Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations

Author: Alexis Kennedy
Publisher: Alexis Kennedy
ISBN: 9781916902411
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
For twelve years, Alexis Kennedy has been writing some of the most original and intelligent narrative games of the last decade - Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Cultist Simulator, and more, as well as guest-writing gigs for BioWare, Paradox and Telltale Games.And for most of that time, he's been writing *about* games as well.Here for the first time in one place are the best of his essays and columns - from hard-won lessons about game development to reviews of unreviewable games, from narrative design principles to writing masterclasses, from historical discursions on labyrinths to the notorious 'Against Worldbuilding'.

The Snare of the Tree, and Other Perilous Seductions: Essays on Dangers in Game Design

Author: Alexis Kennedy
Publisher: Alexis Kennedy
ISBN: 9781916902435
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 68

Book Description
What makes us glad we've played some games, but regret we've played others? What are the game design equivalents of 'savoury' and 'sweet?' Why is a working title dangerous, what menaces lurk in model railway dioramas, and what is the Snare of the Tree? Alexis Kennedy is an award-winning game designer who has developed some of the most original and intelligent indie games of the last decade, including Fallen London, Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator. He is also the author of Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations. "I published Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations, and I got a good response. Readers also pointed out some things they'd prefer. Some wanted more original content. Some wanted more writing about the games I've made. One wanted "The Design of Everyday Things but for games." A couple of helpful souls pointed out that the first edition would have benefited from page numbers. This is a first stab at delivering some of those things. I can confirm the presence of page numbers. It's all original content. Some of it is about the games I've made. And I originally intended this book to be a much longer weightier thing, a total encapsulation of my views on games and game design. You'll be relieved to hear that this ain't that. I'll need another few years to marinade anything that size. The Snare of the Tree, And... is, instead, a punchy little number that you should be able to absorb in a couple of days of commuting."

Mother of Learning: ARC 1

Author: nobody103
Publisher: Wraithmarked Creative, LLC
ISBN: 1955252092
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 786

Book Description
Zorian Kazinski has all the time in the world to get stronger, and he plans on taking full advantage of it. A teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, Zorian is attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. A driven and quiet young man, he is consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, resenting the Kazinskis for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, Zorian has no time for pointless distractions, much less other people's problems. As it happens, though, time is something he is about to get plenty of. On the eve of Cyoria's annual summer festival, Zorian is murdered, then abruptly brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take the train to school. Finding himself trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, he will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery set before him. He does have to unravel it, too, because the loop clearly wasn’t made for his sake, and in a world of magic even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill. Fortunately for Zorian, repetition is the mother of learning…

Lady of Mazes

Author: Karl Schroeder
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 146680758X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Book Description
Author and professional futurist Karl Schroeder, whose novels Ventus and Permanence have established him as a groundbreaking visionary in hard science fiction, extends his imagination into Larry Niven territory, returning to the same distant future in which Ventus was set, but employing a broader canvas, to tell the story of Teven Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations. Brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly is Teven's only hope against invaders both human and superhuman who would destroy its fragile ecologies and human diversity. Filled with action, ideas, and intellectual energy, Lady of Mazes is the hard SF novel of the year. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Proof of Work

Author: Rhea Myers
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1915103045
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
A beautifully produced anthology of crypto-artist, writer, and hacker Rhea Myers's pioneering blockchain art, along with a selection of her essays, reviews, and fictions. DAO? BTC? NFT? ETH? ART? WTF? HODL as OG crypto-artist, writer, and hacker Rhea Myers searches for faces in cryptographic hashes, follows a day in the life of a young shibe in the year 2032, and patiently explains why all art should be destructively uploaded to the blockchain. Now an acknowledged pioneer whose work has graced the auction room at Sotheby’s, Myers embarked on her first art projects focusing on blockchain tech in 2011, making her one of the first artists to engage in creative, speculative, and conceptual engagements with "the new internet." Proof of Work brings together annotated presentations of Myers’s blockchain artworks along with her essays, reviews, and fictions—a sustained critical encounter between the cultures and histories of the artworld and crypto-utopianism, technically accomplished but always generously demystifying and often mischievous. Her deep understanding of the technical history and debates around blockchain technology is complemented by a broader sense of the crypto movement and the artistic and political sensibilities that accompanied its ascendancy. Remodeling the tropes of conceptual art and net.art to explore what blockchain technology reveals about our concepts of value, culture, and currency, Myers’s work has become required viewing for anyone interested in the future of art, consensus, law, and collectivity.

When Species Meet

Author: Donna J. Haraway
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452913536
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 439

Book Description
In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending more than 38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.” In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal–human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending-socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.” Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal–human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.

Ideas Arrangements Effects

Author: The Design Studio for Social Intervention
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781570273681
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Ideas are embedded in social arrangements, which in turn produce effects. With this simple premise, this radically accessible systems design book makes a compelling case for arrangements as a rich and overlooked terrain for social justice and world building. Unpacking how ideas like racism and sexism remain sturdy by embedding themselves in everything from physical and social infrastructure to everyday speech and thought habits, this book gives readers the tools to sense, intervene in and imagine new arrangements.

Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1

Author: Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535793
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Tools for navigating today's hyper-connected, rapidly changing, and radically contingent white water world. Design Unbound presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and emerging, and architecture, which is about designing contexts. In such a practice, design, unbound from its material thingness, is set free to design contexts as complex systems. In a world where causality is systemic, entangled, in flux, and often elusive, we cannot design for absolute outcomes. Instead, we need to design for emergence. Design Unbound not only makes this case through theory but also presents a set of tools to do so. With case studies that range from a new kind of university to organizational, and even societal, transformation, Design Unbound draws from a vast array of domains: architecture, science and technology, philosophy, cinema, music, literature and poetry, even the military. It is presented in five books, bound as two volumes. Different books within the larger system of books will resonate with different reading audiences, from architects to people reconceiving higher education to the public policy or defense and intelligence communities. The authors provide different entry points allowing readers to navigate their own pathways through the system of books.

On Literary Worlds

Author: Eric Hayot
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199926697
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
On Literary Worlds develops new strategies and perspectives for understanding aesthetic worlds.

The War Nerd Iliad

Author:
Publisher: Feral House
ISBN: 1627310649
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
We recognize the names: Achilles, Odysseus, Zeus, and Apollo. We're taught that The Iliad is a foundational text of civilization. But who has really read the text? Until now, The Iliad was hijacked by academics and used to bludgeon schoolchildren as a boring-yet- mandatory reading. Poet, novelist, essayist, and former teacher John Dolan revisits this ancient tale and restores it to its ancient glory. The Greeks and Trojans are still fighting. The gods are still interfering. But in Dolan's version, you'll be amazed at how funny, raw, and terrifying this doomed world of war really is. He strips away clunky, archaic language to reveal the true meaning and themes that animate this tale of war and futility. John Dolan's work under the nom de guerre "Gary Brecher The War Nerd" has been met with both acclaim and controversy. Dolan's version of The Iliad is sapped of the usual saccharine romance attributed to "heroes" and lets the action tell the story. Regardless of attributed name, Dolan/Brecher is an astute observer of modern warfare who now turns that keen analysis to the most classical of documented battles, The Iliad. John Dolan now works with Mark Ames (of eXile fame) to produce the Radio War Nerd weekly podcast on military matters. Born in Denver, Colorado, Dolan currently lives in Macedonia.