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Players and their pets: gaming communities from Beta to Sunset / Mia Consalvo and Jason Begy

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 C66 2015




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Video game narrative and criticism: playing the story / Tamer Thabet

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.P79 T48 2015




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Video games and storytelling: reading games and playing books / Souvik Mukherjee

Online Resource




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War/play: video games and the militarization of society / John Martino

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 M375 2015




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Parables of the posthuman: digital realities, gaming, and the player experience / Johathan Boulter

Hayden Library - GV1469.34 .P79 B68 2015




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MMOs from the inside out: the history, design, fun, and art of massively-multiplayer online role-playing games / Richard A. Bartle

Online Resource




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MMOs from the outside in: the massively-multiplayer online role-playing games of psychology, law, government, and real life / Richard A. Bartle

Online Resource




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Getting gamers: the psychology of video games and their impact on the people who play them / Jamie Madigan

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.P79 M33 2016




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Values at play in digital games / Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum

Hayden Library - GV1469.17.S63 F63 2014




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Computer games: fourth Workshop on Computer Games, CGW 2015 and the fourth Workshop on General Intelligence in Game-Playing Agents, GIGA 2015, held in conjunction with the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI 2015, Buenos Aires,

Online Resource




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MMOs from the Outside In: The Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games of Psychology, Law, Government, and Real Life / Richard A. Bartle

Online Resource




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Video games and storytelling: reading games and playing books / Souvik Mukherjee, Presidency University, Kolkata, India

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.A97 M85 2015




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The play versus story divide in game studies: critical essays / edited by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell

Hayden Library - GV1469.3.P4827 2016




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The role-playing society: essays on the cultural influence of RPGs / edited by Andrew Byers and Francesco Crocco

Hayden Library - GV1469.6.R65 2016




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Playback: a genealogy of 1980s British videogames / Alex Wade

Hayden Library - GV1469.3.W36 2016




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Does playing video games make players more violent? / Barrie Gunter

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.V56 G87 2016




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Tempest: geometries of play / Judd Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister

Hayden Library - GV1469.35.T46 R85 2015




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Learn RPGs in GameMaker: Studio: build and design role playing games / Ben Tyers

Online Resource




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Metagaming: playing, competing, spectating, cheating, trading, making, and breaking videogames / Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 B65 2017




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Playful identities: the ludification of digital media cultures / edited by Valerie Frissen, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Jos de Mul, Joost Raessens

Hayden Library - GV1469.17.S63.P52 2015




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Videogames and post-colonialism: empire plays back / Souvik Mukherjee

Hayden Library - GV1469.M85 2017




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Dangerous games: what the moral panic over role-playing games says about play, religion, and imagined worlds / Joseph P. Laycock

Hayden Library - GV1469.6.L395 2015




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Alternate reality games and the cusp of digital gameplay / edited by Antero Garcia and Greg Niemeyer

Hayden Library - GV1469.3.A395 2017




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Power play: how video games can save the world / Asi Burak and Laura Parker

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 B86 2017




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Transnational contexts of development history, sociality, and society of play: video games in East Asia / S. Austin Lee, Alexis Pulos, editors

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 T74 2016




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Multiplayer online games: origins, players, and social dynamics / Guo Freeman

Hayden Library - GV1469.17.S63 F74 2018




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Geogames and geoplay: game-based approaches to the analysis of geo-information / Ola Ahlqvist, Christoph Schlieder, editors

Hayden Library - GV1469.15.G465 2018




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The postmodern joy of role-playing games: agency, ritual and meaning in the medium / René Reinhold Schallegger

Hayden Library - GV1469.6.S33 2018




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The player's power to change the game: ludic mutation / Anne-Marie Schleiner

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 S35 2017




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Location-based gaming: play in public space.

Online Resource




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Let's Build a Multiplayer Phaser Game: With TypeScript, Socket. IO, and Phaser.

Online Resource




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A play of bodies: how we perceive videogames / Brendan Keogh

Online Resource




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Playing smart: on games, intelligence and Artificial Intelligence / Julian Togelius

Online Resource




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Families at play: connecting and learning through video games / Sinem Siyahhan and Elisabeth Gee

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.S52 S59 2018




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Watch me play: Twitch and the rise of game live streaming / T.L. Taylor

Dewey Library - GV1469.17.S63 T385 2018




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Playing smart: on games, intelligence and Artificial Intelligence / Julian Togelius

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.P79 T64 2018




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Feminism in play / Kishonna L. Gray, Gerald Voorhees, Emma Vossen, editors

Barker Library - GV1469.17.S63 F46 2018




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Playing dystopia: nightmarish worlds in video games and the player's aesthetic response / Gerald Farca

Hayden Library - GV1469.34.P79 F37 2018




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Tabletop role-playing games and the experience of imagined worlds / Nicholas J. Mizer

Dewey Library - GV1469.6.M59 2019




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Classical antiquity in video games: playing with the ancient world / Christian Rollinger

Dewey Library - GV1469.3.C53 2020




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Playing with feelings: video games and affect / Aubrey Anable

Barker Library - GV1469.34.P79 A53 2018




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'Around The NFL' crew breaks down teams playing in prime time

The "Around The NFL" crew breaks down teams playing in prime time in 2020.




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Former NFL player Myron Rolle now a doctor treating coronavirus patients

The NFL released its schedule for the upcoming season last night despite concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. Myron Rolle, a former NFL player who is now a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General hospital, joined CBSN to discuss whether there is a safe way to play sports during this time. 




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Chargers top pick Herbert focusing on playbook at minicamp

Justin Herbert should have been walking onto a Los Angeles Chargers practice field Friday for the first time. Herbert, who was selected with the sixth overall pick in last month's draft, is back in Southern California as the Chargers begin their virtual rookie minicamp this weekend. The former University of Oregon standout has resumed on-field workouts in Huntington Beach with John Beck, a former NFL quarterback and personal coach with whom he worked out before the draft.




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NFL Network's Jane Slater: Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones 'had a hand in' Dallas Cowboys playing opening game at SoFi Stadium

NFL Network's Jane Slater says Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones "had a hand in" Dallas Cowboys playing opening game at SoFi Stadium.




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Tasmin Little plays Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth, Amy Beach.

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Songplay / Joyce DiDonato

MEDIA PhonCD J D562 son




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A play of bodies: how we perceive videogames / Brendan Keogh

Browsery GV1469.34.P79 K46 2018




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Falter: has the human game begun to play itself out? / Bill McKibben

Browsery CB428.M43 2019




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Playing board games online

One of the things that keeps me fairly upbeat these days is playing board games and D&D with my friends online. Since others might want to do the same, I thought I’d jot down some notes on how I do it.

I briefly tried Tabletopia but didn"t like it. I understand why they built the interface as they did, but I found it very hard and very confusing to use, and it took us about 45 minutes to even start understanding the system. Granted, we picked Teotihuacan for our test game, which may not have been the best of choices.

So I continued using my homebrew system, and it works great so far.

Technical set-up

I use Whereby (the former appear.in), a WebRTC service that works absolutely GREAT. I totally recommend it to everyone for your online communication needs. The greatest thing about it is that you just go to a URL, ask the people you want to communicate with to go to the same URL, give permissions, enter the room, and start talking. No sign-ups or logins or whatever.

I have a pro account (or whatever it’s called) that allows 12 simultaneous connections to my room. You can also just grab a room name, go there, and start communicating, but these free rooms have a maximum of four simultaneous connections. So I advise you to take a paid account; you will most likely need more than four connections for playing board games online.

Besides, fuck free. The free Internet is slowly coming to an end and you should pay for services you like and use, or they won’t survive (or sell your data; see also Zoom).

Whereby works on modern Chromium-based browsers, and also in Firefox (though I haven’t tried Firefox on Android yet). It does not work in Safari iOS, but an app is available that works as simply as the web client.

Then figure out how many devices you own that you can use. On the whole, I send out three streams: my 'social' stream (my face, basically) from my laptop, the main board stream from my iPad, and a secondary board stream from a Samsung S6 I happened to have lying around. I occasionally use my real Samsung phone (an S7) as a third cam, for instance to make sure that everyone has the same bits and pieces on mirrored player boards.

Plug in all devices you use, and make sure any phones are on at least 25% charge or so before starting. My Samsung phones, especially, tend to spend a lot of juice on keeping the streams running, and even though plugged in all the time they might end up with less battery charge after a gaming session.

Mute Whereby on all devices except for your social stream. One very annoying thing I noticed is that, both on the iPad and on the Samsungs, it is impossible to turn off the sound completely. Therefore you need to do two things:

  1. Disable sound input by clicking on the microphone icon in the bottom bar.
  2. Disable sound output of all connections by clicking the Mute option in the menu you get after clicking on the three bullets icon in the upper right corner. You must repeat this for every connection.

You can only mute the output once everyone else has joined the stream. If someone drops out and re-joins you must mute them again. This is annoying; but it’s caused by idiotic device vendors not allowing you to mute the sound completely by using the provided hardware buttons — don’t ask me why they took this stupid step.

Now ask the others to join you. If possible and necessary they can also add their own cameras, for instance to show their player boards.

Picking the game

With the technical set-up out of the way, you should pick your game. I found that there are two absolute necessities here:

  1. All players must own the game, so that they can copy the moves of the other players.
  2. The game should have little to no hidden information.

So you might need to buy the same game as your friends. If you are in the Amsterdam area, please support your friendly local game store Friends & Foes instead of the big online retailers. Friends & Foes deliver in Amsterdam (I just ordered Tzolkin from them).

The two games I played most often so far are Azul and Alchemists. I am currently gearing up to try Madeira, Istanbul and Tzolkin; they should work as well.

Azul, Madeira, and Tzolkin have no hidden information at all. They have a variable set-up (and in case of Azul this is repeated each round), but that should be no problem.

Appoint one player or group of players as the Master; the other ones have Copies. The Master players draw all the randoms and show them to the other players, who copy them on to their Copy boards. Having the Master set provide all random draws is very important, since usually quite a bit of design thought went in to deciding exactly how many of one type of card or tile are available. These distributions should not be disturbed!

Azul

With Azul it is very important that all players set up copies of all other players’ personal boards. Part of the game is figuring out which tiles other players are likely to want, and for that all players need an overview of who has which tiles in which position.

Wnen I stream Azul, the main camera is on the central part with the available tiles. Other players can copy that if they like, but it’s not really necessary if the stream is clear enough. My secondary camera is on my own player board, so that everyone can see what I’m doing.

During the game all players clearly state their moves; for instance “I take the two blues with the star, and I put them on my three row.” I take the tiles from the central part, and the other players see me doing that, so they can correct me. They don’t see my copy of their playing baords, but that has never been a problem yet, as long as everyone gives clear instructions.

After a round has ended but before scoring I start up my tertiary camera to stream my copies of everyone else’s player boards, just to make sure no mistakes were made. Then I score each player’s board while showing it on camera. We repeat our final scores orally, just to be sure, and then the Master player sets up for the next round by drawing random tiles from my Master bag.

Alchemists

Alchemists does have a little bit of hidden information: random ingredients drawn, and random helper cards we always call Friendly Friends. (I forget their official name.) The Master player draws these cards for me and shows them on their camera without looking. I take the corresponding cards from my own copy of the game. This works fine, and the distribution of ingredients and Friendly Friends remains intact.

Alchemists really only needs a Master main board stream and social streams; there is no reason to add more cameras.

Although Alchemists’ board is pretty big, it doesn’t contain all that much information, which is good for online gaming. I just need to see which artifacts and ingredients are drawn (and copy them to my own board), and where players place their action cubes (and copy them as well). If I can’t see it clearly I just ask, and that works fine.

Part of Alchemists becomes much easier. In real life every player needs a beautifully-designed but sometimes cumbersone player contraption to both visualise their research and hide it from the other players.


Credit: Karel_danek

Online, it’s not necessary, and I find that my research and thinking flows much easier. Other players cannot see my board, and that gives me a lot more space to work with.

Madeira, Istanbul and Tzolkin

I haven’t played Madeira, Istanbul and Tzolkin yet, but they do not contain hidden information; just start-of-game randoms, plus the random buildings that occasionally appear in Tzolkin and the bonus cards in Istanbul. I do not think these will cause a problem.

The bigger problem might be that their boards are much more involved, and there’s a lot of game state to track. I might need to use two cameras to stream them accurately; I’m not sure yet. We’ll figure that out once we do the first session.