Mark J. P. Wolf is an Associate Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University Wisconsin. His books include Abstracting Reality: Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age (2000), The Medium of the Video Game (2001), Virtual Morality: Morals, Ethics, and New Media (2003), The Video Game Theory Reader (2003), The World of the D'ni: Myst and Riven (2006), The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond (2007), and J. R. R. Tolkien: Of Words and Worlds (forthcoming, 2009).

Bernard Perron is an Associate Professor of Cinema at the University of Montreal. He has co-edited The Video Game Theory Reader (2003), written Silent Hill: il motore del terrore (2006), an analysis of the Silent Hill videogame series, and is editing Gaming After Dark: Essays on Horror Video Games (forthcoming, 2009).

Acknowledgments

Foreword Tim Skelly

Introduction Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf

The Essays:

1. Gaming Literacy: Game Design as a Model for Literacy in the 21st Century Eric Zimmerman

2. Philosophical Game Design Lars Konzack

3. The Video Game Aesthetic: Play as Form David Myers

4. Embodiment and Interface Andreas Gregersen and Torben Grodal

5. Understanding Video Games as Emotional Experiences Aki Jarvinen

6. In the Frame of the Magic Cycle: The Circle(s) of Gameplay Dominic Arsenault and Bernard Perron

7. Understanding Digital Playability Sebastien Genvo

8. Z-axis Development in the Video Game Mark J. P. Wolf

9. Retro Reflexivity: La-Mulana, an 8-Bit Period Piece Brett Camper

10. "This is Intelligent Television": Early Video Games & Television in the Emergence of the Personal Computer Sheila C. Murphy

11. Too Many Cooks: Media Convergence and Self-Defeating Adaptations Trevor Elkington
12. Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games Jesper Juul

13. Between Theory and Practice: The GAMBIT Experience Clara Fernandez-Vara, Neal Grigsby, Eitan Glinert, Philip Tan, and Henry Jenkins

14. Synthetic Worlds as Experimental Instruments Edward Castronova, Mark W. Bell, Robert Cornell, James J. Cummings, Matthew Falk, Travis Ross, Sarah B. Robbins and Alida Field

15. Lag, Language, & Lingo: Theorizing Noise in Online Game Spaces Mia Consalvo

16. Getting into the Game: Doing Multi-Disciplinary Game Studies Frans Mayra

Appendix: Video Games Through Theories and Disciplines

Works Cited

About the Contributors