What happens when previously autonomous firms from different countries, each with their own identities, routines and capabilities, come together inside a single multinational corporation? This book tackles this question through an empirical study of the strategic constitution of a multinational.

This is the first book that sheds light on global game industries and cultural policy. The scope covers the emerging and converging theory and models on cultural industries and its development, and their connection to national cultural policy and globalization. The primary focus of the book is on Asian cultural policy and industries while there are implicit comparisons throughout the book to compare Asia to other global markets. This book is aimed at advanced undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members in programs addressing cultural policy and digital games. It will also be of interest to those within the cultural policy community and to digital games professionals.

Scholarly attention has tended to focus on the owners and management of the multinationals, but when the focus is changed to that of subsidiaries, different aspects of business development and international capitalism come to light. Sandvik’s study looks at the Falconbridge nickel refinery in Kristiansand, Norway.

This book presents a powerful hybrid intelligent system based on fuzzy logic, neural networks, genetic algorithms and related intelligent techniques. The new compensatory genetic fuzzy neural networks have been widely used in fuzzy control, nonlinear system modeling, compression of a fuzzy rule base, expansion of a sparse fuzzy rule base, fuzzy knowledge discovery, time series prediction, fuzzy games and pattern recognition. This effective soft computing system is able to perform both linguistic-word-level fuzzy reasoning and numerical-data-level information processing. The book also proposes various novel soft computing techniques.

Annotation This book constitutes the refereed proceedigs of the 20th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, CONCUR 2010, held in Paris, France, August 31 - September 3, 2010. The 35 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 107 submissions. The topics include:- Basic models of concurrency such as abstract machines, domain theoretic models, game theoretic models, process algebras, and Petri nets. - Logics for concurrency such as modal logics, probabilistic and stochastic logics, temporal logics, and resource logics. - Models of specialized systems such as biology-inspired systems, circuits, hybrid systems, mobile and collaborative systems, multi-core processors, probabilistic systems, real-time systems, service-oriented computing, and synchronous systems.- Verification and analysis techniques for concurrent systems such as abstract interpretation, atomicity checking, model checking, race detection, pre-order and equivalence checking and run-time verification.

How games can make a real-world difference in communities when city leaders tap into the power of play for local impact. In 2016, city officials were surprised when Pokémon GO brought millions of players out into the public space, blending digital participation with the physical. Yet for local control and empowerment, a new framework is needed to guide the power of mixed reality and pervasive play. In Locally Played, Benjamin Stokes describes the rise of games that can connect strangers across zip codes, support the “buy local” economy, and build cohesion in the fight for equity. With a mix of high- and low-tech games, Stokes shows, cities can tap into the power of play for the good of the group, including healthier neighborhoods and stronger communities. Stokes shows how impact is greatest when games “fit” to the local community—not just in terms of culture, but at the level of group identity and network structure. By pairing design principles with a range of empirical methods, Stokes investigates the impact of several games, including Macon Money, where an alternative currency encouraged people to cross lines of socioeconomic segregation in Macon, Georgia; Reality Ends Here, where teams in Los Angeles competed to tell multimedia stories around local mythology; and Pokémon GO, appropriated by several cities to serve local needs through local libraries and open street festivals. Locally Played provides game designers with a model to strengthen existing networks tied to place and gives city leaders tools to look past technology trends in order to make a difference in the real world.

The globalizing influence of professional sports Professional sports today have truly become a global force, a common language that anyone, regardless of their nationality, can understand. Yet sports also remain distinctly local, with regional teams and the fiercely loyal local fans that follow them. This book examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of global sports, in which professional teams and their players have become agents of globalization while at the same time fostering deep-seated and antagonistic local allegiances and spawning new forms of cultural conflict and prejudice. Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann take readers into the exciting global sports scene, showing how soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey have given rise to a collective identity among millions of predominantly male fans in the United States, Europe, and around the rest of the world. They trace how these global—and globalizing—sports emerged from local pastimes in America, Britain, and Canada over the course of the twentieth century, and how regionalism continues to exert its divisive influence in new and potentially explosive ways. Markovits and Rensmann explore the complex interplay between the global and the local in sports today, demonstrating how sports have opened new avenues for dialogue and shared interest internationally even as they reinforce old antagonisms and create new ones. Gaming the World reveals the pervasive influence of sports on our daily lives, making all of us citizens of an increasingly cosmopolitan world while affirming our local, regional, and national identities.