1. This extremely multidisciplinary book engages descriptive and prescriptive methods of study to video games, drawing heavily on philosophical traditions. It will have appeal outside of Film & Media and Philosophy to other areas of scholarly research including Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science. 2.The author is a senior scholar with extensive publications that explore the intersection of philosophy and ethics with digital games and reality. He has a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter as well as a well-designed personal website. He has historically be very engaged with his own digital and social media marketing for books he authors and plans to do the same for this title. 3. The author works to debunk and reframe what readers think they know about video games and digital culture, showing that it is wrong (or at least misguided) and that the important questions are often far more interesting and potentially disturbing than anticipated.

Understanding games as systems, with complex interactions of game elements and rules. Gaming the System demonstrates the nature of games as systems, how game designers need to think in terms of complex interactions of game elements and rules, and how to identify systems concepts in the design process. The activities use Gamestar Mechanic, an online game design environment with a systems thinking focus.

Gaming the Systemtakes an active approach to learning about American government, using novel, exciting, and highly instructive games to help students learn politics by living it. These timeless games are the perfect complement to a core textbook in American government - covering key topics like the Constitution, the Supreme Court, Congress, political participation, campaigns and elections, the federal bureaucracy, the social contract, social movements, and public opinion - and can be applied to specific courses at other levels, as well. For Instructors:These nine games are designed to be easily inserted into courses, with all but one fitting into one class session and all flexible enough to adapt or scale as needed. Games are designed so that students will be ready to play after minimal preparation and with little prior knowledge; instructors do not need to design or prepare any additional materials. An extensive instructor-only online resource provides everything needed to accompany each game: summary and discussion of the pedagogical foundations on active learning and games; instructions and advice for managing the game and staging under various logistical circumstances; student handouts and scoresheets, and more. For Students:These games immerse participants in crucial narratives, build content knowledge, and improve critical thinking skills--at the same time providing an entertaining way to learn key lessons about American government. Each chapter contains complete instructions, materials, and discussion questions in a concise and ready-to-use form, in addition to time-saving tools like scorecards and "cheat sheets." The games contribute to course understanding, lifelong learning, and meaningful citizenship. ructor-only online resource provides everything needed to accompany each game: summary and discussion of the pedagogical foundations on active learning and games; instructions and advice for managing the game and staging under various logistical circumstances; student handouts and scoresheets, and more. For Students:These games immerse participants in crucial narratives, build content knowledge, and improve critical thinking skills--at the same time providing an entertaining way to learn key lessons about American government. Each chapter contains complete instructions, materials, and discussion questions in a concise and ready-to-use form, in addition to time-saving tools like scorecards and "cheat sheets." The games contribute to course understanding, lifelong learning, and meaningful citizenship. ing, lifelong learning, and meaningful citizenship.

"We spend too much time firefighting and fighting among oursleves" ..... "our management meetings are taking too much time, they're just not productive anymore" ....."it was a good idea, but it lacks direction. It has no day to day manager sitting abover it" ...... "these measures have come at the expense of innovation." Sound familiar? These are all real statements from real employees in businesses where the organisation itself, and the priorities that it sets, have become the end and not the means. Places where people do what gets counted, and lose sight of what counts. Optimistic sales projections, creative accounting, fear of risk taking, uneccessary meetings, e-mail "cc" culture, resistance to change, empire building....all symptoms of people playing the organisational game. It comes to every organisation, and it drains resources and squanders opportunities. Are your people doing what needs doing? or doing what gets measured once a month? How many people in your business can't get to the bigger competitive challenges beacause they're busy "firefighting"? This book will explore why and how people play the political game, respond to internal dynamics rather than market movements and work to company deadlines rather than market trends. It will show you how to understand and identify the symptoms of playing the system, mitigate its effects and then act to tackle its causes. It's time to stop playing the organisation game and start playing the competitive game. In a world in which organisations are facing an ongoing struggle to improve their outcomes, it has become increasingly clear that by simply 'cranking up' the productivity targets, their organisational gains are rarely sustainable. Of all the issues facing organisations that are inhibiting this ability, it is the organisational population's ability to 'game the system' that limits the success of initiatives. In order to be able to deal effectively with this issues, managers at all levels need to understand the dynamics at play in an organisation that create the ability to 'game the system,' as well as ways in which to mitigate its effects. Gaming the system occurs on many levels in an organisation, and in many forms. Gaming the System identifies how structures in organisations (both explicit and implicit policies and procedures, stated goals, and mental models) drive behaviours that are detrimental to long-term organisational success. Through the utilisation of case examples, the book shows how to identify these behaviours and develop ways in which to counteract their negative effects that will minimise the long-term personal and organisational potential. The book highlights three core-competencies that can mitigate the negative impacts of organisational gaming the system.

How the increasing reliance on metrics to evaluate scholarly publications has produced new forms of academic fraud and misconduct. The traditional academic imperative to “publish or perish” is increasingly coupled with the newer necessity of “impact or perish”—the requirement that a publication have “impact,” as measured by a variety of metrics, including citations, views, and downloads. Gaming the Metrics examines how the increasing reliance on metrics to evaluate scholarly publications has produced radically new forms of academic fraud and misconduct. The contributors show that the metrics-based “audit culture” has changed the ecology of research, fostering the gaming and manipulation of quantitative indicators, which lead to the invention of such novel forms of misconduct as citation rings and variously rigged peer reviews. The chapters, written by both scholars and those in the trenches of academic publication, provide a map of academic fraud and misconduct today. They consider such topics as the shortcomings of metrics, the gaming of impact factors, the emergence of so-called predatory journals, the “salami slicing” of scientific findings, the rigging of global university rankings, and the creation of new watchdogs and forensic practices.

How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Commit an online crime, go to an online jail. In this MMORPG penal colony, inmates PVP to gain EXP, loot, and most of all...survive. Seph has been sentenced to play in one of these virtual correctional facilities. Sounds fun right? Maybe for some, but there is no worse punishment for Seph, mostly because he isn't a gamer. Will he be able to complete his sentence with all the trials and objectives thrown at him? Trapped in a virtual world he cannot escape, Seph now has to step outside of his comfort zone and align himself with the very thing he's been rebelling against his whole life--the system. Game designer and avid gamer, P.A. Wikoff wrote this story as a love letter to a lifetime of gaming.