Twitch is the leading live streaming platform in most of the world and an integral part of contemporary digital gaming culture. Millions of people broadcast their game play (as well as other activities) to over a hundred million people who regularly visit the site.In this accessible book, Mark R. Johnson offers both a synthesis of existing Twitch research and a new way to understand Twitch as a public forum for gaming. Drawing on ideas of the ancient Greek agora or public ...

Casino games and traditional card games have rich and idiosyncratic histories, complex subcultures and player practices, and facilitate the flow of billions of dollars each year through casinos and card rooms, and between professional players and amateurs. They have nevertheless been overlooked by game scholars due to the negative ethical weight of “gambling” – with such games pathologized and labelled as deviance or mental illness, few look beyond to unpick the games, their players, and t...

The Unpredictability of Gameplay explores the many forms of unpredictability in games and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding and categorizing non-deterministic game mechanics. Rather than viewing all game mechanics with unpredictable outcomes as a single concept, Mark R. Johnson develops a three-part typology for such mechanics, distinguishing between randomness, chance, and luck in gameplay, assessing games that range from grand strategy and MMORPGs ...

This book describes the risks facing patients with congenital heart disease who wish to become pregnant and the ways in which these patients can best be followed and treated during pregnancy. In addition, the organization of care around the delivery is discussed in detail. The first section provides clear advice on pre-pregnancy risk estimation, counseling of patients, medication use, and inheritance. The specific risks associated with congenital heart defects of differing severity are the...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.What if the success you’ve built isn’t the life you were meant for?In Abundant Life: A Journey of Awakening, Mark Johnson invites readers into a beautifully told story of Sarah, a high-achieving attorney whose heart begins to whisper that something is missing. Her life looks full—but her spirit longs for more.Through powerful moments of divine encounter, heartfelt worship, inner healing, and learning to hear God...

**"Subtly altered how I see the world." —Michelle Goldberg, New York Times“[Status and Culture] consistently posits theories I'd never previously considered that instantly feel obvious.” —Chuck Klosterman, author of The Nineties“Why are you the way that you are? Status and Culture explains nearly everything about the things you choose to be—and how the society we live in takes shape in the process.” —B.J. Novak, writer and actorSo...

Taking “Gangnam Style” seriously: what Internet memes can tell us about digital culture.In December 2012, the exuberant video “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video—“Mitt Romney Style,” “NASA Johnson Style,” “Egyptian Style,” and many others. “Gangnam Style” (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of ...

In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this Very Short Introduction Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying c...

Now that we 'curate' even lunch, what happens to the role of the connoisseur in contemporary culture?‘Curate’ is now a buzzword, applied to everything from music festivals to artisanal cheese. Inside the art world, the curator reigns supreme, acting as the face of high-profile group shows and biennials in a way that can eclipse and assimilate the contributions of individual artists. Curatorial-studies programs continue to grow, and the business world is adopting cu...

'Tom Chatfield's Fun Inc. is the most elegant and comprehensive defence of the status of computer games in our culture I have read, as well as a helpful compendium of research ... The numbers surrounding the sector are certainly thudding. By the end of 2008, annual sales of video games - not including consoles or devices - was $40 billion, comfortably outstripping the movie business. In the same year, Nintendo's employees were more profitable per head than Google's. The sheer perv...

Understanding the precarious reality of videogame production beyond the corporate blockbuster studios of North America—with insights from 400+ game developers.The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, f...

The final installment in this acclaimed series offers astute and controversial discussions on contemporary graphic design from 2001 to 2005. This collection of essays takes stock of the quality and profundity of graphic design writing published in professional and general interest design magazines, as well as on blogs and Internet journals. Prominent contributors include Milton Glaser, Maud Lavin, Ellen Lupton, Victor Margolin, Mr. Keedy, David Jury, Alice Twemlow, Steven Heller, Jessica H...