This book deals with the war opposing Sega to Nintendo during the 90's, in the USA, for the control of the home console market. Over 550 pages, it follows the story of Tom Kalinske, who ran Sega US branch from 1990 to 1996. The book tells the many efforts the man and his team made to push the Genesis / Megadrive onto the US market, to try to make a dent in Nintendo's near monopoly over this market. This war is made of many battles, such as an offensive marketing campaign around the game Sonic (1
[...]
Keywords : sega, nintendo, 16 bits, usa, marketing, sony , tom kalinske, genesis
"Les Oubliés de la Playhistoire" is French TV show broadcasted over the Nolife network, that highlights many unknown and intriguing video games. This companion book is packed with two DVDs gathering the 41 episodes of its first season. The books first details the birth of the TV show, thanks to the interview of the various people involved in the project. Each game featured in the first season of the show is then presented over two pages with a short text and several images. The
[...]
Keywords : oublies de la playhistoire, nolife, underdogs
A new year means a new section to the Ludoscience website! To celebrate 2014, we offer you a new "bibliography" section, dedicated to the books about videogames. This big list already features more than 80 books dealing with various topics: history of videogames, game creators biographies, Game Design, Serious Games, videogames studies & analysis... Each book is presented through a personal abstract and opinion, all purely subjective. But please note that we have read
[...]
Keywords : site update, books, videogames, history, game design, serious games
a b s t r a c t Immersive technologies such as virtual environments and augmented reality have a clear potential to support the experiencing of cultural heritage by the large public, complementing the current tools and practices based on tangible goods such as museums, exhibitions, books and visual content. Serious games – videogames designed for educational objectives – appear as a new tool to learn cultural content in an engaging way. In this paper, we will provide an extensiv
[...]
Keywords : Cultural heritage, Serious Game
Research on digital game-based learning indicates that this learning method can be - under certain conditions - more efficient than other traditional teaching methods, such as textbooks, or web-based learning. Without additional support learning from games may or may not occur, this is why instructional support should be used in educational settings. The present study focuses on testing with feedback as a type of instructional support with great promise. Testing is widely used in almost all clas
[...]
Keywords : Digital game-based learning, Learning from games, Testing, Feedback
The biography of Markus "Notch" Persson, and his world famous creation: Minecraft (2011). This books details the birth of this legendary game, and it begins with the end of the story: the MineCon convention held up in 2011 to celebrate the official release of the 1.0 version of the game. At this date, the game was already played by 16 millions people in the world, making both Markus Persson and his company, Mojang, millionaires. The book then goes back to Notch's childhood, from his pa
[...]
Keywords : minecraft, notch, markus persson, mojang, indie, biography
This book is part of a series titled "the world explained to grown-ups." Hence, with its 160 pages, it aims to explain, in a simple and accessible manner, the world of video games to people who don't know anything about it. Despite its reduced size, this books successfully manages to achieve his goal, as it talks about many topics: history of video games, their art and cultural aspect, their industry, their controversies (addiction & violence), alongside with more recent topics lik
[...]
Keywords : video game, introduction, history, art, industry, addiction, violence, gamification
A series of books dedicated to videogames considered as controversial due to their content: violence, sex, promotion of an ideology. This first book in the series is dedicated to two kinds of videogames: car-action games (Death Race, Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto) and erotic games (the Atari 2600 games by Mystique, Rapelay, Singles, 7 sins, Playboy the Mansion...). Each title is discussed through a variable number of pages, from one or two pages to more than a dozen depending on how much the aut
[...]
Keywords : violence, sex, polemic, politics, grand theft auto, rapelay, familles de france, shane fenton
This book highlights the potential of video games for education purposes. Over 250 pages, 10 chapters are dealing with a different topic each. For example, one chapter relies on the Final Fantasy series to demonstrate the artistic potential of video games, while another chapter presents a classroom experiment conducted over the Harry Potter games and movies to make the students work on storytelling. While the book subject is very interesting, the quality of its chapters varies heavily. The best
[...]
Keywords : education, video game, classroom, theoretical
This tiny 50 pages books aims to tell the history of the Grand Theft Auto (1997-2015) series of games. While the book offers many beautiful pictures, the text is unfortunately not up to the task. First of all, the books "forgets" about the first two episodes (barely mentioned), and begins his story with Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar Games, 2001). Each title is then presented over a few pages. But the text only presents some numbers and a summary of each episodes features, without ever
[...]
Keywords : history, grand theft auto, gta, rockstar