real world, and pipe fabricated sense data into your brain? What signs could you look for to help you determine whether you’re in the real world or just a convincing virtual facsimile? This second volume in Mnemoclave’s Posthuman Cyberware Sourcebook series explores the two ways in which neuroprosthetic technologies immerse a cyborg in her environment and allow her to sense and manipulate the world: through embodiment and embedding. The process of cyborgization not only grants its human subject an augmented body with enhanced, reduced, or simply different capacities; it also embeds him in a particular part of the real physical world and provides the means by which he senses and manipulates that environment. And it may be the instrument through which he dives into virtual worlds, as well. Among the topics explored are: The paths of cyborgization • Different approaches to cyborgization, including the creation of full-body, partial, extended, sessile, and ‘hollow’ cyborgs • Differing types of neurocognitive interfaces that can exist between a piece of cyberware and its human host • The extent to which cyberware can be concealed from visual or remote electronic detection • The operational lifespan of cyberware and its potential health impacts on users Obstacles to characters’ acquisition of cyberware, including cost, legality, and required maintenance and customization • Problems like neurocoupling resection syndrome (NRS) that affect full-body cyborgs and other augmented individuals Cyberware and virtual worlds • Distinctions between virtual, augmented, and refracted reality • The mechanics by which cyborg characters can recognize and adjust to transitions between the real and virtual worlds • The use of digital avatars as cyberdoubles or cybermorphs within virtual worlds • Plot impacts of cyborg characters’ maximal, partial, temporary, or long-term immersion in VR environments The book is written especially for GMs who are designing adventures or campaigns set in near-future worlds with a cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, or biopunk atmosphere in which posthumanizing cyberware exists and societies are tilting ever further toward the dystopian. The text draws extensively on the best contemporary research regarding neurocybernetics and the bioengineering, economic, sociopolitical, and cultural aspects of human enhancement, to aid GMs who are looking to give their campaigns a hard sci-fi edge. The volume includes dozens of special textboxes with plot hooks, character traits, equipment descriptions, and ideas for successfully GM-ing the ontological puzzles and narrative twists that cyborgization and virtual reality make possible – to help you incorporate the material directly into your game, regardless of which rule system you’re using.
Author: M. T. Anderson Publisher: Candlewick Press ISBN: 0763697230 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization. When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth — but not necessarily an unwelcome one. Can it really be called an invasion when the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable? As it turns out, yes. With his parents’ jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv’s miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, have to get creative to survive. And since the vuvv crave anything they deem classic Earth culture (doo-wop music, still life paintings of fruit, true love), recording 1950s-style dates for the vuvv to watch in a pay-per-minute format seems like a brilliant idea. But it’s hard for Adam and Chloe to sell true love when they hate each other more with every passing episode. Soon enough, Adam must decide how far he’s willing to go — and what he’s willing to sacrifice — to give the vuvv what they want.
Author: Matthew McCaffrey
Author: Matthew McCaffrey
Author: Matthew McCaffrey
Author: Adrian, Angela
Author: Woody Evans
Author: Thomas Malaby
Author: Bruce Damer
Author: Don Heider
Author: Mychilo Stephenson Cline
Author: Matthew E. Gladden
Author: M. T. Anderson