New Books in Game Studies

Games are an established aide in pre-college mathematics education. Meanwhile, innumerable popular books have investigated the mathematics of games. In a new edited volume for the AMS/MAA Classroom Resource Materials Series, topologist and NSF educational program director Mindy Capaldi and contributors join advanced topics with innovative lesson designs in possibly the first book of game-based mathematics education for college curricula. Teaching Mathematics Through Games (MAA Press, 2020) comprises lesson material for the full breadth of coursework taken by math students involving just as diverse and often surprising a breadth of games.I've become interested in how edited collections come about, especially in mathematics, so i took some time at the start to ask Dr. Capaldi about the conception and production of this project. We then discussed a selection of six of the book's seventeen chapters that offer a sense of its scope and a taste of its value. To touch briefly on some chapters we did not discuss: Christine Latulippe use the combinatorial format of Sudoku and dates in the history of mathematics to practice converting between numeration systems; and Jacob Heidenreich adapts the game play of Battleship to hone students' understanding of properties of functions.In addition to a detailed description of game play and how it ties in to the topic, each chapter contains exercises, problems, or activities that build upon the core lesson, and an online supplement provides material to support the lessons in practice. The book is designed specifically for instructors and provides rich material for an active learning curriculum, but avid and curious gamers and math geeks will also find much to enjoy.Suggested companion works: MAA Instructional Practices Guide Gathering 4 Gardner Mindy Capaldi is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Valparaiso University in Indiana. She completed her Ph.D. at North Carolina State University in 2010 and is currently on a leave of absence as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation.Cory Brunson is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida. His research focuses on geometric and topological approaches to the analysis of medical and healthcare data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In A New History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 2021), Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi trace changes leading to the computer becoming a ubiquitous technology. Over the past fifty years, the computer has been transformed from a hulking scientific super tool and data processing workhorse, remote from the experiences of ordinary people to a diverse family of devices that billions rely on to play games, shop, stream music, and movies, communicate, and count their steps. A comprehensive reimagining of Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing, this new volume uses each chapter to recount one such transformation, describing how a particular community of users and producers remade the computer into something new. Haigh and Ceruzzi ground their accounts of these computing revolutions in the longer and deeper history of computing technology. They begin with the story of the 1945 ENIAC computer, which introduced the vocabulary of "programs" and "programming," and proceed through email, pocket calculators, personal computers, the World Wide Web, videogames, smartphones, and our current world of computers everywhere--in phones, cars, appliances, watches, and more. Finally, they consider the Tesla Model S as an object that simultaneously embodies many strands of computing.Dr. Thomas Haigh is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Comenius Visiting Professor at Siegen University. He has been researching the history of computing for more than twenty years and is a past chair of SIGCIS, the group for historians of information technology. He is the lead author, with Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope, of ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, about the design, construction, and use of the first general-purpose programmable electronic computer, the ENIAC. His new book, with Paul Ceruzzi, is New History of Modern Computing: a comprehensive history of computing from ENIAC to the Covid-19 pandemic. Austin Clyde is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. He researches artificial intelligence and high-performance computing for developing new scientific methods. He is also a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology, and Society program, where my research addresses the intersection of artificial intelligence, human rights, and democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality of virtual items and worlds, about the value of such things, and indeed, about how they may reshape our understanding of the “real” world.Grant Tavinor finds that approach to be fundamentally mistaken, and that to really account for virtual reality, we must focus on the medium and its uses, and not the hypothetical and speculative instances that are typically the focus of earlier works. He also argues that much of the cultural and metaphysical hype around virtual reality is undeserved.But this does not mean that virtual reality is illusory or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is significant for the altogether different reason that it overturns much of our understanding of how representational media can function and what we can use them to achieve.The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality (Routledge, 2021) is the first book to present an aesthetics of virtual reality media. It situates virtual reality media in terms of the philosophy of the arts, comparing them to more familiar media such as painting, film and photography.Grant Tavinor speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about some of the fundamental features of virtual reality, the implications of working in a picturing medium, as well as the challenges that VR poses to the philosophy of the arts and ethics.Grant Tavinor is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Lincoln University, New Zealand. He has published widely on the aesthetics of videogames, virtual worlds, digital media ethics, and the philosophy of technology.Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Digital games for learning are now commonplace, used in settings that range from K–12 education to advanced medical training. In Making Games for Impact (MIT Press, 2021), Kurt Squire examines the ways that games make an impact on learning, investigating how designers and developers incorporate authentic social impact goals, build a team, and work with experts in order to make games that are effective and marketable. Because there is no one design process for making games for impact—specific processes arise in response to local needs and conditions—Squire presents a series of case studies that range from a small, playable game created by a few programmers and an artist to a multimillion-dollar project with funders, outside experts, and external constraints.These cases, drawn from the Games + Learning + Society Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, show designers tackling such key issues as choosing platforms, using data analytics to guide development, and designing for new markets. Although not a how-to guide, the book offers developers, researchers, and students real-world lessons in greenlighting a project, scaling up design teams, game-based assessment, and more. The final chapter examines the commercial development of an impact game in detail, describing the creation of an astronomy game, At Play in the Cosmos, that ships with an introductory college textbook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (University of California Press, 2015) by Joseph Laycock, explores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic.Fantasy role-playing games do share several functions in common with religion. However, religion—as a socially constructed world of shared meaning—can also be compared to a fantasy role-playing game. In fact, the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often resembled the very games of imagination they condemned as evil. By attacking the imagination, they preserved the taken-for-granted status of their own socially constructed reality. Interpreted in this way, the panic over fantasy-role playing games yields new insights about how humans play and how they construct and maintain meaningful worlds together.Joseph Laycock is an associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University. He has written several books on new religious movements and American religious history, including one on The Satanic Temple. He is also a co-editor for the journal Nova Religio.Carrie Lynn Evans is currently a PhD student of English Literature with Université Laval in Quebec. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.” Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall’s Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games (University Press of Mississippi, 2021) illustrates how this holds true not just in the writing of historical narratives but also the history of film. The book shows how one of the most important revolutions in world history, a revolt in which enslaved people fought for their freedom and created the first majority Black and post-slavery republic, has been silenced, ridiculed, or whitewashed by American and European film makers. She introduces us to Haitian directors such as Raoul Peck who want to tell their own story, free of white saviors but with the full horrors of slavery. The book takes some surprising turns. It turns out video games such as Assassins’ Creed do a better job at recreating the resistance of enslaved people than most films. Sepinwall also finds an unexpected hero in comedian Chris Rock. His Top Five contains a subplot about a fictionalized version of Rock trying to promote his film about the Haitian Revolution to white journalists who can't even understand the concept of a slave revolt.Dr. Sepinwall, who earned her doctorate at Stanford, is a professor of history at California State University San Marcos. Her previous books include The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism and Haitian History: New Perspectives. She also has a number of articles in journals and edited collections such as Journal of Modern History, Journal of Haitian Studies, Journal of American Culture, and Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination. In the interests of full disclosure, she is one of my favorite collaborators and we co-edited a volume of the World History Bulletin on France in world history.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production.The Digital Black Atlantic (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) spans the African diaspora’s range—from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbean—while its essayists span academic fields—from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies. This transnational and interdisciplinary breadth is complemented by essays that focus on specific sites and digital humanities projects throughout the Black Atlantic. Covering key debates, The Digital Black Atlantic asks theoretical and practical questions about the ways that researchers and teachers of the African diaspora negotiate digital methods to explore a broad range of cultural forms including social media, open access libraries, digital music production, and video games. The volume further highlights contributions of African diaspora studies to digital humanities, such as politics and representation, power and authorship, the ephemerality of memory, and the vestiges of colonialist ideologies.Grounded in contemporary theory and praxis, The Digital Black Atlantic puts the digital humanities into conversation with African diaspora studies in crucial ways that advance both.Digital Black Atlantic projects and a journal referenced in the interview: sx: a small literary salon Sonya Donaldson's Singing into the Nation Kaiama Glover and Alex Gil's In the Same Boats Schuler Espirit's Create Caribbean Roopika Risam's The Global Du Bois Project Sharika Crawford is an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and the author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mahjong: many have played the game, but few are familiar with its rich and complex history. In Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2021), Annelise Heinz (University of Oregon) follows this beloved pastime from the International Settlement in Shanghai, to the detention facilities on Angel Island Immigration Station, to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, to Jewish American bungalow colonies in the Catskill Mountains—and beyond. Heinz examines the intersection of leisure and Orientalism to show how the game shaped the lives and identities of Chinese and Americans alike over half a century. Equally fascinating is Heinz’s discussion of mahjong’s evolving materiality, from artisanal bone-and-ivory production to mass-manufactured plastic. To tell this story, Heinz combines a wide array of sources, including not only manuscript material and newspapers, but also novels, popular music, and dozens of oral history interviews. Mahjong will interest scholars of American culture; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; race and immigration; Jewish studies; and business history—as well as mahjong fans and players of all backgrounds. Pung!Ian Shin is Assistant Professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The inside story of the world's most famous board game-a buried piece of American history with an epic scandal that continues today.The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game (Bloomsbury, 2015) reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins.Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily--and richly--ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord's Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly. Her game--underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today--was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt's famed Brain Trust.A gripping social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly's real-life winners and losers.Mary Pilon is a journalist, screenwriter, and author of the bestselling books "The Monopolists" and "The Kevin Show" as well as co-host and co-author of “Twisted: The Story of Larry Nassar and the Women Who Brought Him Down.” Her work regularly appears in the New Yorker, Esquire, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Vice, New York, and The New York Times, among other publications.Dr. Lee Pierce (they & she) is Assistant Professor of Rhetorical Communication at State University of New York at Geneseo and host of the podcast RhetoricLee Speaking. Connect with Lee on Gmail and social media @rhetoriclee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Games have been of interest to mathematicians almost since mathematics became a subject. In fact, entire branches of mathematics have arisen simply to analyze certain games. The Raven's Hat: Fallen Pictures, Rising Sequences, and Other Mathematical Games (MIT Press, 2021) does something very different, and something that I think listeners will find intriguing – it uses games in order to explain mathematical concepts.The Raven's Hat presents a series of engaging games that seem unsolvable--but can be solved when they are translated into mathematical terms. How can players find their ID cards when the cards are distributed randomly among twenty boxes? By applying the theory of permutations. How can a player guess the color of her own hat when she can only see other players' hats? Hamming codes, which are used in communication technologies. Like magic, mathematics solves the apparently unsolvable. The games allow readers, including university students or anyone with high school-level math, to experience the joy of mathematical discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices