Download or read book Character Driven Game Design written by Petri Lankoski and published by Taik Books. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do game characters contribute to shaping the playing experience? What kinds of design tools are available for character-based games that utilize methods from dramatic writing and game research? Writer Petri Lankoski has a theory for this. There is a need to tether character design to game design more tightly than has been the case in the past, as well as to pay attention to social networks of characters by the means of finding useful design patterns. “The use of Lajos Egri’s bone structure for a three dimensional-character and of Murray Smith’s three levels of imaginative engagement with characters allows the candidate to expose the full complexity of the imaginary persons represented and controlled in a single-player game. What makes his design-center approach even more interesting is that game play is an integral part of it.” Comments Bernard Perron, Associate Professor of Université de Montréal on Lankoski´s work.
Download or read book Better Game Characters by Design written by Katherine Isbister and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-04-29 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Games are poised for a major evolution, driven by growth in technical sophistication and audience reach. Characters that create powerful social and emotional connections with players throughout the game-play itself (not just in cut scenes) will be essential to next-generation games. However, the principles of sophisticated character design and interaction are not widely understood within the game development community. Further complicating the situation are powerful gender and cultural issues that can influence perception of characters. Katherine Isbister has spent the last 10 years examining what makes interactions with computer characters useful and engaging to different audiences. This work has revealed that the key to good design is leveraging player psychology: understanding what's memorable, exciting, and useful to a person about real-life social interactions, and applying those insights to character design. Game designers who create great characters often make use of these psychological principles without realizing it. Better Game Characters by Design gives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players' reactions to characters, helping produce stronger designs and better results.
Download or read book Game Writing written by Chris Bateman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the videogame industry has grown up, the need for better stories and characters has dramatically increased, yet traditional screenwriting techniques alone cannot equip writers for the unique challenges of writing stories where the actions and decisions of a diverse range of players are at the centre of every narrative experience. Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames was the first book to demystify the emerging field of game writing by identifying and explaining the skills required for creating videogame narrative. Through the insights and experiences of professional game writers, this revised edition captures a snapshot of the narrative skills employed in today's game industry and presents them as practical articles accompanied by exercises for developing the skills discussed. The book carefully explains the foundations of the craft of game writing, detailing all aspects of the process from the basics of narrative to guiding the player and the challenges of nonlinear storytelling. Throughout the book there is a strong emphasis on the skills developers and publishers expect game writers to know. This second edition brings the material up to date and adds four new chapters covering MMOs, script formats, narrative design for urban games, and new ways to think about videogame narrative as an art form. Suitable for both beginners and experienced writers, Game Writing is the essential guide to all the techniques of game writing. There's no better starting point for someone wishing to get into this exciting field, whether they are new game writers wishing to hone their skills, or screenwriters hoping to transfer their skills to the games industry.
Download or read book Character Design from the Ground Up written by Kevin Crossley and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All stories have characters, and whether its a film, game, book, or comic, all characters need to be designed. Character design has become a distinct discipline in the entertainment industry, and character designers are employed by film and game companies across the globe to bring life to scripts and ideas. In this book, illustrator and character designer Kevin Crossley provides a complete overview of character design. Starting with the basics of materials, equipment, and sofware, Kevin will explain the processes professional character designers follow to develop characters for publishing, games, and film. From ideas and thumbnails, anatomy and reference, through effective drawing, 3D mock-ups and full turnarounds, Kev explains how a character designer works to achieve professional results.
Download or read book Game Programming Patterns written by Robert Nystrom and published by Genever Benning. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biggest challenge facing many game programmers is completing their game. Most game projects fizzle out, overwhelmed by the complexity of their own code. Game Programming Patterns tackles that exact problem. Based on years of experience in shipped AAA titles, this book collects proven patterns to untangle and optimize your game, organized as independent recipes so you can pick just the patterns you need. You will learn how to write a robust game loop, how to organize your entities using components, and take advantage of the CPUs cache to improve your performance. You'll dive deep into how scripting engines encode behavior, how quadtrees and other spatial partitions optimize your engine, and how other classic design patterns can be used in games.
Download or read book Rules of Play written by Katie Salen Tekinbas and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-09-25 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.
Download or read book Fundamentals of Game Design written by Ernest Adams and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2010-04-07 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To create a great video game, you must start with a solid game design: A well-designed game is easier to build, more entertaining, and has a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Here to teach you the essential skills of player-centric game design is one of the industry’s leading authorities, who offers a first-hand look into the process, from initial concept to final tuning. Now in its second edition, this updated classic reference by Ernest Adams offers a complete and practical approach to game design, and includes material on concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams analyzes the specific design challenges of all the major game genres and shows you how to apply the principles of game design to each one. You’ll learn how to: Define the challenges and actions at the heart of the gameplay. Write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. Understand the essentials of user interface design and how to define a game’s look and feel. Design for a variety of input mechanisms, including the Wii controller and multi-touch iPhone. Construct a game’s core mechanics and flow of resources (money, points, ammunition, and more). Develop appealing stories, game characters, and worlds that players will want to visit, including persistent worlds. Work on design problems with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies. Make your game accessible to broader audiences such as children, adult women, people with disabilities, and casual players. “Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework I’ve seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and player—one that I’ve found useful for both teaching and research.” — Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Façade
Download or read book Game Research Methods An Overview written by Patri Lankoski and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Games are increasingly becoming the focus for research due to their cultural and economic impact on modern society. However, there are many different types of approaches and methods than can be applied to understanding games or those that play games. This book provides an introduction to various game research methods that are useful to students in all levels of higher education covering both quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. In addition, approaches using game development for research is described. Each method is described in its own chapter by a researcher with practical experience of applying the method to topic of games. Through this, the book provides an overview of research methods that enable us to better our understanding on games."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Game Design Deep Dive written by Joshua Bycer and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-08-17 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Game Design Deep Dive: Free-to-Play (F2P) continues the series’ focus on examining genres with a look at the history and methodology behind free-to-play and mobile games. The genre is one of the most lucrative and controversial in the industry. Josh Bycer lays out not only the potential and pitfalls of this design but also explores the ethics behind good and bad monetization. This book offers: A comprehensive look at the practices behind the most popular free-to-play and mobile games A detailed talk about the ethics of F2P, and one of the few honest looks at it from both sides of the argument A perfect read for designers, students, or people wanting to educate themselves about the practices of the genre Joshua Bycer is a Game Design Critic with more than seven years of experience critically analyzing game design and the industry itself. In that time, through Game-Wisdom.com, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games.
Download or read book The Craft and Science of Game Design written by Philippe O'Connor and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Craft and Science of Game Design: A Video Game Designer’s Manual goes into the nuts and bolts of video game development from the perspective of a veteran designer with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. It covers the psychology and biology of why people play games and goes in depth on the techniques and tricks professional game designers use to be successful in game development. If you are looking to make a career in video games, or are already in the industry, the insights and hard-earned lessons contained in this book are sure to be useful at all levels of the profession. Originally from Canada, Phil O’Connor has been making video games all over the world since 1997. Phil has worked at some of the industry’s largest studios on some of the biggest projects, including Far Cry 3 and Rainbow Six Siege. With credits on nearly 20 games, Phil has shared in this book some of the less-known details of being a game designer in today’s video game industry, along with a breakdown of some of the skills to help professional designers shine.
Download or read book Design Dictionary written by Michael Erlhoff and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2007-12-07 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dictionary provides a stimulating and categorical foundation for a serious international discourse on design. It is a handbook for everyone concerned with design in career or education, who is interested in it, enjoys it, and wishes to understand it. 110 authors from Japan, Austria, England, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, and elsewhere have written original articles for this design dictionary. Their cultural differences provide perspectives for a shared understanding of central design categories and communicating about design. The volume includes both the terms in use in current discussions, some of which are still relatively new, as well as classics of design discourse. A practical book, both scholarly and ideal for browsing and reading at leisure.
Download or read book Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity written by Chris Totten and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete guide to creating usable, realistic game characters with two powerful tools Creating viable game characters requires a combination of skills. This book teaches game creators how to create usable, realistic game assets using the power of an open-source 3D application and a free game engine. It presents a step-by-step approach to modeling, texturing, and animating a character using the popular Blender software, with emphasis on low polygon modeling and an eye for using sculpting and textures, and demonstrates how to bring the character into the Unity game engine. Game creation is a popular and productive pursuit for both hobbyists and serious developers; this guide brings together two effective tools to simplify and enhance the process Artists who are familiar with Blender or other 3D software but who lack experience with game development workflow will find this book fills important gaps in their knowledge Provides a complete tutorial on developing a game character, including modeling, UV unwrapping, sculpting, baking displacements, texturing, rigging, animation, and export Emphasizes low polygon modeling for game engines and shows how to bring the finished character into the Unity game engine Whether you're interested in a new hobby or eager to enter the field of professional game development, this book offers valuable guidance to increase your skills.
Download or read book Video Games and the Mind written by Bernard Perron and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a video game make you cry? Why do you relate to the characters and how do you engage with the storyworlds they inhabit? How is your body engaged in play? How are your actions guided by sociocultural norms and experiences? Questions like these address a core aspect of digital gaming--the video game experience itself--and are of interest to many game scholars and designers. With psychological theories of cognition, affect and emotion as reference points, this collection of new essays offers various perspectives on how players think and feel about video games and how game design and analysis can build on these processes.
Download or read book Interactive Storytelling for Video Games written by Josiah Lebowitz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What really makes a video game story interactive? What's the best way to create an interactive story? How much control should players be given? Do they really want that control in the first place? Do they even know what they want-or are their stated desires at odds with the unconscious preferences? All of these questions and more are examined in this definitive book on interactive storytelling for video games. You'll get detailed descriptions of all major types of interactive stories, case studies of popular games (including Bioshock, Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, and Metal Gear Solid), and how players interact with them, and an in-depth analysis of the results of a national survey on player storytelling preferences in games. You'll get the expert advice you need to generate compelling and original game concepts and narratives.With Interactive Storytelling for Video Games, you'll:
Download or read book GURPS Lite written by Sean Punch and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Introduction to Game Design Prototyping and Development written by Jeremy Gibson and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2015 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This hands-on guide covers both game development and design, and both Unity and C♯. This guide illuminates the basic tenets of game design and presents a detailed, project-based introduction to game prototyping and development, using both paper and the Unity game engine.
Download or read book Introduction to Game Design Prototyping and Development written by Jeremy Gibson Bond and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2014-07-04 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn Game Design, Prototyping, and Programming with Today’s Leading Tools: Unity™ and C# Award-winning game designer and professor Jeremy Gibson has spent the last decade teaching game design and working as an independent game developer. Over the years, his most successful students have always been those who effectively combined game design theory, concrete rapid-prototyping practices, and programming skills. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development is the first time that all three of these disciplines have been brought together into a single book. It is a distillation of everything that Gibson has learned teaching hundreds of game designers and developers in his years at the #1 university games program in North America. It fully integrates the disciplines of game design and computer programming and helps you master the crucial practice of iterative prototyping using Unity. As the top game engine for cross-platform game development, Unity allows you to write a game once and deliver it to everything from Windows, OS X, and Linux applications to webpages and all of the most popular mobile platforms. If you want to develop games, you need strong experience with modern best practices and professional tools. There’s no substitute. There’s no shortcut. But you can get what you need in this book. COVERAGE INCLUDES In-depth tutorials for eight different game prototypes Developing new game design concepts Moving quickly from design concepts to working digital prototypes Improving your designs through rapid iteration Playtesting your games and interpreting the feedback that you receive Tuning games to get the right “game balance” and “game feel” Developing with Unity, today’s best engine for independent game development Learning C# the right way Using Agile and Scrum to efficiently organize your game design and development process Debugging your game code Getting into the highly competitive, fast-changing game industry
