From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat

Author: Justine Cassell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262531689
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Girls and computer games—and the movement to overcome the stereotyping that dominates the toy aisles. Many parents worry about the influence of video games on their children's lives. The game console may help to prepare children for participation in the digital world, but at the same time it socializes boys into misogyny and excludes girls from all but the most objectified positions. The new "girls' games" movement has addressed these concerns. Although many people associate video games mainly with boys, the girls games' movement has emerged from an unusual alliance between feminist activists (who want to change the "gendering" of digital technology) and industry leaders (who want to create a girls' market for their games). The contributors to From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat explore how assumptions about gender, games, and technology shape the design, development, and marketing of games as industry seeks to build the girl market. They describe and analyze the games currently on the market and propose tactical approaches for avoiding the stereotypes that dominate most toy store aisles. The lively mix of perspectives and voices includes those of media and technology scholars, educators, psychologists, developers of today's leading games, industry insiders, and girl gamers. Contributors Aurora, Dorothy Bennett, Stephanie Bergman, Cornelia Brunner, Mary Bryson, Lee McEnany Caraher, Justine Cassell, Suzanne de Castell, Nikki Douglas, Theresa Duncan, Monica Gesue, Michelle Goulet, Patricia Greenfield, Margaret Honey, Henry Jenkins, Cal Jones, Yasmin Kafai, Heather Kelley, Marsha Kinder, Brenda Laurel, Nancie Martin, Aliza Sherman, Kaveri Subrahmanyam

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat

Author: Yasmin B. Kafai
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262516063
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Book Description
Girls and women as game players and game designers in the new digital landscape of massively multiplayer online games, “second lives,” “modding,” serious games, and casual games. Ten years after the groundbreaking From Barbie to Mortal Kombat highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in World of Warcraft, but they are also scantily clad “booth babes” whose sex appeal is used to promote games at trade shows. Player-generated content has revolutionized gaming, but few games marketed to girls allow “modding” (game modifications made by players). Gender equity, the contributors to Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat argue, requires more than increasing the overall numbers of female players. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and the experience of girl and women players in gaming communities; the still male-dominated gaming industry and the need for different perspectives in game design; and gender concerns related to emerging serious games (games meant not only to entertain but also to educate, persuade, or change behavior). In today's game-packed digital landscape, there is an even greater need for games that offer motivating, challenging, and enriching contexts for play to a more diverse population of players. Contributors Cornelia Brunner, Shannon Campe, Justine Cassell, Mia Consalvo, Jill Denner, Mary Flanagan, Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Elisabeth Hayes, Carrie Heeter, Kristin Hughes, Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins III, Yasmin B. Kafai, Caitlin Kelleher, Brenda Laurel, Nicole Lazzaro, Holin Lin, Jacki Morie, Helen Nissenbaum, Celia Pearce, Caroline Pelletier, Jennifer Y. Sun, T. L. Taylor, Brian Winn, Nick YeeInterviews with Nichol Bradford, Brenda Braithwaite, Megan Gaiser, Sheri Graner Ray, Morgan Romine

Mass Collaboration and Education

Author: Ulrike Cress
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319135368
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Book Description
Mass collaboration on Internet platforms like Wikipedia and Scratch, along with wider movements like the maker space and citizen science, are poised to have profound impacts on learning and education. Bringing together researchers from such fields as: psychology, education, information technology, and economics, the book offers a comprehensive overview of mass collaboration, novel, cross disciplinary, theoretical accounts, and methodological approaches for studying and improving these massively collaborative enterprises. The book is aimed to serve as an information source for researchers, educators, and designers of platforms and learning environments.

Virtual Gender

Author: Alison Adam
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134570058
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
As yet there has been relatively little published on women's activities in relation to new digital technologies. Virtual Gender brings together theoretical perspectives from feminist theory, the sociology of technology and gender studies with well designed empirical studies to throw new light on the impact of ICTs on contemporary social life. A line-up of authors from around the world looks at the gender and technology issues related to leisure, pleasure and consumption, identity and self. Their research is set against a backcloth of renewed interest in citizenship and ethics and how these concepts are recreated in an on-line situation, particularly in local settings. With chapters on subjects ranging from gender-switching on-line, computer games, and cyberstalking to the use of the domestic telephone, this stimulating collection challenges the stereotype of woman as a passive victim of technology. It offers new ways of looking at the many dimensions in which ICTs can be said to be gendered and will be a rich resource for students and teachers in this expanding field of study.

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat

Author: Yasmin B. Kafai
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Book Description
Brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists and industry professionals, including some of the contributors to the earlier volume, to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today.

Game Usability

Author: Katherine Isbister
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000523489
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 453

Book Description
This book introduces the basics in game usability and overall game UX mindset and techniques, as well as looking at current industry best practices and trends. Fully updated for its second edition, it includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for UX and communicate results to higher-ups effectively. The book begins with an introduction to UX strategy considerations for games, and to UX design, before moving on to cover core user research and usability techniques as well as how to fit UX practices into the business process. It provides considerations of player differences and offers strategies for inclusion as well as chapters that give platform and context specific advice. With a wealth of new interviews with industry leaders and contributions from the very best in game UX, the book also includes brand new chapters on: Accessibility Mobile Game Usability Data Science Virtual and Augmented Reality Esports This book will be vital reading for all professional game developers and game UX advocates, as well as those students aspiring to work in game development and game UX.

Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming

Author: Yasmin B. Kafai
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365830268
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
In Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat, the third edited volume in the series that includes From Barbie to Mortal Kombat and Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat, we expand the discussions on gender, race, and sexuality in gaming. We include intersectional perspectives on the experiences of diverse players, non-players and designers and promote inclusive designs for broadening access and participation in gaming, design and development. Contributors from media studies, gender studies, game studies, educational design, learning sciences, computer science, and game development examine who plays, how they play, where and what they play, why they play (or choose not to play), and with whom they play. This volume further explores how we can diversify access, participation and design for more inclusive play and learning.

10th European Conference on Games Based Learning

Author:
Publisher: Academic Conferences and publishing limited
ISBN: 1911218093
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1041

Book Description

Learning Race and Ethnicity

Author: Anna Everett
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262550679
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
An exploration of how issues of race and ethnicity play out in a digital media landscape that includes MySpace, post-9/11 politics, MMOGs, Internet music distribution, and the digital divide. It may have been true once that (as the famous cartoon of the 1990s put it) "Nobody knows you're a dog on the Internet," and that (as an MCI commercial of that era declared) on the Internet there is no race, gender, or infirmity, but today, with the development of web cams, digital photography, cell phone cameras, streaming video, and social networking sites, this notion seems quaintly idealistic. This volume takes up issues of race and ethnicity in the new digital media landscape. The contributors address this topic--still difficult to engage honestly, clearly, empathetically, and with informed understanding in twenty-first century America--with the goal of pushing consideration of a vexing but important subject from margin to center. Learning Race and Ethnicity explores the intersection of race and ethnicity with post 9/11 politics, online hate-speech practices, and digital youth and media cultures. It examines universal access and the racial and ethnic digital divide from the perspective of digital media learning and youth. The chapters treat such subjects as racial identity in the computer-mediated public sphere, minority technology innovators, new methods of music distribution, digital artist Judy Baca's work with youth, Native American digital media literacy, and minority youth technology access and the pervasiveness of online health information. Contributors Ambar Basu, Graham D. Bodie, Dara N. Byrne, Jessie Daniels, Mohan J. Dutta, Raiford Guins, Guisela Latorre, Antonio López, Chela Sandoval, Tyrone D. Taborn, Douglas Thomas

Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning

Author: Mary Hamilton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472587472
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning addresses two paradoxical currents that are sweeping through the contemporary educational field. The first is the opening up of possibilities for multimodal communication as a result of developments in digital technologies and the sensitivity to multiliteracies. The second is the increasing pressure from standardised testing, accountability and performance measurement which pull curricular and pedagogical practices out of alignment with the everyday informal practices and interests of teachers and learners and narrow opportunities for diverse expressions of literacy. Bringing together an international team of scholars to examine the tensions and struggles that result from the current educational climate, the book provides a much-needed discussion of the intersection of technologies of literacies, education and self. It does so through diverse approaches, including philosophical, theoretical and methodological treatments of multimodality and governmentality, and a range of literacies - early years, primary school, workplace, digital, middle school, secondary school, indigenous, adult and place. With examples taken from all stages of education and in several countries, the book allows readers to explore a range of multimodal practices and the ways in which governmentality plays out across them.