Keywords : serious game, history, expressive, chris crawford
This book details the history of two legendary game consoles, both released in 1994. The 300 pages are divided in two parts. The first part tells with great details the history of the PlayStation, and the making of its 10 most popular games (Wipeout, Tekken, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid…). The second half is dedicated to the history of the Saturn and 10 of its best titles (Nights, Guardian Heroes, Grandia, Panzer Dragoon, Daytona USA…). Despite already abundant
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Keywords : saturn, playstation, history, sony, sega, wipeout, virtua fighter, 32 bits
As the title suggests, this book gathers trivia and factoids about 100 popular video games: Zelda, Mario, Resident Evil, Shenmue, Dragon's Lair, Viewtiful Joe, Journey, Half-Life, etc. 10 pieces of trivia are presented for each game, with a lot of pictures. The book is quite beautiful, and both pleasant and quick to read. However, it's clearly an "entry-level" book, as the pieces of trivia are very short: each one is told over one or two lines. Moreover, the author doesn't give any sou
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Keywords : history, trivia, entry-level
Keywords : round table, video games, education
This book is based on a unique idea: reviewing the history of video games in France between 1974 and 2013 through the "news" briefs published in video games magazines. This first volume is solely focused to news related to video games consoles. The author has selected many news related to the most interesting or odd stories from the last 40 years: release of a console, an accessory, a special issue of magazine, a tv show, public drama, games collector editions, etc. Each chapter of the
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Keywords : history, video game, france, console, news
The differences between game and labor are culturally defined. According to places and cultures, those activities are similarly described as rational layouts of resources to achieve some specific goals, by following rules located into well-structured environments – although more and more complex and less defined. For all that, despite of the proximity of these abstract concepts, the process of gamification promotes a brand new model of engagement into the activity, inviting workers to expl
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Keywords : gamification, Ludification, Gameplay, Labor, Serious games, Activity, Cooperation
This book focuses on a little known and hardly discussed period from the history of video games: the ends of the 70's, and more specifically the 1976-1980 years of the home consoles. The books explains how, after Ralph Baer's pioneer invention of the Magnavox Odyssey, and the success of Pong in arcades, home video games takes over TV sets around the world thanks to... General Instrument. Indeed, the introduction of a new integrated chip, copying Pong and sold for a few dollars only, allowed many
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Keywords : pong, globalization, economic history, home console, 70's, japan, france, usa
This tiny 80 pages books tells the history of the Mario Kart series of games, from Super Mario Kart (Nintendo, 1992) to Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo, 2014), also including spin-offs like Mario Kart Arcade GP (Namco, 2005). This book features a lot of images and is very pleasant to read. It also offers many trivia related to the various series episodes, obtained through a direct interview with the main designers. As it can go into details due to lack of pages, this book is recommended to anyone who hav
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Keywords : mario kart, history
Following the first book in the series, this book continues to explore the history of controversial video games. This second volume focuses on games about "torture" (Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, Chiller, Manhunt, Mad World...) and horror-themed games (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, The House of the Dead, Sanitarium, Rule of Rose...). Each game and the media controversy that accompanied it are presented using a variable number of pages. Here, this book tends to suffer from the same flaw as t
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Keywords : violence, torture, horror, controversy, addiction, media
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
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Keywords : sega, nintendo, 16 bits, usa, marketing, sony , tom kalinske, genesis