A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative. 
The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions (“Why is this battle boring?”) than big ones (“What does this game mean?”). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play―how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons &amp; Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.
Upton also examines the broader epistemological implications of such a framework, exploring the role of play in the construction of meaning and what the existence of play says about the relationship between our thoughts and external reality. He considers the making of meaning in play and in every aspect of human culture, and he draws on findings in pragmatic epistemology, neuroscience, and semiotics to describe how meaning emerges from playful engagement. Upton argues that play can also explain particular aspects of narrative; a play-based interpretive stance, he proposes, can help us understand the structure of books, of music, of theater, of art, and even of the process of critical engagement itself.

The Aesthetic of Play

Computers & Technology

Upton, Brian

Games & Strategy Guides

The MIT Press

A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative.\nThe impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions ("Why is this battle boring?") than big ones ("What does this game mean?"). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play--how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.

Situational Game Design

Situational Design lays out a new methodology for designing and critiquing videogames. While most game design books focus on games as formal systems, Situational Design concentrates squarely on player experience. It looks at how playfulness is not a property of a game considered in isolation, but rather the result of the intersection of a game with an appropriate player. Starting from simple concepts, the book advances step-by-step to build up a set of practical tools for designing player-centric playful situations. While these tools provide a fresh perspective on familiar design challenges as well as those overlooked by more transactional design paradigms. Key Features Introduces a new methodology of game design that concentrates on moment-to-moment player experience <li>Provides practical design heuristics for designing playful situations in all types of games</li> <li>Offers groundbreaking techniques for designing non-interactive play spaces</li> <li>Teaches designers how to create games that function as performances</li> <li>Provides a roadmap for the evolution of games as an art form.</li>

A K Peters/CRC Press

Situational Design lays out a new methodology for designing and critiquing videogames. While most game design books focus on games as formal systems, Situational Design concentrates squarely on player experience. It looks at how playfulness is not a property of a game considered in isolation, but rather the result of the intersection of a game with an appropriate player. Starting from simple concepts, the book advances step-by-step to build up a set of practical tools for designing player-centric playful situations. While these tools provide a fresh perspective on familiar design challenges as well as those overlooked by more transactional design paradigms. Key Features Introduces a new methodology of game design that concentrates on moment-to-moment player experience <li>Provides practical design heuristics for designing playful situations in all types of games</li> <li>Offers groundbreaking techniques for designing non-interactive play spaces</li> <li>Teaches designers how to create games that function as performances</li> <li>Provides a roadmap for the evolution of games as an art form.</li>

Looking at Edinburgh Castle, it is easy to appreciate that it embodies a thousand year's worth of history. By investigation of soils and erosional features, we can extend Edinburgh's history back to the end of the ice-ages, and the movements of glaciers across the region can also be discerned. However, before the ice-ages, we are confronted with a vast time gap of around 300 million years. It is when we investigate the bed-rocks that it is possible to take the story back further, which is the purpose of this book, now available in paperback. Edinburgh's rocks, formed between 300 and 450 million years ago, afford startling perspectives of the extraordinarily different environments of those remote times. The sandstones with which much of the city is built, were washed down in rivers meandering through a tropical landscape. Coals from the seams of the Midlothian coal-field are fossil relicts of extensive rain-forests that thrived in steamy coastal swamps. The more visible rocks, such as the famous Castle Rock, are memorials to volcanoes that erupted about 340 million years ago. Older than these, and dating back to more than 400 million years, are the Braid, Blackford, and much of the Pentland Hills, while the oldest rocks within a 25 mile radius of Waverley Bridge are tucked away in a few small patches of the Pentland hills.** Beautifully produced, lovely to hold and read...an excellent book for all geologists. ~ The Geoscientist [Subject: Earth Science, Geology]

Edinburgh Rock: The Geology of Lothian

Science & Math

Clarkson, Euan

Earth Sciences

Liverpool University Press

The Scottish Borders region is famed for its frontier history and its myths and ballads. This book - now available in paperback - concerns the much more ancient geological history revealed by its rocks. The authors tell how the once great ocean of Iapetus met its end through the inexorable motion of the tectonic plates that brought continental masses on a collision course. The impact of these continents spelled the death-knell for Iapetus and, in so doing, brought about an intense folding and uplift of huge quantities of ocean floor sediment to form the mighty Caledonide mountain chain. These momentous events brought the essential building blocks of Scotland into their final positions. After attaining their maximum grandeur, the Caledonide mountains were progressively eroded to become shadows of their former glory. Meanwhile, the unified tectonic plate on which Scotland sits proceeded to drift northwards. In so doing, 'ancestral Scotland' migrated from the southern hemisphere, across the equator to ultimately reach its present temperate position. The rocks of the Scottish Borders record much of the Palaeozoic history of the ocean closing, the building and subsequent breakdown of the mountains, as well as of the history of the deserts, rivers, and forests that came and went on its northerly migration. The book also looks at volcanoes, large and small, and how their existence is indelibly recorded in the Borders hills while the latest geological events to sculpt the Borders landscape were of the Pleistocene ice-ages. Written in the accessible style, this volume describes a differing geological history in Scotland. [Subject: Earth Science, Geology]

Death of an Ocean: A Geological Borders Ballad

Scotland's mountains and glens retain the secrets of the long and frequently violent geological history that has gone into their making. Volcanoes have played a major role in the creation of Scotland and while the youngest, a mere sixty million years old, were responsible for much of the scenic splendour of the Inner Hebrides, the rocks composing many of the famous Scottish landforms as, for example, those of Glencoe and the Edinburgh district are also the direct result of volcanism.
Volcanoes and the Making of Scotland explores back in time from the most recent examples to volcanoes of the obscure Precambrian times which left their signature in the ancient rocks of the far north-west. Geographically the book ranges across all of Scotland from Shetland to the Borders. Reflecting current research into Scotland's geology, the author also speculates as to the climate, geography and ecology of the long-gone landscapes in which the volcanoes of differing ages were created and destroyed.
The book is extensively illustrated with maps, sketches, cross-sections and photographs and relates what can currently be seen in the worn-down remains of Scotland's old volcanoes to active analogues around the world. This book vividly brings life and meaning to what the layman would otherwise regard as cold and incomprehensible rocks.

Volcanoes and the Making of Scotland

Looking at Edinburgh Castle, it is easily appreciated that it embodies a thousand year's worth of history. By investigation of soils and erosional features we can extend Edinburgh's history back to the end of the ice-ages and the movements of glaciers across the region can also be discerned. However, before the ice-ages we are confronted with a vast time gap of around three hundred million years. For this interval, we can only surmise what local conditions in and around Edinburgh were like. It is when we investigate the bed-rocks that it is possible to take the story back further. Edinburgh's rocks, formed between 300 and 450 million years ago, afford startling perspectives of the extraordinarily different environments of those remote times. The sandstones with which much of the city is built, were washed down in rivers meandering through a tropical landscape. Coals from the seams of the Midlothian coal-field are fossil relicts of extensive rain-forests that thrived in steamy coastal swamps. The more visible rocks, such as the famous Castle Rock, are memorials to volcanoes that erupted about 340 million years ago. Older than these, and dating back to more than 400 million years, are the Braid, Blackford, and much of the Pentland Hills. Whilst the oldest rocks within a 25 mile radius of Waverley Bridge are tucked away in a few small patches of the Pentland hills. More than two hundred years of geological research have left us with a remarkably detailed picture of the distribution of land and sea, of the climate and of the evolving plants and animals that lived here. Edinburgh Rock is an account of these fascinating Palaeozoic times by Brian Upton and Euan Clarkson.

The Scottish Borders region is famed for its frontier history and attendant myths and ballads. This book concerns the much more ancient geological history revealed by its rocks. The authors tell how the once great ocean of Iapetus met its end through the inexorable motion of the tectonic plates that brought continental masses on a collision course. Impaction of these continents spelled the death-knell for Iapetus and, in so doing, brought about intense folding and uplift of huge quantities of ocean floor sediment to form the mighty Caledonide mountain chain. These momentous events brought the essential building blocks of Scotland into their final positions. After attaining their maximum grandeur, the Caledonide mountains were progressively eroded to become shadows of their former glory; meanwhile, the unified tectonic plate on which Scotland sits proceeded to drift northwards. In so doing â€˜ancestral Scotlandâ€™ migrated from the southern hemisphere, across the equator to ultimately reach its present temperate position. The rocks of the Borders record much of the Palaeozoic history of the ocean closing, the building and subsequent breakdown of the mountains, as well as of the history of the deserts, rivers and forests that came and went on its northerly migration. This Borders story tells also of volcanoes large and small and how their existence is indelibly recorded in the Borders hills whilst the latest geological events to sculpt the Borders landscape were the Pleistocene ice-ages.Written in the accessible style familiar to readers of the authorsâ€™ Edinburgh Rock this volume describes a differing geological history in Scotland. Intended for those wanting to learn more about the origins of a popular region it will also appeal to geologists on field trips and students of geology as the authors display their deep affection for and knowledge of the geology of the Scottish Borders.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Upton, Brian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Upton, Brian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Upton, Brian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Aesthetic of Play

The Aesthetic of Play

Situational Game Design

Situational Game Design

Edinburgh Rock: The Geology of Lothian

Death of an Ocean: A Geological Borders Ballad

Volcanoes and the Making of Scotland

Edinburgh Rock: The Geology of Lothian

Volcanoes and the Making of Scotland

Death of an Ocean: A Geological Borders Ballad