A small book (150 pages) laying down a general introduction to the universe of videogames. The author details the history of videogames (with the contribution of the Le Diberder brothers and their "cycles theory" on this topic), the various jobs of the videogames industry and the process of game design, and in a last chapter try to analyze the future of videogames as a communicational tool. It's the English translation of a french book published in 2004 under the title "Jeux
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Keywords : introduction, jobs, history, schools
With nearly 1000 pages, this heavy book was baked for you by two of best videogames researchers. I gathers many articles that anyone serious about the study of games must (or at least should) have read. The articles gathers are quite different, ranging from scientific essays about the definition of videogames (Huinzingua, Caillois, Suits, etc.) to players gaming diaries and professional game developers postmortems (Valve Software on how they created Half-Life, Lucasart on their pioneering MMO &q
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Keywords : research, game studies, history, definition
A videogame project involving a flying ferret, which is controled in an innovative way trough mouse inputs (Game Design documents).
Keywords : mouse
Following the videogame classification project, Gam.B.A.S is a research project aimed to study the deep nature of videogames through formal deconstruction of their inner structure. Gam.B.A.S. - Prototype #1 The first step of this ongoing project is to try to provide answer to the following question: What is gameplay? Demonstation videos of the two prototypes created (2007): Publications related to this project Many analysis have yet to be done,
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Keywords : game design, game creation software
This learning project intents to raise students awareness on videogame academic research through Project Based Learning (P.B.L.). The students are involved in our different research project through the design of serious game, talks about history or culture related research or even through the creation of original gameplay principles... The students are also invited to share their own points of view through collective debates and group projects relying on their personnal thoughts
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Keywords : game design, education
This book gathers about 200 "design patterns" aimed to ease the creation of games. It's a formalized and analytical list of the various elements that composes games, ordered in different categories. For example, in the "Game Elements" category you'll find the patterns "lives", "power-ups" and "avatar", while the "Social Interaction" category gathers patterns like "trading", "competition" and "player killin
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Keywords : game design, design patterns, theoretical, reference
A book introducing a unique and thought-provoking approach to Game Design. Through a concept they call "Zen Game Design", the two authors emphasize over the fact that many game design methodologies exist, and that these methodologies are many because they suit different needs. The authors thus start form the "needs", and dedicate the first part of the book to a detailed analysis of the different player profiles. This analysis is based on a theoretical model called "Demog
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Keywords : game design, players typology, DGD1, zen game design, psychology, methodology
In this one-of-a-kind book, each text-written page is accompanied by an illustration that ease the understanding of the text. Besides its unique shape, this book is also brilliant content-wise. Raph Koster, a famous American Game Designer specialized in MMORPGs (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2), presents a theory to explain why people like to play. According to him, the "theory of fun" is due to the fact that the human brain is happy when he learns, and games happens to
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Keywords : psychologie, theory of fun, drawings, raph koster
This large 500 pages book dissects the various aspects of Game Design: brainstorming for ideas, what players are seeking, artificial intelligence, storytelling, writing Game Design Document... Written by industry veteran Richard Rouse III (who designed the action-horror games The Suffering, among others), this book is full of wise and relevant advices for Game Designers, whether they are working alone as indies or in a big team. The originality of this book lies in the in-depth interviews of
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Keywords : game design, analysis, richard rouse III, centipede, sims, ed logg, doug church
This book provides insightful thoughts and design advices for interactive storytelling applications, e.g. video games. Written by the legendary American game designer Chris Crawford, it's the result of 10 years of experimentation from the author in this area. He first draws a theoretical analysis of interactivity and storytelling structures, to then introduce an efficient yet easy to understand approach: thinking in "action verbs" to analyze and improve games interactivity. The book is
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Keywords : interactive storytelling, video game, story, design, theory, example, reference