Cheating

“Mia Consalvo’s analysis of cheating is a bold contribution to the growing games studies literature. She shows how the concept can help us draw meaningful connections between the technical, economic, aesthetic, and social aspects of game culture. How can we cheat if the possibilities are hardcoded into the game, and if the tips or tools we are using are sold to us by the game company? How can players have so many different and contradictory ideas about what constitutes cheating in an electronic game? Where does cheating end and social networking/collaboration begin? I will be pondering some of these questions long after I put the book aside.”–Henry Jenkins, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT, and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide “An intriguing look at one of the most maligned aspects of gameplay, Cheating explores the act of subverting game rules from a range of perspectives and finds, surprisingly, not villains and spoilsports, but players of all types engaged in a complex negotiation of personal, cultural, and industrial exchange.” Tracy Fullerton , Codirector, Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts “Rules of Play makes a monumental contribution to the development of game theory, criticism, and design. It will instantly become a standard textbook in the field on the basis of its rigor and scope – yet it is written in such an engaging style that many will read it for pleasure. Salen and Zimmerman do for games what Sergei Eisenstein did for cinema – offer an expert practitioner’s perspective on central aspects of the aesthetics and cultural importance of an emerging medium.”–Henry Jenkins, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT, and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide “Irving Singer’s Three Philosophical Filmmakers is the kind of book which rarely gets written any more. Singer pushes aside the encrusted secondary literature which surrounds Hitchcock, Welles, and Renoir to engage with their works from a loving and knowing perspective. In the course of the book, he gives us a deeper appreciation of how these three men thought about and through the cinema. Some of what he has to say is certainly debatable – and that is part of this book’s pleasure – because it comes from a lifetime of filmgoing rather than speaking through the borrowed authority of some theoretical grand master. Singer writes with an analytic eye and a conversational tone, showing how we must bring our minds and our hearts to bear on art that matters.”–Henry Jenkins, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT, and author of *Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide*Please note: Endorser gives permission to excerpt from quote. “Reading Play Between Worlds is anything but grinding. Taylor has long been one of the most nuanced scholars of life in the massively multiplayer game world – someone who knows her orc from her dark elves, who understands the complex intertwining of on-line and off-line identities, and who has interesting things to teach us about the ethics of power gaming. At the same time, she is someone who asks big questions about the relationship between work and play, about the debates surrounding gender and games, and about issues of online governance and intellectual property which will shape the future interactions between gamers and game companies. Each of the book’s chapters could be read and taught on its own terms; taken as a whole, they add up to a vivid picture of a world where many of us are spending lots of time these days.”–Henry Jenkins, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT, and author of *Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide*Please note: Endorser gives permission to excerpt from quote. “Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace offer a fascinating frontline perspective on life in the emerging multiverses – rich, immersive multiperson game worlds where people live, conduct business, engage in politics, and struggle with crime, corruption, and other forms of moral transgression. The issues that The Second Life Herald examines will be ones with which society will be grappling for years to come, but they come alive here through vivid portraits of the settlers, politicos, griefers, entrepreneurs, and con artists who are the early adapters of these online worlds.”–Henry Jenkins, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT, and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide “An intriguing look at one of the most maligned aspects of game play, Cheating explores the act of subverting game rules from a range of perspectives and finds, surprisingly, not villains and spoilsports, but players of all types engaged in a complex negotiation of personal, cultural, and industrial exchange.”–Tracy Fullerton, Co-Director, Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts

Mia Consalvo is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games and Atari to Zelda: Japan’s Videogames in Global Contexts, both published by the MIT Press.

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