Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
Author: T L Taylor
In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.
Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)--including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online-and offline life--and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play--and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space--what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
Interesting book: Poor Eaters or Aromaterapia Libro Practico
Clinical Decision Support: The Road Ahead
Author: Robert A Greenes
This book examines the nature of medical knowledge, how it is obtained, and how it can be used for decision support. It provides complete coverage of computational approaches to clinical decision-making. Chapters discuss data integration into healthcare information systems and delivery to point of care for providers, as well as facilitation of direct to consumer access. A case study section highlights critical lessons learned, while another portion of the work examines biostatistical methods including data mining, predictive modelling, and analysis. This book additionally addresses organizational, technical, and business challenges in order to successfully implement a computer-aided decision-making support system in healthcare delivery.
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