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Gargas cave (Our projects)
A serious game created the 100th anniversary celebration of the "Gargas caves", a prehistoric site located in France. Famous for its negative wall-paintings of hands and its overlapping engravings of animal figures, part of this cave is unfortunately no longer visitable. Indeed, public access limited to avoid the deterioration (due to lightning and or CO2 rejected by breathing visitors) of its historical treasures. This virtual version of the caves presents you with a wall roc [...]Keywords : serious game, prehistory
Half-Real - Videogames between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Book reference)
A great videogame analysis book written by one of the founders of the scientific study of games: the ludology. In this book, Jesper Juul explores the connections between videogames and fictional worlds, and he highlights the special features of videogames when it comes to "tell stories." The first part of the book features an essay about the definitions of "games" and "video games" which were heavily quoted (both endorsed or criticized) by most of the following scie [...]Keywords : ludology, game studies, fiction, definition
Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution (Book reference)
This book gives a portrayal of several famous video game creators: Cliff Bleszinski (Unreal Tournament, Gears of War), Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario, Zelda...), Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims...), John Romero and John Carmack, alongside with three bonus chapters dedicated to the first video games, to military Serious Games (America's Army) and to MMORPG players (Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies). Overall, the book is very pleasant to read and filled with interesting information. The portraits of c [...]Keywords : history, cliff bleszinski, will wright, america's army, star wars galaxies, anarchy online
Confessions of the Game Doctor (Book reference)
Bill Kunkel, usually known as "The Game Doctor", is one of the videogaming press pioneers in the USA. With his lifetime friend Arnie Katz, he started to write down articles about videogames in 1978, for the Video magazine. In 1981, the two pioneers launched Electronic Games, the first magazine dedicated to videogames published in the USA - if not in the world. This autobiographic book gathers numerous trivia and short stories coming from the career of Bill Kunkel: the birth of Electron [...]Keywords : biography, bill kunkel, video games, press, usa, electronic games, the game doctor
L'Empire des jeux (Book reference)
A tiny book (140 pages in small format) gathering trivia and funny stories about 50 famous videogames: Pac-Man, Mario, Zelda, GTA... Each game is presented over two pages by several pictures and a short text. While this book reads easily, most of its information is far from being unique. Most of them are now part of the common knowledge of the average videogame player, or can be easily found in Wikipedia and similar sources. Anyway, this book remains a good gift idea for anyone discovering video [...]Keywords : history, anecdote, simple
Patterns In Game Design (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : game design, design patterns, theoretical, reference
The A-Z of Cool Computer Games (Book reference)
This book is full of nostalgia, as it details games, machines and other elements of the videogame culture (ads, magazines, etc.) coming from a "golden era" of their history, according to the author: from the end of the 70's to the beginning of the 90's. This book gathers about 200 games and memories from the author, who are described with passion over one or two pages each. As the author is British, he was exposed to the European wave of videogames. This book will thus triggers a lot o [...]Keywords : history, games, machines, europe, culture
21st Century Game Design (Book 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 [...]Keywords : game design, players typology, DGD1, zen game design, psychology, methodology
Valoriser via le jeu vidéo (Broacasting our studies)
Cet article relate la démarche novatrice de l'Éducation Nationale qui tente via des jeux vidéo de transmettre un message à la génération des 15–18 ans pour valoriser ses filières Industrielles. Sous l'axe scientifique de la communication et de la sociologie, dans un premier temps, nous explorerons la stratégie mise en place pour élaborer les jeux dont la vocation sera de véhiculer le message souhait&e [...]Keywords : Pedagogy, Video Game, Serious Game, Education
A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Book reference)
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 [...]Keywords : psychologie, theory of fun, drawings, raph koster