Read more
Zusatztext Can we win at the game of life? As Castronova writes with wisdom and humor! the game of life is not only about winning and losing! victories and defeats! but most of all why we play the game. For pleasure? Excellence? Faith? No matter what our life goal! Castronova brings strategic lessons learned from the field of game design and his own experience in the game of life to help us choose the kinds of games we play! and how to play hard for our victory conditions! quest! thrive! and win. Informationen zum Autor Edward Castronova is Professor of Media at Indiana University, USA. He is the author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games (2006), Exodus to the Virtual World (2008) and Wildcat Currency: The Virtual Transformation of the Economy (2014). He specializes Games, Technology, and Society, and has served in the past as Director of the BS degree program in Game Design, and Chair of the Department of Media Arts and Production. Klappentext For centuries, thinkers of all stripes have said that life is a game. What if that is true? What if life really is a game? What if our presence here is part of a vast and beautiful interactive machine?Edward Castronova urges readers to think about the human condition in the same way that a player thinks about a game. So many of the mechanics we see in games are present in daily life, from role-playing and levelling up, to investing, diplomacy, and the sublime tension between the risk of loss and the thrill of victory. What is 'victory,' though? We all have our own ideas about how to win this game. Some say the point is to feel good. Others say it is all about God, with Heaven as the win condition. However we envision our lives, game designs tells us how best to play. We decide what it means to win this game; game thinking tells us the most sensible way to do it. Thus, though it is new, the field of game design has much to say about the fundamental questions of human existence. Philosophy asks why we are here. Game Design answers: To interact, to choose, to play. Life is a Game describes how insights from game design can improve life outcomes. Zusammenfassung What if life is a game? Are you winning? Have you even decided what ‘winning’ is?Game design could be defined in many ways, but here the term is used to denote the practice of creating choices. Designing a game, in this sense, involves crafting limits, rewards, incentives, and risks in such a way that the person who interacts with the game – the player – makes choices that have consequences.Edward Castronova urges readers to think about the fundamentals of the human condition and compare them to different games that we all know. In some ways, life is like an idle game: providing unchallenging distractions that fit easily into a person's daily routine. In other ways, life is like the game Minesweeper: You poke in different places to learn about what you don’t know, taking care to avoid big explosions. Or, life is like a role-playing game: You adopt a persona and speak your part, always seeking adventure. Bringing together questions relating to diverse fields – such as politics, economics, sociology and philosophy - Castronova persuades readers to broaden the scope of game design to answer questions about life’s everyday obstacles. The object of this book is to take seriously the idea that life is a game. The goal is not to make readers wealthier or healthier. Its goal is to go on a journey into the human condition, with game design as a guide. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction a. Stances and the Strategic Layer b. Concepts and Examples c. Is there a Game Designer? d. Life's Important; So Are Games e. We Can Only Write From Who We Are Part I: The Strategic Turn 1. Why Do Great Thinkers Keep Saying That Life is a Game? a. The Many Similarities Between Living, Gaming, and Playin...
