Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2016 -

With this book, Consalvo (Concordia Univ.) solidifies her position as one of the most promising voices in the field of game studies, crafting an essential study of a topic that is perhaps so pervasive that it has heretofore been invisible: the quality of "Japaneseness" in the Western video game industry and how Japanese video games are marketed to, transformed by, and received in North America. Consalvo's prose is concise, lively, and refreshingly free of jargon--though she deftly incorporates historical contexts--fromJaponisme to Orientalism--and theoretical frameworks such as cosmopolitanism into her analysis. The study does justice to the complex range of Western reactions to Japanese games, including attempts to mask or remove the "cultural odor" of a game and attempts to capitalize on Japan's cultural coolness by emphasizing elements that seem culturally weird. Consalvo closely reads many significant games, dealing with both their narrative and ludic aspects. More important, the book is very focused on the people--players, fans, ROM hackers, translators, and localizers--who passionately love these games and bring their creativity to transforming and interpreting them for new audiences. Essential for any library building a collection on video game studies.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.

This small, accessible, well-researched volume (fifth in the "Playful Thinking" series) explores how video games uniquely influence empathy, emotion, and social connection. Working against the stereotype that games facilitate indifferent and antisocial players, Isbister (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) argues that many game designers create supportive environments for emotional and social growth. Initially distinguishing games from other media via their use offlow(via Csikszentmihalyi) and choice, Isbister details the ways that avatars, non-player characters, and character customization evoke emotional responses during solo play situations. The second chapter explores how coordinated action, role-playing, and social situations extend emotional potential into socially shared experience and co-performance. The final two chapters examine game design tactics that utilize physical movement as a way to not only provoke emotion but also foster intimacy and community-building across networked distances. Illustrative mainstream and indie examples include both digital-only and non-digital games, and the "Wrapping Up" section at the end of each chapter offers useful summaries. Overall, Isbister optimistically establishes framing concepts meant to refocus critical discussion and future design practices toward the ways that games can enhance understanding human experience through an engaged emotional lens.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty.