Football isn't a matter of life and death,' Bill Shankly once famously said, 'it's much more important than that.' In The Heart of the Game, Jimmy Greaves looks back over his long association with the sport to give his take on all things football, and attempts to make sense of our undying passion for the beautiful game. How has the game changed from its working class roots to its current celebrity-driven image? How do managers like Sir Alf Ramsey compare to the Svens of today? Why have England stopped producing great goalkeepers? How come the football of yesteryear was more physical, yet the footballer of today is more injury-prone? Drawing on both his knowledge and love of the game, this is Jimmy at his fascinating, witty and humorous best.

Sometimes baseball is just a metaphor for life, and sometimes it works the other way around. All Sarah Duke ever cared about was baseball, and she’s finally earned her shot as a full-time sports writer. She loves the work, she loves being one of the few women to ever gain access to a man’s world, but most of all, she loves the game. When Duke meets Molly Grettano and her two sons at the ballpark, she instantly connects with the young family, but Molly isn’t sure Duke’s ready for something more. Molly wants someone softer, more feminine, and more importantly, someone steady. She and her boys have been abandoned before, and she’s vowed to never to put them in that position again. If she were ever to trust anyone, it would have to be someone fully dedicated to her and her children. Duke has a lot of heart, but neither woman is sure there’s enough room left in it for anything other than baseball.

Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime! Adventure video games have provided players with epic and hilarious storytelling for over fifty years. What started from the humble beginnings of text adventures led to a blast of point-and-click and graphic adventure games throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Trailblazers like Roberta and Ken Williams, Ron Gilbert, Tim Schaffer and Dave Grossman brought timeless characters, stories and puzzles to life, lighting the imaginations and wracking the brains of gamers around the world. This book showcases the companies, games and creators that have made the adventure video game one of the most passionately-adored genres in the medium. In these pages you’ll find histories on influential companies such as Sierra On-Line, LucasArts and Telltale Games, as well as some of the most revered games in the genre. With a bright future emerging as veterans and newcomers forge ahead with new ideas and visual flourishes for adventure games, there’s never been a better time to become acquainted (or reacquainted!) with a colorful and exciting part of gaming history. So point your cursor over the start button and click that mouse!

Classic and cutting-edge writings on games, spanning nearly 50 years of game analysis and criticism, by game designers, game journalists, game fans, folklorists, sociologists, and media theorists. The Game Design Reader is a one-of-a-kind collection on game design and criticism, from classic scholarly essays to cutting-edge case studies. A companion work to Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's textbook Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, The Game Design Reader is a classroom sourcebook, a reference for working game developers, and a great read for game fans and players. Thirty-two essays by game designers, game critics, game fans, philosophers, anthropologists, media theorists, and others consider fundamental questions: What are games and how are they designed? How do games interact with culture at large? What critical approaches can game designers take to create game stories, game spaces, game communities, and new forms of play? Salen and Zimmerman have collected seminal writings that span 50 years to offer a stunning array of perspectives. Game journalists express the rhythms of game play, sociologists tackle topics such as role-playing in vast virtual worlds, players rant and rave, and game designers describe the sweat and tears of bringing a game to market. Each text acts as a springboard for discussion, a potential class assignment, and a source of inspiration. The book is organized around fourteen topics, from The Player Experience to The Game Design Process, from Games and Narrative to Cultural Representation. Each topic, introduced with a short essay by Salen and Zimmerman, covers ideas and research fundamental to the study of games, and points to relevant texts within the Reader. Visual essays between book sections act as counterpoint to the writings. Like Rules of Play, The Game Design Reader is an intelligent and playful book. An invaluable resource for professionals and a unique introduction for those new to the field, The Game Design Reader is essential reading for anyone who takes games seriously.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.

From the text adventures of Zork, to the arcade game of Pac-Man, to the corridors of Doom, and on to the city streets of Grand Theft Auto IV, the maze has often been used as a space to trap and confuse players in their navigation of gameworlds. However, the maze as a construction on the landscape has a long history before the invention of the videogame. By examining the change in the maze from the landscapes of open spaces and closed gardens through to the screen of the videogame, both mazes and labyrinths are discussed in terms of historical reference, alongside the author's personal experiences of walking and playing these structures. This book shows how our cultural experiences of real world maze landscapes may have changed, and how we negotiate videogame worlds along the various paths and meanings they so often create for us.

Who wins and who loses in urban regeneration? What are the mechanisms at play? Francesca Weber-Newth looks at two neighbourhoods that are adjacent to large-scale regeneration schemes: the 2012 Olympic park in London and the Mediaspree waterside development in Berlin. By analysing how urban regeneration is experienced on the ground, her study counters the notion that Olympic-led regeneration is any different from other forms of neoliberal urban development. Adopting Pierre Bourdieu's view of the social world as made up of competitive ›games‹, an analysis of the two neighbourhoods reveals how the concepts of ›culture‹ and ›community‹ are strategically employed in the ›game‹ of urban regeneration - to the benefit of some and the detriment of others.

To create a great video game, you must start with a solid game design: A well-designed game is easier to build, more entertaining, and has a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Here to teach you the essential skills of player-centric game design is one of the industry’s leading authorities, who offers a first-hand look into the process, from initial concept to final tuning. Now in its second edition, this updated classic reference by Ernest Adams offers a complete and practical approach to game design, and includes material on concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams analyzes the specific design challenges of all the major game genres and shows you how to apply the principles of game design to each one. You’ll learn how to: Define the challenges and actions at the heart of the gameplay. Write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. Understand the essentials of user interface design and how to define a game’s look and feel. Design for a variety of input mechanisms, including the Wii controller and multi-touch iPhone. Construct a game’s core mechanics and flow of resources (money, points, ammunition, and more). Develop appealing stories, game characters, and worlds that players will want to visit, including persistent worlds. Work on design problems with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies. Make your game accessible to broader audiences such as children, adult women, people with disabilities, and casual players. “Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework I’ve seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and player—one that I’ve found useful for both teaching and research.” — Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Façade

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. From the ancient Greeks to today’s festival of sponsors – this is the definitive sporting, social and political history of the Olympic Games. 'An excellent, pacy, anecdote-studded history of the modern Games' – The Times The Olympic Games have become the greatest show on earth. But how was such a ritual invented? Why did it prosper and how has it been so utterly transformed? In The Games, sports historian David Goldblatt takes on a breathtakingly ambitious search for the answers and brilliantly unravels the complex strands of this history. Beginning with the Olympics as a sporting side show at the great Worlds Fairs of the Belle Epoque and its transformation into a global media spectacular, care of Hollywood and the Nazi party. The Games shows how sport and the Olympics had been a battlefield during the Cold War, a defining moment for social and economic change in host cities and countries, and a theatre of resistance for women and athletes of colour once excluded from the show. Filled with stories from over a century of Olympic competition – this amazingly researched history captures the excitement of sporting brilliance and the kaleidoscopic experience of the Games. It shows us how this sporting spectacle has come to reflect the world we hope to inhabit and the one we actually live in.