In 2006, about 67 percent of Americans played video games using a computer or game console such as PlayStation, Xbox, or Wii. Video games have come a long way since they were developed in the 1970s. In the past, game programs used a computer-like gadget that could be connected to the television. The players would look at the image on the television screen, hence the name "video game." With the development of personal computers in the 1980s, the computer monitor became a more popular display device, leading to the new term "computer game." These terms, along with "digital game," are now interchangeable. Digital Games, Revised Edition explains the history of digital games, explores how the games have affected players and society, and discusses emerging trends in the digital gaming industry.

Praise for the previous edition: "Highly recommended."—Association of Region XI School Librarians Since the advent of widespread Internet use, digital technology has been used for criminal intent. From computer viruses capable of shutting down and destroying infected computers to recruiting members online for hate groups, the ways the Internet can be used for nefarious purposes is practically limitless. But there is hope. Those in the digital industry are working to increase safeguards from cyber terrorists, such as heading off viruses before they can infect computers, and increasing cyber security. Digital Security, Revised Edition describes how computers are used both to commit crimes and to prevent them and concludes with a discussion of the future of digital crime and stopping its spread.

This book provides the first in-depth exploration of video games as history. Chapman puts forth five basic categories of analysis for understanding historical video games: simulation and epistemology, time, space, narrative, and affordance. Through these methods of analysis he explores what these games uniquely offer as a new form of history and how they produce representations of the past. By taking an inter-disciplinary and accessible approach the book provides a specific and firm first foundation upon which to build further examination of the potential of video games as a historical form.

This book covers the state-of-the-art in digital games research and development for anyone working with or studying digital games and those who are considering entering into this rapidly growing industry. Many books have been published that sufficiently describe popular topics in digital games; however, until now there has not been a comprehensive book that draws the traditional and emerging facets of gaming together across multiple disciplines within a single volume.

This edited volume explores how digital games have the potential to engage learners both within and outside the classroom and to encourage interaction in the target language. This is the first dedicated collection of papers to bring together state-of-the-art research in game-based learning.

The purpose of this unique book is to outline the core of game science by presenting principles underlying the design and use of games and simulations. Game science covers three levels of discourse: the philosophy of science level, the science level, and the application or practical level. The framework presented will help to grasp the interplay between forms of knowledge and knowledge content, interplay that evolves through the action of the players.

The popularity of entertainment gaming over the last decades has led to the use of games for non-entertainment purposes in areas such as training and business support. The emergence of the serious games movement has capitalized on this interest in leisure gaming, with an increase in leisure game approaches in schools, colleges, universities and in professional training and continuing professional development. The movement raises many significant issues and challenges for us. How can gaming and simulation technologies be used to engage learners? How can games be used to motivate, deepen and accelerate learning? How can they be used to greatest effect in learning and teaching? The contributors explore these and many other questions that are vital to our understanding of the paradigm shift from conventional learning environments to learning in games and simulations.

Emotions, Technology, and Digital Games explores the need for people to experience enjoyment, excitement, anxiety, anger, frustration, and many other emotions. The book provides essential information on why it is necessary to have a greater understanding of the power these emotions have on players, and how they affect players during, and after, a game. This book takes this understanding and shows how it can be used in practical ways, including the design of video games for teaching and learning, creating tools to measure social and emotional development of children, determining how empathy-related thought processes affect ethical decision-making, and examining how the fictional world of game play can influence and shape real-life experiences. - Details how games affect emotions—both during and after play - Describes how we can manage a player's affective reactions - Applies the emotional affect to making games more immersive - Examines game-based learning and education - Identifies which components of online games support socio-emotional development - Discusses the impact of game-based emotions beyond the context of games

This book looks closely at the endings of narrative digital games, examining their ways of concluding the processes of both storytelling and play in order to gain insight into what endings are and how we identify them in different media. While narrative digital games share many representational strategies for signalling their upcoming end with more traditional narrative media – such as novels or movies – they also show many forms of endings that often radically differ from our conventional understanding of conclusion and closure. From vast game worlds that remain open for play after a story’s finale, to multiple endings that are often hailed as a means for players to create their own stories, to the potentially tragic endings of failure and "game over", digital games question the traditional singularity and finality of endings. Using a broad range of examples, this book delves deeply into these and other forms and their functions, both to reveal the closural specificities of the ludonarrative hybrid that digital games are, as well as to find the core elements that characterise endings in any medium. It examines how endings make themselves known to players and raises the question of how well-established closural conventions blend with play and a player’s effort to achieve a goal. As an interdisciplinary study that draws on game studies as much as on transmedial narratology, Forms and Functions of Endings in Narrative Digital Games is suited for scholars and students of digital games as well as for narratologists yet to become familiar with this medium.