New Books in Technology

This book offers a comprehensive and practical guide to Games User Research (GUR). Blending theory and hands-on experience, it walks readers through methods, tools, and techniques tailored to the real-world constraints of small and medium-sized game development studios to support them in delivering better player experiences. The book is divided into three parts. Part one introduces core concepts to game development, and explores gameplay experience, together with factors that influence player behaviour and decisions. The part ends by exploring the games user researcher's role and its common challenges. Next, part two presents readers with a 10-step end-to-end research process for a single study. From understanding stakeholders, designing methods, through recruiting participants, moderating sessions and analysing results, to delivering actionable insights. It provides guidance, real-life examples, and templates for integrating research in the game development practices, even when the budget and timeline are tight. Finally, part three provide readers with ready-to-use "recipes" for 10 research methods covering every phase of the game production cycle. Each recipe includes practical tips, pitfalls to avoid, and actual report excerpts. Whether you're an indie developer wanting to better understand your players, UX designer or researcher moving from application software to the world of games, this book will provide you with all the information on how to use research to gain the insights needed to create better player experiences.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.
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The volume addresses issues of security and risk in economic and business history. A focus lies on the study of security in order to highlight the central role of preventive measures, corresponding corporate strategies, (public) demands for measures to promote security, and the conscious avoidance of actions considered risky. It is less on questions of risk avoidance and more on the analysis of decisions and strategies for creating stability and averting potential threats.

The book aims at understanding how these security-oriented interventions and forward-looking approaches have shaped economy and businesses.With contributions by Dolly Afoumba | Anna Corsten | Marie Huber | Nina Kleinöder | Christian Kleinschmidt | Andreas Langenohl | Christian Marx | Cornelia Sahling | Tim Salzer | Tonio SchwertnerThis title is also available as open access. https://www.nomos-shop.de/en/p/security-and-risk-gr-978-3-7560-3577-9

Interview host, Paula de la Cruz-Fernández
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In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are
shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations,
risks, and social costs of these systems.

Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI’s
inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it
threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource
allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals,
communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate
for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a
critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded
not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective
action.

This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español.

This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and
the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading
and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences.

Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation:

Instituto Nuevos Horizontes

Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez



Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke.


The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor.


The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias.

DukeGPT

Wendy Brown

Ivan Illich

"Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena

"We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender

"The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena

"AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender

"It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna

"It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna

"The
groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for
political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society
and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna

"The very idea of
intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that
same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender

"The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender

"Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna

"How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender

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We chat with historian David Kirsch, Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School, about how to understand the Dot Com bubble and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s. David both lived through the Dot Com moment as a California resident and is a scholar of technology bubbles, including through his coauthored book, Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation (Stanford University Press, 2019). We talk to him about how to think about past and contemporary bubbles from both personal and professional historical perspectives.
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Despite the importance of innovation for the growth of firms, industries, and the national economy, the strategic tools available to effectively manage and create new technologies are often neglected by entrepreneurs and corporate managers. The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024) examines how firms can leverage and create technology capital. The analysis considers the two key stages of the innovation process: technology management and technology creation. Each stage involves complex managerial decisions related to resource allocation and the assessment of relevant costs and benefits. This book examines the most frequent trade-offs that shape the innovation process across these two stages. It also provides an introduction to intellectual property and patent analytics.
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