Game culture and material culture have always been closely linked. Analog forms of rule-based play (ludus) would hardly be conceivable without dice, cards, and game boards. In the act of free play (paidia), children as well as adults transform simple objects into multifaceted toys in an almost magical way. Even digital play is suffused with material culture: Games are not only mediated by technical interfaces, which we access via hardware and tangible peripherals. They are also subject to material hybridization, paratextual framing, and processes of de-, and re-materialization.

Game culture and material culture have always been closely linked. Analog forms of rule-based play (ludus) would hardly be conceivable without dice, cards, and game boards. In the act of free play (paidia), children as well as adults transform simple objects into multifaceted toys in an almost magical way. Even digital play is suffused with material culture: Games are not only mediated by technical interfaces, which we access via hardware and tangible peripherals. They are also subject to material hybridization, paratextual framing, and processes of de-, and re-materialization.

This book explores what games and play can tell us about contemporary processes of urbanization and examines how the dynamics of gaming can help us understand the interurban competition that underpins the entrepreneurialism of the smart and creative city. Games and Play in the Creative, Smart and Ecological City is a collection of chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars from game studies, media studies, play studies, architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning. It situates the historical evolution of play and games in the urban landscape and outlines the scope of the various ways games and play contribute to the city’s economy, cultural life and environmental concerns. In connecting games and play more concretely to urban discourses and design strategies, this book urges scholars to consider their growing contribution to three overarching sets of discourses that dominate urban planning and policy today: the creative and cultural economies of cities; the smart and playable city; and ecological cities. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students and scholars of game studies, play studies, landscape architecture (and allied design fields), urban geography, and art history.

As the distinction between the digital and the material world becomes increasingly blurred, the ways in which we think about design are also shifting and evolving. How can the human, digital and material be brought together to intervene in the world? What constitutes our digital-material environments? How can we engage with digital technologies to make sustainable, healthy and meaningful decisions, both now and in the future? Digital Materialities presents twelve chapters by scholars and practitioners working at the intersection between design and digital research in the UK, Spain, Australia and the USA. By incorporating in-depth understandings of the digital-material world from both the social sciences and design, the book considers how this combined knowledge might advance our capacity to design for the future. Divided into three parts, the focus of the book moves from the theoretical to the practical: how different digital materialities are imagined and emerge, through software emulation, urban sensors and smart homes; how new digital designs are sparked through collaborations between social scientists and designers; and finally, how digital design emerges from the insider work of everyday designers. A fascinating, ground-breaking book for students and scholars of digital anthropology, media and communication, and anyone interested in the future of digital design.

This interesting book discusses why, as an activity, topic and metaphor, play and game have become an integral part of modern life. Empirically exemplary and theoretically grounded, this book discusses the developments and expansions in gaming, from easily accessible casual games to the galaxy-spanning gaming worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). It shows how gaming has become a focal point of the entertainment industry, marked by boundless professionalization and monetization, especially in the realm of sports, and how games become global platforms for social networks, where players from all over the world meet in digital sandboxes. The combination of the virtual and the ludic creates hyperreal spaces in which people try out new forms of interaction, cooperation, and even brainstorming. The authors ask if this behavior has become the new way of life and the new normal, and if this heralds the ludic century. They take readers on a journey to understand the dynamics of today's gaming society, and base their observations and analyses on an original theory of play, which, in contrast to social normalcy, revolves around the allure and threats of the unexpected. This book is of interest to students and researchers of social science and communication studies, especially those working on the interface of AI and society.

The ebook version of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and is freely available to read online. This book presents how sets of tablet play characteristics shape children's current digital playgrounds.

This two-volume set LNCS 11590 and 11591 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies, LCT 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2019, in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2019. The 1274 full papers 209 posters presented at the HCII 2019 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 5029 submissions. The papers cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of applications areas. The papers in this volume are organized in the following topical sections: mobile and ubiquitous learning; virtual reality and augmented reality systems for learning; and collaborative technology.