Readings

 

Books

DeKoven, B. (1978) The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books. (1st or 2nd Edition)

Laurel, Brenda. (2001). Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. (2005). The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The following:

Topic Essays/Salen & Zimmerman

The Player Experience                 3

The Rules of a Game                   9

Gaming the Game                       15

The Game Design Process     21

Player and Character                 27

Games and Narrative                 33

Game Communities                    39

Speaking of Games                    45

Game Design Models                53

Game Economies                        59

Game Spaces                                65

Cultural Representation            71

What is a Game?                         77

What is Play?                                 83

Other Essays

Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon (1955)/Johan Huizinga       96

The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games (1962)/Roger Caillois                        122

Construction of a Definition (1990)/Bernard Suits                                                                           172

"Complete Freedom of Movement" (1998)/Henry Jenkins                                                         330

The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat (1990)/F. Randall Farmer and Chip Morningstar 728

Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs (1996)/Richard Bartle      754

Yalom, Marilyn. The Birth of the Chess Queen. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.

 

Additional Recommended Readings

Caillois, Roger. Man, Play & Games. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001 (1958).

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Boston: Beacon, 1955.

Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Select Parks game art portal: http://www.selectparks.net

Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

 

Papers

Brand, Stewart. "SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums," Rolling Stone, December 7, 2001. http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/MOO_MUD_IRC/curtis_mudding.article

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace." http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat." http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2005). "Sustainable Play: Towards A New Games Movement for the Digital Age." Digital Arts & Culture Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen, December 2005. Download here: http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/DACSustainablePlay.pdf

Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) "The Hegemony of Play." In Situated Play: Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association 2007 Conference. Tokyo, Japan, September 2007. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/HegemonyOfPlayFINAL.pdf

Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2007). "A Game Of Ones Own: Towards a New Gendered Poetics of Game Space." In Proceedings, Digital Arts & Culture 2007, Perth, Australia, September 2007. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/LudicaDAC07.pdf

Lazarro, N. & Keeker, K. (2004). "What's My Method? A Game Show on Games." In CHI 2004 Conference Proceedings, April 2004. http://www.xeodesign.com/whatsmymethod.pdf

Lazzaro, N. (2004-2005) "Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story." Self-published white paper. www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html

Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Norman, D.A. (2004). "Affordances and design." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Pearce, C. (2008). "The Truth About Baby Boomer Gamers." Games & Culture, Vol 3, Issue 2. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/BoomerGamersPreview.pdf

Pearce, Celia. "Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity." Visible Language: Special Issue on Fluxus. January 2006. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/fluxus-pearce.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Multiple Pleasures: Women and Online Gaming," Convergence, Vol. 9, No.1, 21-46, Spring 2003. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/CourseReadings/TaylorMultiplePleasures.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." International Journal of Engineering Education 19, no. 1. www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/papers/Taylor-Designers.pdf

Zimmerman, E. (2003). "Play as research: The iterative design process." http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.htm