This book presents a historical, economic and artistic analysis of Japanese video games, hoping to explain why they are so successful all around the world. The author, who is an expert of this topic, offers us a combination of detailed history (the birth of Japanese video game industry), personal analysis of games series (Mario, Final Fantasy, etc.), and interviews with legendary game designers such as Shigeru Miyamoto and Fumito Ueda. The author then explores some "japanese-specific"
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Keywords : japan, analyse, shigeru miyamoto, fumito ueda, jrpg, akihabara, pokémon, music games
This tiny 80 pages book tackles the question of the artistic and cultural potential of video games. The first part of the book quickly reviews the history and classification of video games, using elements from the classical book written by Le Diberder Brothers. In the second part, the author deals with how players regard games. He then draws elements from his personal experience in a "gamer's club" running monthly Lan Parties (networked computer game sessions). Thanks to the interview
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Keywords : video game, art, culture, introduction
This 900-pages behemoth is the revised and extended edition of a book first published in 2000. It covers extensively the industrial creation of video games. The book is divided in three main parts: the design of games, project and team management, and video game software architecture design. In the first part, the authors address topics that will become the classic parts of "game design" books: game concept ideas, writing Game Design Documents, balancing, user interface, prototyping...
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Keywords : industry, design, management, architecture, reference
This book focuses on the history of role-playing and adventure games made in the USA. The central theme of the book is the truly captivating story of Richard Garriott, the creator of famous rpg saga Ultima (1981-1999). The book details his path starting with his teenage years, when he discovered Dungeons & Dragons, a game that will greatly influence his first amateurs creations on the Apple II. After two years of work, he attempts to sell his first "real" game, Akalabehth (1980), b
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Keywords : history, ultima, richard garriot, origin systems, id software, john romero, doom, texas
An introductory book about Game Design. The first part focuses on general tips about Game Design (storytelling, balancing, etc.). The second part is dedicated to a presentation of the different videogames genres. The first part of the book is clearly the most interesting one, as the second part is both aging fast and not as detailed as we could have expected. Please note that this book received three updates greatly extending the part about Game Design tips, titled "Fundamentals of Game Des
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Keywords : games design, tips, video games genres
This book deals with the topic of interactivity from an overall point-of-view. Its 400 pages are divided in 4 parts. The first one is dedicated to the fundamentals concepts of interactivity. The second one provides many design tips using real-world examples of successful and flawed applications interfaces. From these examples, the third part lays down a general theory of interactivity, completed by an historical perspective of the software industry in the fourth part (including the way it gather
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Keywords : interactivity, design, theory
One of the best book ever written about the history of video games. Over more than 450 pages, the book explores the American history of videogames with a great deal of details: the beginnings with Spacewar!, the rise and fall of Atari, the arrival of Nintendo, the birth of the ESRB alongside the Nintendo-Sega war, etc. It also focuses on several important trials related to video games: the Atari-Ralph Baer case for the paternity of video games, the Universal strike to Donkey Kong over King-
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Keywords : history, united states, trials
This is the third edition of one of the first, if not the first, book to seriously tackle the history of video game on a global level. The book structure is chronological: each chapter covers the main events of a single year. Moreover, the author chose to mostly focuses his book on the history of consoles in the US. After a first chapter dedicated to early digital games, the book details the main events of the video game industry between 1970 and 2000. Among others things, it presents the variou
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Keywords : history, videogame, usa, console
This book is dedicated to the history of computing, but deals with the history of computer and video games too. The main topic is the birth and legacy of the "Hacker" movement: a group of talented youth people who initiated a drive for computers to be a tool available and useful to everyone. During the dawn of the 60's, in the U.S., at the famous MIT university, a group of students changed the very idea of "computing" by using one of their university's computer to create all
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Keywords : hackers, MIT, spacewar!, apple II, steve wozniak, sierra on line, ken and roberta williams, homebrew computer club
This book is one of the most iconic texts on the use of video games for education. It aims to demonstrate stakeholders, teachers and other education professionals how video games can enhance learning. The book thus presents a lot of interesting examples coming from school education, adult education and defense. While the book tone is more evangelist than scientific, especially when read today, it remains a very rich and thought-provoking introduction to the "digital game-based learni
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Keywords : game based learning, digital games, learning, examples