Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged far behind. Gaming Representation examines portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.

Representation of Disability in Children’s Video Games looks at how children’s engagement with characters and stories in video games helps create the perception of disability they have as teens and adults. Drawing on child development theory supported by neuroscience, the book shows how the scaffold of information, the schema, adults have of disability is first created at a very young age as they interact through game play with characters with disabilities. Positing that early video game play experiences should provide exposure to narrative schemas that add understanding and help create meaning about the disability represented, the book presents how such representation in children’s video games maps against cognitive development, and the psychomotor and cognitive needs and abilities of children ages 3 to 12. Close reading of over 40 PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 (ESRB E, 10+) games and analysis of games as diverse as Backyard Baseball and Sly Cooper helped define broad categories of representation: representation can be cosmetic, providing exposure but not gameplay utility; it can be incidental, used as a device that provides purpose for the narrative; or it can more authentically represent the disability as integral to the character and their life. The book provides readers with an overview of contemporary games that betters their understanding of how children’s games present disability and how children create their perceptions through interaction with characters and stories. This book will be of interest to academics and students of game studies, in particular topics such as behavioural science, ethics, and HCI, as well as sociology, communications, and digital media.

The Bioshock series looms large in the industry and culture of video games for its ambitious incorporation of high-minded philosophical questions and retro-futuristic aesthetics into the ultraviolent first-person shooter genre. Beyond the Sea marks ten years since the release of the original game with an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite. Simultaneously lauded as landmarks in the artistic growth of the medium and criticized for their compromised vision and politics, the Bioshock games have been the subject of significant scholarly and critical discussion. Moving past well-trodden debates, Beyond the Sea broadens the conversation by putting video games in dialogue with a diverse range of other disciplines and cultural forms, from parenting psychology to post-humanism, from Thomas Pynchon to German expressionist cinema. Offering bold new perspectives on a canonical series, Beyond the Sea is a timely contribution to our understanding of the aesthetics, the industry, and the culture of video games. Contributors include Daniel Ante-Contreras (Miracosta), Luke Arnott (Western Ontario), Betsy Brey (Waterloo), Patrick Brown (Iowa), Michael Fuchs (Graz), Jamie Henthorn (Catawba), Brendan Keogh (Queensland), Cameron Kunzelman (Georgia), Cody Mejeur (Michigan State), Matthew Thomas Payne (Notre Dame), Gareth Schott (Waikato), Karen Schrier (Marist), Sarah Stang (York/Ryerson), Sarah Thorne (Carleton), John Vanderhoef (California State, Dominguez Hills), Matthew Wysocki (Flagler), Jordan R. Youngblood (Eastern Connecticut State), and Sarah Zaidan (Emerson).

This is a collection of recent novel contributions in game theory from a group of prominent authors in the field. It covers Non-cooperative Games, Equilibrium Analysis, Cooperative Games and Axiomatic Values in static and dynamic contexts.Part 1: Non-cooperative Games and Equilibrium AnalysisIn game theory, a non-cooperative game is a game with competition between individual players and in which only self-enforcing (e.g. through credible threats) alliances (or competition between groups of players, called 'coalitions') are possible due to the absence of external means to enforce cooperative behavior (e.g. contract law), as opposed to cooperative games. In fact, non-cooperative games are the foundation for the development of cooperative games by acting as the status quo. Non-cooperative games are generally analysed through the framework of equilibrium, which tries to predict players' individual strategies and payoffs. Indeed, equilibrium analysis is the centre of non-cooperative games. This volume on non-cooperative games and equilibrium analysis contains a variety of non-cooperative games and non-cooperative game equilibria from prominent authors in the field.Part 2: Cooperative Games and Axiomatic ValuesIt is well known that non-cooperative behaviours, in general, would not lead to a Pareto optimal outcome. Highly undesirable outcomes (like the prisoner's dilemma) and even devastating results (like the tragedy of the commons) could appear when the involved parties only care about their individual interests in a non-cooperative situation. Cooperative games offer the possibility of obtaining socially optimal and group efficient solutions to decision problems involving strategic actions. In addition, axiomatic values serve as guidance for establishing cooperative solutions. This volume on cooperative games and axiomatic values presents a collection of cooperative games and axiomatic values from prominent authors in the field.

Since the birth of modernity, Western thought has been at war with clichés. The association of philosophical and cultural integrity with originality, and the corresponding need for invention and novelty, has been a distinct concern of a whole spectrum of ideas and movements, from Nietzsche’s polemics against the ‘herd’, the ‘shock of the new’ of the artistic avant-garde, the Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture, to Orwell’s defence of political dialogue from ‘dying metaphors’. This book is the first examination of the cliché as a philosophical concept. Challenging the idea that clichés are lazy or spurious opposites to genuine thinking, it instead locates them as a dynamic and contestable boundary between ‘thought’ and ‘non-thought’. The book unpacks the constituent phenomena of clichés – repetition, circulation, the readymade, same-ness – through readings of ‘anti-philosophical’ thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Paulhan, de Certeau, Derrida, Sloterdijk, Badiou and Groys. In doing so, the book critically articulates the techniques and technologies through which the boundary between ‘thought’ and ‘non-thought’ is formed in modern Western philosophy. Rejecting the idea that clichés should be dismissed out of hand on normative frameworks of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ thinking, or ‘new’ and ‘old’ ideas, it instead interrogates the material, cultural and archival ground on which these frameworks are built.

This unique handbook maps the growing field of consumer psychology in its increasingly global context. With contributions from over 70 scholars across four continents, the book reflects the cross-cultural and multidisciplinary character of the field. Chapters relate the key consumer concepts to the progressive globalization of markets in which consumers act and consumption takes place. The book is divided into seven sections, offering a truly comprehensive reference work that covers: The historical foundations of the discipline and the rise of globalization The role of cognition and multisensory perception in consumers’ judgements The social self, identity and well-being, including their relation to advertising Social and cultural influences on consumption, including politics and religion Decision making, attitudes and behaviorally based research Sustainable consumption and the role of branding The particularities of online settings in framing and affecting behavior The Routledge International Handbook of Consumer Psychology will be essential reading for anyone interested in how the perceptions, feelings and values of consumers interact with the decisions they make in relation to products and services in a global context. It will also be key reading for students and researchers across psychology and marketing, as well as professionals interested in a deeper understanding of the field.

This Companion provides an authoritative source for scholars and students of the nascent field of media geography. While it has deep roots in the wider discipline, the consolidation of media geography has started only in the past decade, with the creation of media geography’s first dedicated journal, Aether, as well as the publication of the sub-discipline’s first textbook. However, at present there is no other work which provides a comprehensive overview and grounding. By indicating the sub-discipline’s evolution and hinting at its future, this volume not only serves to encapsulate what geographers have learned about media but also will help to set the agenda for expanding this type of interdisciplinary exploration. The contributors-leading scholars in this field, including Stuart Aitken, Deborah Dixon, Derek McCormack, Barney Warf, and Matthew Zook-not only review the existing literature within the remit of their chapters, but also articulate arguments about where the future might take media geography scholarship. The volume is not simply a collection of individual offerings, but has afforded an opportunity to exchange ideas about media geography, with contributors making connections between chapters and developing common themes.

This collection explores the politics of game play and its cultural context by focusing on the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies to macro political economy analysis of techno-nationalisms and transcultural flows of cultural capital, it provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming.

This volume puts forth an original theoretical framework, the ludonarrative model, for studying video games which foregrounds the empirical study of the player experience. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to and description of the model, which draws on theoretical frameworks from multimodal discourse analysis, game studies, and social semiotics, and its development out of participant observation and qualitative interviews from the empirical study of a group of players. The volume then applies this approach to shed light on how players’ experiences in a game influence how they understand and make use of game components in order to progress its narrative. The book concludes with a frame by frame analysis of a popular game to demonstrate the model’s principles in action and its subsequent broader applicability to analyzing video game interaction and design. Offering a new way forward for video game research, this volume is key reading for students and scholars in multimodality, discourse analysis, game studies, interactive storytelling, and new media.