Power Play

Beschrijving

‘Essential reading for anyone trying to understand where the next influence operation is being built’
ELIOT HIGGINS, founder of Bellingcat

‘Revelatory . . . will fundamentally change how you understand modern power’
KELLY CLANCY, author of Playing with Reality
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In Power Play**, leading game industry expert George E. Osborn reveals how video games – the world’s largest entertainment medium – are being used by autocrats, populists and violent extremists to influence the real world around us.**

Video games are the world’s largest entertainment medium. They are played by billions of people of all ages every year, generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

But they are more than an entertainment product. They connect people across the globe, creating digital third places where people talk, share ideas and build identities, fostering diverse communities capable of dominating the digital discourse now shaping our reality.

While democracies continue to underestimate the potential for influence in this space, others have seized the opportunity to control, co-opt or collaborate with video game communities to wield the power of these vast information ecosystems.

Saudi Arabia is spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring video games businesses to wash its reputation. Russia has funded video game development to help spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine. Steve Bannon utilised tactics deployed by online video game communities to propel Donald Trump into the White House, and Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin even carved video game references into his bullets.

Supported by the insights of politicians, academics and industry experts, Power Play is the vital guide for understanding this new political frontier, highlighting what democracies must do to protect and harness the immense power of play before the essential battle for digital influence is lost for good.

Beschrijving

Sawyer Daniels had a plan.She’d teach at the daycare and go to class until she finished her degree. Once a week, she would bartend at the strip club, Atlantis, to earn the money she needed to break free.She just had to make it until graduation, and then, with any luck she’d be out of this mess.But one night, she meets Rex Lockwood. The hot and broody man she’d been eyeing one night at work. When one thing leads to another, she ends the night in his lap where lines between work and pleasure begin to blur.To make matters worse, he’s the new university hockey coach for her brother’s team. The brother she’s currently refusing to speak to.Rex Lockwood never thought he’d be back in New York City, but here he is, back in the hockey world as the men’s hockey coach for his old university. Now that he’s back, he’s promised himself that he will only do what’s best for him and his daughter, not letting anyone close enough to affect her happiness.But when he meets a girl with bright blue eyes and a body made for him, he begins questioning his reasons for keeping everyone at a distance.Can they overcome these obstacles, or will they be driven further apart?