As the title implies, this book tackles the history of videogames through a quite unique viewpoint: gamepads. This book analyses each and every gamepad released for a home console, from the Atari 2600 controllers to Xbox 360 ones. It is divided in five parts. The first one goes through the early beginnings of game controllers : it analyses the ones created for Spacewar! and Tennis for Two, among others. The second part is dedicated to the evolution of controllers handling, and details how the va
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Keywords : joypads, history, gamepads, game design
This books focuses on the history of videogames in Britain, and more specifically on the best-known videogames in history that originates from Britain: Tomb Raider, Grand Theft, Auto, Elite, MUD, Populous, Lemmings, Carmageddon, Runescape, EarthWormJim, etc. This book also details the history of some famous english computers, such as Sinclair's ZX family, the Amstrad computer line, the BBC Micro and its legacy, that includes the ARM processors nowadays embedded in almost any smartphone. Extremel
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Keywords : history, videogames, britain, grand theft auto, tomb raider, elite, populous, mud
We wrote an article about the historical origins of "Serious Games", which get published by Springer in the book "Serious Games and Edutainment Applications" a few months ago. We first review the historical definitions of the "Serious Games" oxymoron. We then explore the history of videogames in search of the first "Serious Games", that actually appeared before the first entertainment videogames... This book gathers several scientific articles ded
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Keywords : serious games, history
An excellent book featuring a deep analysis of the experiences offered to players by videogames. Being at the same time a gamer and a scholar, the author provides us with his very thoughtful and stimulating ideas on this topic. The first three chapters are tackling the issue of defining games, video games, and the relation between games and movies / storytelling. As they are full of concepts and references, these chapters are a bit harder to read than the others. The three following chapters are
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Keywords : history, philosophy, sociology, experience, critical, gamification
Alongside with "The Ultimate History of Videogames" and "La Saga des Jeux vidéo", here is without a doubt the third must-read book for anyone who want to have a global view on the history of videogames. The authors starts from the early games up to nowadays, and tells the story of the most important games and machines thanks to interviews with their creators. The added value of this book compared to the two previous ones is the fact that, in addition to tackling
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Keywords : history, united kindgom, france, europe
This book deals with the rich history of videogames and cinema, and more specifically their relations with American movies. The author details with a high level of precision the various links between the movie and videogame industries, such as the numerous movies-games and games-movies adaptions. But the author doesn't remain at a surface level, he pursues his analysis at a deep level: he studies the evolution of games-movies relations according to the different economical eras of the videogames
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Keywords : cinema, videogames, hollywood, thesis, mario, donkey kong, warner
The french written reference about the history of videogames. This must-have book has know five different editions between 1997 and 2012. It details the story of many famous videogames thanks to interviews with their designers: Pong, Tomb Raider, Tetris, Doom, Myst, Sim City, etc. The book also have a background story with the life of Philippe Ulrich, famous french game designer and founder of Cryo, who have lived through all the stages of the videogames history. A very interesting read wi
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Keywords : history, france, world of warcraft
IG Magazine is a journal, issued every 2 months, with a format that is half-way between a book and a regular journal. Each issue comes with more than 250 pages dedicated to the current trends, the economy, the culture and the history of videogames. IG magazine was published between March 2009 and July 2013, for a total of 27 regular issues and 10 additional "special issues." It was an excellent journal, the only french journal that was able to talk about current videogames topics while
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Keywords : journal, news, economy, culture, history, analysis
Pix'n Love is a journal dedicated to the history of videogames. It uses a format that is half-way between a book and a regular journal. The 128 pages of each issue explores in great details the history of a selection of games and machines, ranging from the highly popular ones (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Megaman, Rayman, etc.) to the nearly unknown games. Each article is generally written after the interview of the creators, allowing Pix'n Love to provide the reader with a lot of novel and unique i
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Keywords : history, interview, novel
An historical timeline related videogames evolution from 1952 to 2001. Features more than 150 videos and interactive games to illustrate the history.
Keywords : history