Games & Activities

Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games takes you inside the video arcade game industry during the pivotal decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Warren Davis, the creator of the groundbreaking Q*bert, worked as a member of the creative teams who developed some of the most popular video games of all time, including Joust 2, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Revolution X.

In a witty and entertaining narrative, Davis shares insightful stories that offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to work as a designer and programmer at the most influential and dominant video arcade game manufacturers of the era, including Gottlieb, Williams/Bally/Midway, and Premiere.

Likewise, the talented artists, designers, creators, and programmers Davis has collaborated with over the years reads like a who’s who of video gaming history: Eugene Jarvis, Tim Skelly, Ed Boon, Jeff Lee, Dave Thiel, John Newcomer, George Petro, Jack Haeger, and Dennis Nordman, among many others.

The impact Davis has had on the video arcade game industry is deep and varied. At Williams, Davis created and maintained the revolutionary digitizing system that allowed actors and other photo-realistic imagery to be utilized in such games as Mortal Kombat, T2, and NBA Jam. When Davis worked on the fabled Us vs. Them, it was the first time a video game integrated a live action story with arcade-style graphics.

On the one-of-a-kind Exterminator, Davis developed a brand new video game hardware system, and created a unique joystick that sensed both omni-directional movement and rotation, a first at that time. For Revolution X, he created a display system that simulated a pseudo-3D environment on 2D hardware, as well as a tool for artists that facilitated the building of virtual worlds and the seamless integration of the artist’s work into game code.

Whether you’re looking for insights into the Golden Age of Arcades, would like to learn how Davis first discovered his design and programming skills as a teenager working with a 1960's computer called a Monrobot XI, or want to get the inside scoop on what it was like to film the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Aerosmith for Revolution X, Davis’ memoir provides a backstage tour of the arcade and video game industry during its most definitive and influential period.

Puzzles from the Nether re-creates the retro world of Hawkins, where Eleven, Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Max and their ever-frazzled parents navigate the Upside Down, fight off herds of demodogs and eat far too many Eggo's.

To help the team, you must guide Hopper through the demogorgon tunnels, reveal the codes to help Bob escape Hawkins Lab and solve eerie riddles to earn your place in the gang.

There are more than 100 puzzles and riddles based on the world of Stranger Things with both fantastically frightening and whimsically retro artworks throughout the book to illustrate every brainteaser.

Do you keep forgetting where you put things – and, even, what those things are called? Has 'thingy' become one of your commonly used words? Do you find yourself feeling a bit befuddled? If so, it sounds like you're suffering from what is commonly known as 'Senior Moments'. But never fear, Senior Mind Gym is a comprehensive mental workout wrapped up in one handy book that will help reboot your scatterbrain. With fun quizzes, conundrums, crosswords, word games, suduko, mazes and escape-the-page games you can sharpen your little grey cells with a daily workout. 

Regularly challenging your brain will help to improve your mental agility, concentration levels, memory and problem-solving skills – something we can all benefit from, at any age! Sales points: Gift book aimed at seniors, but a broad age range can benefit from and enjoy the content Contains a variety of fun mental challenges to improve brain function.

Video Game Ecologies and Culture examines the environments that video games affect and are impacted by. The edited collection engages with the notion of ecology as a critical concept that allows to study video game conceptions of human, posthuman, and natural environments and explore the entangled eco-cultural formations in video games and gaming. The contributions discuss the theme of video game ecologies with an interdisciplinary emphasis on the cultural, political, social, and ecological discourses pertaining to the medium and reflect on the relations and imaginaries developed through eco/critical video game practices. These interrelations are carved out in essays on relationality, kinship, and capitalist ruins, immersion in virtual marine ecosystems, video games and the commodification of ecocriticism, eco-colonial power formations, playing and recording nature, gender and post-anthropocentric game worlds, time-loop chronotopes, and ludoaffective dissonance and survival in video games.

Grab the controller! Save the World!
One of the gaming industry’s leading women describes how gaming can be a force for global good.

Play is in our DNA, but gaming has always had a bad rap. Since the first humans carved a game board into the dirt, we’ve been told that playing around isn’t a useful way to spend our time. But gaming is as natural as we are. We game to experiment with ideas and to learn. We play to create new worlds so we can change this one. Gaming pushes us to imagine what more we can become. In Push Play: Gaming for a Better World, Dr. Songyee Yoon, Chief Strategy Officer at NCSOFT, lays out how gaming can help us craft a better world together.

While gaming has global implications, it has largely been created by, marketed to and associated with men. The gaming industry’s perception as a “boys club” has kept many talented women from pursuing their passions in STEM. As a leader and expert in the video game industry, Dr. Yoon shares her own experience in this male dominated field and her quest for a more diverse and equitable tech community. From encouraging more female lead characters in games to creating more supportive environments for working mothers, Dr. Yoon works to break down barriers for those who have been shut out of opportunities in STEM. After all, the game only gets better with more players.

Through stories from her career in the gaming industry and her deep passion for tech, she outlines how innovations in gaming push industries forward and create a more equitable world for everyone.

• Learn how gaming inspires Artificial Intelligence to consider everyone’s perspective.
  
• Master tips and tricks from gaming that can be used to lead diverse and thriving business teams.
  
• Explore the digital worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Games and understand why we need digital communities where all humans can participate.
  

So, get those thumbs flexing with Push Play to unlock your power to play.

Dive into the captivating world of British history shows with Fingers on Buzzers.

Whether you're a Pointless armchair aficionado, nostalgic for the days of Going for Gold, or a bona fide Mastermind, this funny trivia book is perfect for you!

British history through quizzes. Authored by Lucy Porter and Jenny Ryan, the dynamic duo behind the popular podcast "Fingers on Buzzers," this funny trivia book takes readers on a kaleidoscopic journey through the history of British quiz shows. From the early days of TV quizzes to the contemporary pub quiz craze, Fingers on Buzzers is packed with fun trivia, pop quizzes for the whole family, and fascinating insights on great Britain.

Dive into British History. Fingers on Buzzers features exclusive contributions from quiz legends such as James Harkin from QI, Roger Tilling, the voice of University Challenge, and big names like Richard Osman and the hosts of No Such Thing as a Fish. The book also includes insights from behind the scenes of your favorite TV quiz shows, making it a treasure trove for trivia lovers and the perfect present for history buffs.

Inside, you’ll find:

• An interactive and nostalgic celebration of the UK's beloved quiz culture.
• A timeless comprehensive guide to the Great British quiz.
• A perfect blend of entertainment and education in a book filled with important events in history and trivia.

If you liked What If? 2, The Very British Problems Quiz Book, or The Story Behind, you’ll love Fingers on Buzzers.

Videogames have always depicted representations of American culture, but how exactly they feed back into this culture is less obvious. Advocating an action-based understanding of both videogames and culture, this book delineates how aspects of American culture are reproduced transnationally through popular open-world videogames. Playing American proposes an analytic focus on open-world videogames' "ambient operations" and traces practices of "playing American" through the stages of videogame development, gameplay, and reception. Three case studies – concentrating on the Grand Theft Auto, Watch Dogs, and Red Dead Redemption franchises, respectively – highlight different figurations of "playing American." Thematic foci range from public discourses on systemic racism and neoliberal capitalism to the justification of real-world surveillance practices and to the reconfiguration of the Western in the digital age. Playing American provides those interested in either videogames or American culture with a fresh angle and new concepts regarding its subject matters. It demonstrates that videogames are agents of cultural reproduction that do distinct cultural work for American culture in the twenty-first century.

Video games are a global phenomenon, international in their scope and democratic in their appeal. This is the first volume dedicated to the subject of apocalyptic video games. Its two dozen papers engage the subject comprehensively, from game design to player experience, and from the perspectives of content, theme, sound, ludic textures, and social function. The volume offers scholars, students, and general readers a thorough overview of this unique expression of the apocalyptic imagination in popular culture, and novel insights into an important facet of contemporary digital society.

As Daniel Hardcastle careers towards thirty, he looks back on what has really made him happy in life: the friends, the romances… the video games. Told through encounters with the most remarkable – and the most mind-boggling – games of the last thirty-odd years, Fuck Yeah, Video Games is also a love letter to the greatest hobby in the world.

From God of War to Tomb Raider, Pokémon to The Sims, Daniel relives each game with countless in-jokes, obscure references and his signature wit, as well as intricate, original illustrations by Rebecca Maughan. Alongside this march of merriment are chapters dedicated to the hardware behind the games: a veritable history of Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Atari consoles.

Joyous, absurd, personal and at times sweary, Daniel's memoir is a celebration of the sheer brilliance of video games.

Not all games are released equal. The barriers of language and culture can leave our world divided, and this includes the video games that we get the chance to play. Matt Barnes, Dazz Brown and Greg S-C of DidYouKnowGaming? created the YouTube series Region Locked to give people an insight into the weird and wonderful titles that never left their home countries, and now they bring their expertise to you in this book.

Encounter masterpieces you never knew existed from your favourite series and developers, as well as some utterly bizarre creations that seem so outlandish you might wonder how on earth they were released in the first place. The authors explore what it's like to play these games and investigate the fascinating characters behind them to discover why such remarkable creations never enjoyed international exposure.

The book covers games from all eras and a variety of platforms so there’s sure to be something to pique the interest of everyone, from casual gamers to hardcore fans.

Forty original contributions on games and gaming culture

What does Pokémon Go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? How does BioShock Infinite help us navigate world-building?

From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Unlike other media technologies, video games demand engagement like no other, which begs the question—what is the role that video games play in our lives, from our homes, to our phones, and on global culture writ large?

How to Play Video Games brings together forty original essays from today’s leading scholars on video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand Theft Auto V, or music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. See how Age of Empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture. They are a must read for fans and students of the medium.

Praise for Working the Phones:

“A sharp reminder of the difficulties faced by call-center workers.” —The Financial Times

“Jamie Woodcock shows us what call-centers can tell us about bleakness and resistance in the modern workplace.” —VICE

“Jamie Woodcock’s brilliant insider account of life in a British call-center reveals the dirty realities of digital capitalism . . . a book that is sure to become a classic.” —Peter Fleming, author of The Mythology of Work

“Woodcock knows not only his theory but his subject inside out. There’s casualization, cruelty, and regimentation, but also subversion, and his focus on employee resistance offers a flicker of hope.” —Times Higher Education

In Marx at the Arcade, acclaimed researcher Jamie Woodcock delves into the hidden abode of the gaming industry. In an account that will appeal to hardcore gamers, digital skeptics, and the joystick-curious, Woodcock unravels the vast networks of artists, software developers, and factory and logistics workers whose seen and unseen labor flows into the products we consume on a gargantuan scale. Along the way, he analyzes the increasingly important role the gaming industry plays in contemporary capitalism and the broader transformations of work and the economy that it embodies.

Jamie Woodcock is a sociologist of work, focusing on digital labor, the gig economy, and resistance. He is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics and is the author of the award-winning Working the Phones (2016). He is on the editorial board of Historical Materialism and an editor of Notes from Below, an online journal of workers’ inquiry.

Ringbearers collects together essays by established and leading figures within Game Studies, each focused on different aspects of the Massively Multiplayer Online game The Lord of the Rings Online.

The authors played the game extensively, yet they each come to it with different questions. Some essays focus on what players do with and in the game, whether that means asking about the opportunities provided for role-play or asking how the knowledge that fans bring to the game informs their experience of it. Others focus on the design of the game: for example the handling of narrative and its temporal dimensions, the articulation of core themes into ludic form, or the representational and aural strategies used. Moral rhetorics solicit discussion from various perspectives, as does the treatment of horror and the 'other'. Particular game mechanics are analysed in detail such as the game's crafting economy, or, more generally, the development of improbable conventions that players have learned to accept as the grammar of games.

As well as Design, Media and Game Studies students and scholars, Ringbearers will also prove of interest to those studying adaptation and to scholar-fans of JRR Tolkein's massively influential and popular fictional work.

In this new anthology, the editors of the widely acclaimed The Political Interests of Gender (1988) make a compelling case for reconstructing feminist theory in critical-realist terms, fostering more robust, multi-dimensional approaches to analyses of the political interests of gender.

Leading gender studies’ scholars utilise different research traditions to investigate topics including human rights, women’s movements, gendered labour markets, international monetary policy, equality policy, and queer politics. This unique anthology includes theoretical and empirical work, illustrating how to build bridges between materialist and discursive theoretical frameworks for understanding the politics of gender. It will be a trend-setting text for advanced gender studies political science, and sociology courses, as well as for professionals in these fields.

"You know my methods, apply them."  - Sherlock Holmes

Join the world's greatest fictional detective and use your own powers of deduction to solve these ingenious enigmas. More than 70 specially commissioned puzzles set in the world of Sherlock Holmes, designed to test your powers of perception, logic and deduction. Solutions to each puzzle are included.

There's no greater (fictional) puzzle-solver. Now you can learn Holmes' methods and become a master sleuth!

Step through the looking glass into a magical world of puzzles based on Lewis Carroll’s classic tale.

Sharpen your wit and wisdom with 80 conundrums set in Lewis Carroll's weirdly brilliant and brilliantly weird world. Carroll, an obsessive, inventive expert logician, would create elaborate "Pillow Problems" every evening. Some of these are in this collection, grouped by difficulty, so you can match your skills of deduction, reasoning, arithmetic, and creative thinking against the master's. All the familiar characters from his masterpiece appear, including the Mad Hatter with a puzzle about biscuits, the Cheshire Cat with a math quandary, and the Red Queen with a riddle to untangle—all beautifully illustrated with Sir John Tenniel’s original art.

Containing more than 100 enigmas, riddles and conundrums, all taking inspiration from their extraordinary stories and vivid worlds, explore new galaxies and new technologies while solving challenges all written in the distinctive and brilliant styles of these five stars of science fiction.

Enter the genre-defining worlds created by five masters of speculative fiction in The Science Fiction Puzzle Book. Featuring the prolific works of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Ursula K. Le Guin, become part of their futuristic, dystopian and world-building adventures with this series of enigmatic puzzles.

'A knotty puzzle may hold up a scientist for a century'
– Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn.

Psycho Puzzles re-creates the suspense and drama of Hitchcock's greatest films in more than 80 puzzles.

Each conundrum uses characters and situations from his movies to set the scene and you will be asked to calculate the answers to a number of gruesome questions, such as: Can Melanie Daniels survive inside a phone booth as the birds make their savage attack? How much hard liquor can Roger Thornhill consume while being chased by a crop duster? Can Norman sink Marion's car and return to the Bates Motel before the police catch him?

Highly illustrated throughout with period artworks, and with trivia questions about Hitchcock and his life and works as well, this is the perfect book for any movie-loving puzzle fan.

More than 80 puzzles and trivia questions inspired by the worlds and works of Alfred Hitchcock. All of his feature films are referenced, with particular attention paid to his most famous works, such as Psycho, North by Northwest, The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window. Stylish artworks and illustrations are included to re-create the vivid atmosphere of his movies.

The world’s greatest detective returns once more . . . to test your powers of deduction! Can you solve all the cases in this remarkable collection?

Written in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great stories, and told in the voice of Dr. Watson, this book offers an enlightening and diverting selection of puzzles—more than 200 of them. They range from elementary riddles to fiendish brainbusters, from simple riddles to full-out mysteries. Fans must follow threads of logic through convoluted labyrinths, unravel wordknots, figure out identities, solve a murder by looking at an illustration, and much more. Can you live up to Holmes’s exacting standards? Solvers will find tips and tricks for “deducing” the Sherlock way, along with all answers and explanations.

Expand your mind with this exciting collection of mental challenges—more than 100—from the seemingly simple to the almost impossible.

Mystify your mind with more than 100 brainteasers. This provocative collection of puzzles will test your solving skills with an assortment of lateral thinking problems, confounding conundrums, extreme enigmas, almost-impossible IQ questions, and perplexing physics quandaries. Try to solve the mystery of a death in a locked room, how a woman figured out a crafty cabbie had lied to her, why a wife was crying over her expensive birthday present, and more!

Sherlock Holmes is the world's greatest and most loved detective. Now you can learn his methods and become a master puzzle solver!

This title from the De Gruyter Book Archive has been digitized in order to make it available for academic research. It was originally published under National Socialism and has to be viewed in this historical context. Learn more here.

The story of white masculinity in geek culture through a history of hobby gaming

Geek culture has never been more mainstream than it is now, with the ever-increasing popularity of events like Comic Con, transmedia franchising of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, market dominance of video and computer games, and the resurgence of board games such as Settlers of Catan and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Yet even while the comic book and hobby shops where the above are consumed today are seeing an influx of BIPOC gamers, they remain overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual.

The Privilege of Play contends that in order to understand geek identity’s exclusionary tendencies, we need to know the history of the overwhelmingly white communities of tabletop gaming hobbyists that preceded it. It begins by looking at how the privileged networks of model railroad hobbyists in the early twentieth century laid a cultural foundation for the scenes that would grow up around war games, role-playing games, and board games in the decades ahead. These early networks of hobbyists were able to thrive because of how their leisure interests and professional ambitions overlapped. Yet despite the personal and professional strides made by individuals in these networks, the networks themselves remained cloistered and homogeneous—the secret playgrounds of white men.

Aaron Trammell catalogs how gaming clubs composed of lonely white men living in segregated suburbia in the sixties, seventies and eighties developed strong networks through hobbyist publications and eventually broke into the mainstream. He shows us how early hobbyists considered themselves outsiders, and how the denial of white male privilege they established continues to define the socio-technical space of geek culture today. By considering the historical role of hobbyists in the development of computer technology, game design, and popular media, The Privilege of Play charts a path toward understanding the deeply rooted structural obstacles that have stymied a more inclusive community. The Privilege of Play concludes by considering how digital technology has created the conditions for a new and more diverse generation of geeks to take center stage.

Gambling in Papua New Guinea, despite being completely absent prior to the Colonial era, has come to supersede storytelling as the region’s main nighttime activity. Money Games is an ethnographic monograph which reveals the contemporary importance of gambling in urban Papua New Guinea. Rich ethnographic detail is coupled with cross-cultural comparison which span the globe. This anthropological study of everyday economics in Melanesia thereby intersects with theories of money, value, play, informal economy, social change and leadership.

Card Games is a detailed and fully illustrated guide to 52 of the most popular card games for all ages.

A simple deck of cards can provide hours of entertainment for adults and children, so it's no surprise that card games are as popular as ever. From simple, fast-paced games for children to more complex, strategic games for adults, this family-friendly companion features 52 classic games for groups of all sizes. This handy guide provides detailed rules and instructions for each game, accompanied by clear, colored diagrams to help you master these fun, engaging games.

Card Games is a detailed guide to 52 of the most popular card games, perfect for players of all ages.

A simple deck of cards can provide hours of entertainment for adults and children, so it’s no surprise that card games are as popular as ever. From simple, fast-paced games for children to more complex, strategic games for adults, this family-friendly companion features 52 classic games for one player upwards.

This handy guide provides detailed rules and instructions for each game, accompanied by clear, colored diagrams to help you master these fun, engaging games. The current edition has been updated to include two popular poker games: Five-card Stud and Texas Hold’em.