A young boy nearly paralyzed in a car accident runs for the first time in his life during a baseball game. A refugee family from despoiled East Africa plays soccer in my suburban backyard on Thanksgiving Day. A group of college boys is challenged to a game of basketball against the women’s varsity team in an empty gym, then another on a tough inner city court. I hit the first homerun of my life when I am thirty-three years old. These are Ordinary Games. This is a book of pure inspiration. Many of the sporting world’s most profound achievements and displays of humanity are never recorded. They happen on sandlots, asphalt, and backyards. Stories of well-known athletes and teams abound in popular literature – what is missing is an exaltation of the moments that can happen to any of the rest of us - and do. Ordinary Games is the grandstand for everyday miracles. This is an inspirational book that shows how any one of us can transcend possibility or lighten life’s burdens simply by picking up a ball. It is a collection of poignant memoirs of games played without grandstands. Some of the stories relive everyday miracles, while others find the souls of players ascending into the spirits of the games they play. They tell of the glory, despair, and humanity that can be found any afternoon or evening, at any playground, gym, or empty field. The tone is frequently humorous, but the tenor is deeply and genuinely human. While the primary themes involve overcoming impossible odds, secondary themes focus on overcoming common misperceptions. Throughout the narrative, these pieces explore racial and gender divides (including a history of violent separatism) with subtlety, grace, realization, respect, and the common language of competition. The vantage point is wholly familiar, yet new and fresh. My voice is that of a mediocre athlete who can hold his own (but to save his life cannot run fast), and whose sensibilities ignite when the game is on. This familiarity and intensity let readers watch and play at the same time, and hardly notice the difference. Something in each chapter has happened to them, too, and is worth remembering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications, SGDA 2014, held in Berlin, Germany, in October 2014. The 14 revised full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. The focus of the papers was on the following: games for health, games for medical training, serious games for children, music and sound effects, games for other purposes, and game design and theories.

Games of the Gods, The Mythological Greek Ancient Gods, employ The Youth Video Gamers to fight The Diabolic and Sinister Zoombies, Deadly Spiritual Demons that have burst out of transport waves of the Earth’s Atmospheric Spheres to corrupt the minds of humans. The youthful Video Gamers use their incredible skills, controlling their Joy Stick to a Live War-time Video Battle with Gaming Applications. The Greek Gods, through their Portals on Earth, employ youth throughout the world to FIGHT and KILL their Enemies. Humans were given the ability by the Gods to expertly control the Video Games from implants into their DNA made untold ages ago from The Fox-47, which was placed in the Gene Cell Genome, knowing one day the Gods would return to save Mother Earth. The War of the Galaxy/Gamers begins. Games of the Gods is the second novel in the Gene Factor trilogy. When the implants in the Human Genome, the FOX-47 genetic cell factor that was placed into Man’s DNA awakens, the Gods return into their Portals on Earth to direct the youth who will fight through Video War Technology to kill the enemy. Following the first novel, The Gene Factor; this second book explores the ancient mystery – that Mankind was visited by Alien Gods millions of years ago – and those Gods implanted into the Genome of the DNA the skills to fight Deadly Forces that would be needed one day on Earth. That Day Has Arrived in the novel Games of the Gods.

In the quarter of a century since three mathematicians and game theorists collaborated to create Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, the book has become the definitive work on the subject of mathematical games. Now carefully revised and broken down into four volumes to accommodate new developments, the Second Edition retains the original's wealth of wit and wisdom. The authors' insightful strategies, blended with their witty and irreverent style, make reading a profitable pleasure. In Volume 2, the authors have a Change of Heart, bending the rules established in Volume 1 to apply them to games such as Cut-cake and Loopy Hackenbush. From the Table of Contents: - If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em! - Hot Bottles Followed by Cold Wars - Games Infinite and Indefinite - Games Eternal--Games Entailed - Survival in the Lost World

Let the games begin! In their (overabundance of) free time, the gods grew bored and decided to create challenging battles of wits to spice things up! Their opponent? Humanity! A select few players called “apostles” meet the gods on the spiritual realm’s playing field to beat the deities at their own games. A former god named Leshea has woken after sleeping for thousands of years, and her first demand is to meet “this era’s very best player!” She is introduced to Fay, an acclaimed rookie apostle. Together, they plan to challenge the gods and win the ultimate prize, but no one in human history has managed to clear ten games—because the gods can be capricious, outrageous, and sometimes downright incomprehensible! In the face of absurdity, what can the apostles do but enjoy the contest to its fullest?

These comparative studies focus on the relationship between war and games in an effort to achieve an understanding of the phenomenon of war, in order ultimately to avoid it. Out of the ten studies on war and games in this volume, the first five are historical, the next two are by anthropologists, and the last three concern modern war games. The purpose of this comparative study is to focus on the relationship between war and games by highlighting their differences and similarities in an effort better to understand the phenomenon of war. Americans and Europeans contribute studies on war and games in ancient Greece, the lack ofmilitary games in Byzantium, jousts in the middle ages, 'flower wars' and the Aztec and Maya ball game, games in pre-industrial societies and their relation to war, and aspects of computer and video games. Contributors T.B.ALLEN, T.J. CORNELL, M. HERMAN, BRUCE M. KNAUFT, C.M.MAZZUCCHI, P.A.G. SABIN, A.A. SHELTON, DAVID TURTON, T. ZOTZ.