Videogames once seemed like they would have a part to play in the future of the book – the natural evolution of literary practice onto more expressly interactive digital platforms. Today, despite numerous compelling examples of videogames that support literary engagement, the comparison can seem strange, clichéd, banal, and beside the point. This chapter attempts to reset the comparison of videogames and literature for the present moment of digital culture. First, it presents a brief history of critical perspectives on videogames as literature. Second, it reflects on the contemporary status of and challenges to videogaming’s literary aspirations following recent shifts in the industry’s design priorities and monetization practices. This chapter does not present an argument regarding the status of games as literature. Rather, its goal is to describe the urgent work of literary studies in continuing to rethink digital gaming in the unfolding digital age.

Despite promising early evidence for the validity of well-designed game-based assessments (GBAs) for employee selection, the interaction between the complexity of games and their use in international and cross-cultural contexts is unknown. To address this, this paper presents a descriptive, qualitative study examining the perspectives of both GBA vendors and organizational stakeholders related to cross-cultural issues unique to GBAs related to 1) privacy, 2) legality, and 3) applicant reactions. Overall, privacy and legality concerns appeared similar for GBAs as with other assessment methods, although certain common characteristics of GBAs amplify common concerns. Applicant reactions appeared more positive to GBAs across national borders and cultures than traditional assessments, although some international differences were reported. Other cross-cultural topics raised included international differences in the conflation of GBA and artificial intelligence, in the importance of mobile-first design, and in the ability of GBAs to provide a more language-agnostic experience than other assessment types.

Chapter 2 discusses the dilemma posed by the requirement that ‘communicative’ English be taught in a foreign language classroom – which is naturally different from real life – and suggest different ways out of this dilemma as general possibilities. The chapter therefore provides a practical applied linguistic background for the more theoretically motivated chapters that follow. We argue that many of the teaching dilemmas triggered by the setting of the foreign language classroom relate to the fact that the classroom provides its own ritual space, in which the conventions and practices and related rights and obligations holding for daily life are turned upside down.Thus, a key dilemma invariably facing the foreign language teacher is how to teach real-life language use in a non-real-life setting.

This chapter takes as its central focus the triumphal games given by the Roman praetor Lucius Anicius Gallus in 167 BCE. The chapter deconstructs the hostile account of this event in Polybius’ Histories by examining how Anicius manipulated the musical dynamics of the spectacle in order to amplify the importance of his triumph. The second half of the chapter situates the episode in the context of broader developments in Greek and Roman musical culture during the second century BCE. As well as discussing the general treatment of music in Polybius’s Histories, it considers how the dissemination of Greek musical culture during this period sparked a reaction from senior members of the Roman political elite, as evidenced most notably by the fragmentary speeches of Cato the Elder and Scipio Aemilianus.

I describe the theoretical assumptions of rational models and assess -- largely negatively -- their ability to produce knowledge relevant to international relations.

What does it mean to build digital worlds in the Anthropocene? Despite their compromised provenance, computer and video games offer a potent avenue for designing and partaking in environmental scenarios. As a review of the varied approaches to ludic world design suggests, differences in opinion as to who or what constitutes a viable game world – broadly speaking, designers, players, software or spaces – bear on environmental impasses in our shared world, which is marked by multispecies entanglements and obligations. If the essence of world-building lies primarily not in a singular, authorial intent or vision but in a collective imagining and realisation, then designed worlds may serve as both inspirations and cautionary tales for our ecologically compromised times.

This chapter focuses on the identities created for other residents (Athenian women and girls, male metics and their daughters and Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes) and non-residents (especially colonies and allies). In comparison to those of the male Athenians, the identities of other residents and non-residents of the city were not nearly as complex, in part because these other groups had limited opportunities for participation in the celebration. While the identities of Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes focused on their position as citizens-to-be or as the newest citizens who were prepared to fight for the city, the identities for the other groups focused on their service to the goddess. The participation of both non-residents and residents also marked them as members of the community of “all the Athenians” and allowed them to create identities as members of this group. International visitors had a significant role to play as excluded non-members who contrasted with members of the community. Thus, how one took part in the Great Panathenaia was instrumental in determining what it meant to be a member of “all the Athenians” who were celebrating the Great Panathenaia.

This chapter is the first of two chapters examining the identities created at the Great Panathenaia. It asks what identities were created for Athenian men. For these men, the processes were particularly complex, and they had to take part in a variety of different aspects of the festival. The more often a man participated, the more complex his identities became. A man could also have further identities as a member of specific subgroups of Athenian men: as a member of the cavalry, as benefactor of the city, as a member of a genos, a (Kleisthenic) deme and a (Kleisthenic) tribe. Different aspects of a man’s overall identity would have been salient at different moments in the festival and depended on how exactly any individual man participated. Especially in the games during the classical and Hellenistic periods, the definition of what it meant to be an Athenian male mapped quite closely on to a very political and Aristotelian understanding of citizenship. Consequently, the identities of Athenian men were particularly sensitive to political change in the city, and they quickly reflected developments in other areas of the city’s life.

This chapter explores the novel-writing of the experimental writing collective the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo). Despite the seeming mismatch between the Oulipo's attachment to form and the perceived formlessness of the novel, many oulipians have experimented with writing novels. This chapter begins by considering how oulipians have re-invented the novel form via the transposition of structures and constraints from other genres and disciplines. It then reflects on the various functions of these structures and constraints arguing that, while some serve primarily as architectural devices or creative stimuli, others are intrinsically meaningful. In particular I reflect on the ways in which oulipian-authored novels explore the relationship between self and system, and between the individual and the collective. Indeed, oulipian-authored novels often bear the collective stamp of the Oulipo. As this chapter argues, the group has developed a compelling shared imaginary that marks its novelistic production and that raises questions concerning authorship and creative ownership. Lastly, this chapter considers the ways in which oulipian-authored novels frequently invite the reader into a literary game that draws out his or her own creative potential.

“A City for Pigs” portrays Plato as a systems modeler of a sustainable society. Plato’s argumentative methods, in the Republic especially, are favorably compared to techniques of computer simulation and to the heuristic objectives of game theory. Plato’s views about social cooperation in the use of common-pool resources, for example, are shown to be strikingly similar to conclusions reached via field studies by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom in Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990). Plato’s own homology, of city and soul, provides a compelling rationale for both individual and collective action vis-à-vis the environmental and social problems we still face today.