Greg Toppo's The Game Believes in You presents the story of a small group of visionaries who, for the past 40 years, have been pushing to get game controllers into the hands of learners. Among the game revolutionaries you'll meet in this book:*A game designer at the University of Southern California leading a team to design a video-game version of Thoreau's Walden Pond.*A young neuroscientist and game designer whose research on "Math Without Words" is revolutionizing how the subject is taught, especially to students with limited English abilities.*A Virginia Tech music instructor who is leading a group of high school-aged boys through the creation of an original opera staged totally in the online game Minecraft.Experts argue that games do truly "believe in you." They focus, inspire and reassure people in ways that many teachers can't. Games give people a chance to learn at their own pace, take risks, cultivate deeper understanding, fail and want to try again-right away-and ultimately, succeed in ways that too often elude them in school. This book is sure to excite and inspire educators and parents, as well as provoke some passionate debate.

    Sid Sackson presents solitaire, strategy, and party games that can be played by children or adults with such common items as cards, checkerboards, dice, pencils, and paper. Diagrams and an abundance of examples, together with clear explanations of strategy and goals, show how to play such intriguing entertainments as Mate, a game of pure skill and logic; Blue and Gray, an exciting variation of Checkers; Plank, an advanced version of Tic-Tac-Toe; Knight Chase, a form of hide-and-seek on the checkerboard; Last Word, in which players select letters to form words in two, three, or four directions; Crossings, a fast-paced battle in which pieces move forward in a group; and other challenging diversions. The author also presents brief reviews of more than 300 other games.

    Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake— until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it's like to be young, driven, and wildly creative.

    Men look to be of service. Emmy Award–nominated actor best known for his role on Queen Sugar and transformational speaker Dondré Whitfield challenges us to be real men in this provocative look at the power found in serving others.Too many males abuse the power they have.Often those males grow up without healthy role models and so, while they look like men, they act like boys. Only now there are adult consequences to their actions.And many of us are caught in the shifting cultural ideas about manhood, unsure of how to make sound decisions or truly be a man. Every day we find evidence that the role of men at home, at work, and out in the world is deeply misinterpreted.In Male vs. Man, Dondré Whitfield equips us to become men rather than simply "grown males." Men are healthy and productive servant-leaders who bring positive change to their communities. Males are self-serving and stuck in negative cycles that we hear and read about daily. They create chaos instead of cultivating calm.Male vs. Man is an uplifting playbook for men who want to level up. It will help men and women alike understand what real manhood is, based on biblical wisdom as well as hard-earned lessons from someone who has been there. With practical guidance and a strong spiritual foundation, Dondré shows how to cultivate the life-changing spiritual, emotional, and psychological attributes of servant leadership at home, at work, and in our communities.

    Britain's Got Talent. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and, most of all, to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. How has that worked out so far? Rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemates abound. Siblings won't speak to each other they're so rivalrous. Kids can't make friends because they don't want to cede their top class ranking to their fellow students. (Their parents don't want them to either.) The richest men in the world sulk when they fall a notch or two in the rich list. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Our dog-eat-dog culture has decimated companies, incapacitated collaborators and sown distrust. Winners take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. Just as we have learned that individuals aren't rational and markets aren't efficient but went ahead operating as though they were, we now know that competition quite regularly doesn't work, the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition throws off a very great deal of waste. It might be comforting to designate these 'perverse outcomes' but as aberrations mount, they start to look more like a norm. It doesn't have to be that way. Around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, collaborative ways to work that don't pit people against each other but support them in their desire to work together. While the rest of the world remains mired in pitiless sniping, racing to the bottom, the future belongs to the people and companies who have learned that they are greater working together than against one another. Some call that soft but it's harder than anything they've done before. They are the real winners.

    Fun Inc. dispels these misconceptions, revealing that 40 per cent of all video game players are women, that most of the bestselling console games of all time involve no real-world violence at all, and how World of Warcraft's online community of over 12 million players is changing our understanding of what it means to be sociable in the modern world.But understanding games means a lot more than simply challenging stereotypes. Find out why the South Korean government will invest $200 billion into its video games industry over the next 4 years and how games are used to train the US Military, to model global pandemics and to campaign against human rights abuses in Africa.Game worlds are creating a new science of mass engagement that is starting to transform our understanding of economics, business and communications. Whether you like video games or loathe them, Fun Inc. will show you that you cannot ignore them.

    Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. And while we watch more television than ever before, how we watch it is changing in ways we have barely slowed down to register. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach television shows, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate—as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will. Wired contributing editor Frank Rose introduces us to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world—people like Will Wright (The Sims), James Cameron (Avatar), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and dozens of others whose ideas are changing how we play, how we chill, and even how we think. The Art of Immersion is an eye-opening look at the shifting shape of entertainment today.

    Games are part art and part appliance, part tableau and part toaster. In How to Talk about Videogames, leading critic Ian Bogost explores this paradox more thoroughly than any other author to date.Delving into popular, familiar games like Flappy Bird, Mirror’s Edge, Mario Kart, Scribblenauts, Ms. Pac-Man, FarmVille, Candy Crush Saga, Bully, Medal of Honor, Madden NFL, and more, Bogost posits that videogames are as much like appliances as they are like art and media. We don’t watch or read games like we do films and novels and paintings, nor do we perform them like we might dance or play football or Frisbee. Rather, we do something in-between with games. Games are devices we operate, so game critique is both serious cultural currency and self-parody. It is about figuring out what it means that a game works the way it does and then treating the way it works as if it were reasonable, when we know it isn’t.Noting that the term games criticism once struck him as preposterous, Bogost observes that the idea, taken too seriously, risks balkanizing games writing from the rest of culture, severing it from the “rivers and fields” that sustain it. As essential as it is, he calls for its pursuit to unfold in this spirit: “God save us from a future of games critics, gnawing on scraps like the zombies that fester in our objects of study.”

    This expert, one-of-a-kind handbook shows you how to:Ensure that your inheritance instructions will he carried out -- the way you want them to beProtect your child's inheritance from creditors, ex-spouses, addictions, tax troubles, mismanagement, squandering, and other risks of lossPrevent family conflict that can arise when parents die and children divide the "family money"Leave more money to your children and grandchildren, and less to the IRS -- and understand the hidden cost of a "death tax" repeal

    It reveals how children adapt to and are influenced by different parenting styles and how safeguarding their emotional development is the key to creating a more peaceful, harmonious, and sustainable world.Practical advice for raising a well-adjusted child includes tips on:Supporting your child's developing emotional intelligenceUnderstanding how your childhood has influenced your own emotional make-upHelping you achieve your full parenting potentialParenting for a Peaceful World is for parents, child health professionals, teachers, and adults seeking to heal and grow.Robin Grille is an internationally renowned author, speaker, educator, psychologist, and psychotherapist specializing in child development, parenting issues, and family relationships.

    "Addiction by Design" takes readers into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward.Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schull shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible--even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schull describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and "ambience management," player tracking and cash access systems--all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum "time on device." Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two."Addiction by Design" is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life.

    It is for everyone who cares about education in an uncertain world and explains how teachers, parents and grandparents can cultivate confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship in children, at the same time as helping them to do well in public examinations. Educating Ruby shows, unequivocally, that schools can get the right results in the right way, so that the Rubys of tomorrow will emerge from their time at school able to talk with honest pleasure and reflective optimism about their schooling. Featuring the views of schoolchildren, parents, educators and employers and drawing on Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas’ years of experience in education, including their work with Building Learning Power and the Expansive Education Network, this powerful new book is sure to provoke thinking and debate. Just as Willy Russell’s Educating Rita helped us rethink university, the authors of Educating Ruby invite fresh scrutiny of our schools.

    From dramatic, high-risk spacewalks to author Scott Parazynski’s death-defying quest to summit Mount Everest—his body ravaged by a career in space—readers will experience the life of an elite athlete, physician, and explorer.This intimate, compelling account offers a rare portrait of space exploration from the inside. A global nomad raised in the shadow of NASA’s Apollo missions, Parazynski never lost sight of his childhood dream to one day don a spacesuit and float outside the airlock. With deep passion, unbridled creativity, resilience, humility, and self-deprecation, Parazynski chases his dream of the ultimate adventure experience, again and again and again. In an era that transitioned from moon shots to the Space Shuttle, space station, and Mars research, Parazynski flies with John Glenn, tests jet packs, trains in Russia to become a cosmonaut, and flies five missions to outer space (including seven spacewalks) in his seventeen-year NASA career.An unparalleled, visceral opportunity to understand what it’s like to train for—and deploy to—a home in zero gravity, The Sky Below also portrays an astronaut’s engagement with the challenges of his life on Earth, including raising a beautiful autistic daughter and finding true love.

    Sound too good to be true? For the Economides family, it's a reality, and it can be yours too.What could the average family do with an extra $3,000 a year? America's Cheapest Family show you strategies, tips, tools, and tricks in Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half, so you can achieve huge savings year after year. It's a fact, the Economides say, saving money on groceries is one of the quickest ways to start making a positive difference in your family's financial future.And these tips and strategies can ork whether you're shopping for seven or for one.•Spend less time shopping and cooking•Get more bang for your grocery buck•Plan meals for picky eaters and busy schedules•Discover kitchen tools that streamline meal preparations•Learn many ways to eat out or eat in and save big•Turn your freezer into a money-making machine

    The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives.Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.