Download or read book Ultimate Game Design Building Game Worlds written by Tom Meigs and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2003-06-09 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Build games with techniques and insights from a pro.
Download or read book Computer Game Worlds written by Claus Pias and published by Diaphanes. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer games have become ubiquitous in today's society. Many scholars have speculated on the reasons for their massive success. Yet we haven't considered the most basic questions: Why do computer games exist? What specific circumstances led to the creation of this entirely new type of game? What sorts of knowledge facilitated the requisite technological and institutional transformations? With Computer Game Worlds, Claus Pias sets out to answer these questions. Tracing computer games from their earliest forms to the unstoppable commercial and cultural phenomena they have become today, Pias then provides a careful epistemological reconstruction of the process of playing games, both at computers and by computers themselves. The book makes a valuable theoretical contribution to the ongoing discussion about computer games.
Download or read book The World s Game written by Bill Murray and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as much for the emotional outbursts and violence of its fans as for its own stars, soccer (or football, as it is known outside the United States) is a global game. Its international controlling body, FIFA, boasts more members than the United Nations. Bill Murray traces the growth of what during pre-industrial times was called "the simplest game" through its codification in the nineteenth century to the 1994 World Cup, held for the first time in the United States. Murray weaves the sport's growth into the culture and politics of the countries where it has been taken up, analyzing its reputation as a game that has seen more riots and on-field brawls than all other types of football combined. He vividly illustrates how soccer has become the world's most popular sport, one that has resisted the interference of politicians, dictators, and profiteers and - more recently - the demands of television, through which it has spread to virtually every corner of the globe. The World's Game will be entertaining and enlightening to anyone from the most avid, knowledgeable fan to those who merely hope to learn a little about the sport.
Download or read book Game World written by C.J. Farley and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Narnia for the Social Media Generation." --The Wall Street Journal "By the time of Farley's Game World, gaming had gone digital, and while his book is more fantasy-adventure than puzzle-mystery, there are parallels worthy of discussion, from the nature of the games to the depictions of disabled." --Booklist, included in "Conversation Starters: Recontextualizing the Classics" "Drawn from both video gaming culture and the rich tapestry of Jamaican myth and folklore, blending pointed social satire and mystical philosophy, this exuberant, original hero's journey is a real trip...Exhilarating, thought-provoking and one of a kind." --Kirkus Reviews "Adult author/Wall Street Journal editor Farley's middle-grade debut draws from Jamaican mythology and beliefs, as well as from other cultures, to weave a fast-paced, whimsical mixture of magic and action...the setting lends itself well to memorable imagery and a fun experience." --Publishers Weekly "Farley blends video gaming and Jamaican folklore in this intense, fast-paced middle-grade fantasy that is sure to quickly grab readers." --Booklist "Here (finally!) is a middle-grade action novel that showcases West Indian mythology and features protagonists of color." --School Library Journal "Game World is unique in that its fantasy world, as its name suggests, is built upon characters and stories from actual Jamaican folklore." --Philadelphia Review of Books One of This Spring's Hottest Teen Books, Huffington Post "I found it very hard to set down this excellent novel and do something else without thinking about it....I highly recommend his book to fans of fantasy. Because you will love it!!" --Middle Shelf (reviewed by Teak, age 13) "Farley writes in a straightforward way that is both accessible to younger readers but still interesting to adults." --Persephone Magazine "In his metaphorical world, Farley spares neither the dubious machinations of high finance nor the heartbreak of an orphan." --Center for Fiction "I highly recommend Game World for kids in 4th-12th grade. Parents can read it too and love the characters and story just as much as the kids." --The Family Coach Dylan Rudee's life is an epic fail. He's bullied at school and the aunt who has raised him since he was orphaned as a child just lost her job and their apartment. Dylan's one chance to help his family is the only thing he's good at: video games. The multibillion-dollar company Mee Corp. has announced a televised tournament to find the Game-Changers: the forty-four kids who are the best in the world at playing Xamaica, a role-playing fantasy game that's sweeping the planet. If Dylan can win the top prize, he just might be able to change his life. It turns out that Dylan is the greatest gamer anyone has ever seen, and his skills unlock a real-life fantasy world inside the game. Now actual monsters are trying to kill him, and he is swept up into an adventure along with his too-tall genius sister Emma, his hacker best friend Eli, and Ines Mee, the privileged daughter of Mee Corp.'s mysterious CEO and chief inventor. Along the way they encounter Nestuh, a giant spider who can spin a story but not a web; Baron Zonip, a hummingbird king who rules a wildly wealthy treetop kingdom; and an enchantress named Nanni who, with her shadow army, may be bent on conquering Xamaica and stealing its magic. In order to save his sister and his friends, Dylan must solve a dangerous mystery in three days and uncover secrets about Xamaica, his family, and himself. But will he discover his hidden powers before two worlds--Xamaica and Earth--are completely destroyed?
Download or read book Play Between Worlds written by T. L. Taylor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-02-13 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture. In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
Download or read book They Create Worlds written by Alexander Smith and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths. Key Features: The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry. The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before. Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century. The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.
Download or read book The World s Most Instructive Amateur Game Book written by Dan Heisman and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaches amateur chess players how to improve their chess skills so they can become better players.
Download or read book Mafia written by Angus Hyland and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer written by Michael Maizels and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generously illustrated volume that documents the career of Jason Rohrer, one of the most heralded art game designers working today. A maker of visually elegant and conceptually intricate games, Jason Rohrer is among the most widely heralded art game designers in the short but vibrant history of the field. His games range from the elegantly simple to others of almost Byzantine complexity. Passage (2007)—acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York—uses game rules and procedurals to create a contemporary memento mori that captures an entire lifetime in five minutes. In Chain World (2011), each subsequent player of the game's single copy modifies the rules of the universe. A Game for Someone (2013) is a board game sealed in a box and buried in the Mojave Desert, with a list of one million potential sites distributed to Rohrer's fan base. (Rohrer estimated that it would take two millennia of constant searching to find the game.) With Chain World and A Game for Someone, Rohrer became the first designer to win the prestigious Game Challenge Design award twice. This book, and the exhibition it accompanies, offers a comprehensive account of the artist's oeuvre. The book documents all seventeen of Rohrer's finished games, as well as sketches, ephemera, and related material, with color images throughout. It includes entries on individual games (with code in footnotes), artist interviews, artist writings, commentary by high scorers, and interpretive texts. Two introductory essays view Rohrer's work in the contexts of game studies and art history. Exhibition The Davis Museum at Wellesley College February–June 2016
Download or read book Game Worlds Get Real written by Zek Valkyrie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how after 20 years of existence, virtual world games have evolved: the social landscapes within digital worlds have become rigid and commodified, and "play" and "fun" have become rational and mechanical products. Twenty million people worldwide play Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). Online role-playing gaming is no longer an activity of a tiny niche community. World of Warcraft—the most popular game within the genre—is more than a decade old. As technology has advanced and MMORPGs became exponentially more popular, gaming culture has evolved dramatically over the last 20 years. Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Offline presents a compelling insider's examination of how adventuring through virtual worlds has transformed the meaning of play for millions of gamers. The book provides a historical review of earlier incarnations of virtual world games and culture in the late 1990s, covering the early years of popular games like EverQuest, to the soaring popularity of World of Warcraft, to the current era of the genre and its more general gaming climate. Author Zek Valkyrie—a researcher in the areas of gaming culture, digital communities, gender, sexualities, and visual sociology as well as an avid gamer himself—explores the evolution of the meaning of "play" in the virtual game world, explains how changes in game design have reduced opportunities for social experimentation, and identifies how player types such as the gender switcher, the cybersexual, the explorer, and the trial-and-error player have been left behind in the interest of social and informational transparency.
Download or read book An Architectural Approach to Level Design written by Christopher W. Totten and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore Level Design through the Lens of Architectural and Spatial Experience Theory Written by a game developer and professor trained in architecture, An Architectural Approach to Level Design is one of the first books to integrate architectural and spatial design theory with the field of level design. It explores the principles of level design through the context and history of architecture, providing information useful to both academics and game development professionals. Understand Spatial Design Principles for Game Levels in 2D, 3D, and Multiplayer Applications The book presents architectural techniques and theories for level designers to use in their own work. The author connects architecture and level design in different ways that address the practical elements of how designers construct space and the experiential elements of how and why humans interact with this space. Throughout the text, readers learn skills for spatial layout, evoking emotion through gamespaces, and creating better levels through architectural theory. Create Meaningful User Experiences in Your Games Bringing together topics in game design and architecture, this book helps designers create better spaces for their games. Software independent, the book discusses tools and techniques that designers can use in crafting their interactive worlds.
Download or read book Synthetic Worlds written by Edward Castronova and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hours—and dollars—partaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs. In Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the everyday lives of the gamers—outlining what they do in their synthetic worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems, from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons. Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete? With more than ten million active players worldwide—and with Microsoft and Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game development—online games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects. “Illuminating. . . . Castronova’s analysis of the economics of fun is intriguing. Virtual-world economies are designed to make the resulting game interesting and enjoyable for their inhabitants. Many games follow a rags-to-riches storyline, for example. But how can all the players end up in the top 10%? Simple: the upwardly mobile human players need only be a subset of the world's population. An underclass of computer-controlled 'bot' citizens, meanwhile, stays poor forever. Mr. Castronova explains all this with clarity, wit, and a merciful lack of academic jargon.”—The Economist “Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.”—Tim Harford, Chronicle of Higher Education
Download or read book Monopoly written by Philip E. Orbanes and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Orbanes, master of all things Monopoliana, traces the remarkable story of the world’s most famous board game, from its origins as a collegiate teaching tool in the early twentieth century through Monopoly’s explosive growth in the postwar decades, to the game’s current status as a fixture in homes across the globe. Along the way, Orbanes includes memorable Monopoly personality portraits, surprising Monopoly legends and lore, and an extraordinary tour of the ingenious advertising that contributed to the game’s rise in popularity. This is the first and only book to cover comprehensively the origin, growth, and global reach of the game that has become a universal and everyday cultural icon.
Download or read book Video Game Spaces written by Michael Nitsche and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-12-05 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how we see, use, and make sense of modern video game worlds. The move to 3D graphics represents a dramatic artistic and technical development in the history of video games that suggests an overall transformation of games as media. The experience of space has become a key element of how we understand games and how we play them. In Video Game Spaces, Michael Nitsche investigates what this shift means for video game design and analysis. Navigable 3D spaces allow us to crawl, jump, fly, or even teleport through fictional worlds that come to life in our imagination. We encounter these spaces through a combination of perception and interaction. Drawing on concepts from literary studies, architecture, and cinema, Nitsche argues that game spaces can evoke narratives because the player is interpreting them in order to engage with them. Consequently, Nitsche approaches game spaces not as pure visual spectacles but as meaningful virtual locations. His argument investigates what structures are at work in these locations, proceeds to an in-depth analysis of the audiovisual presentation of gameworlds, and ultimately explores how we use and comprehend their functionality. Nitsche introduces five analytical layers—rule-based space, mediated space, fictional space, play space, and social space—and uses them in the analyses of games that range from early classics to recent titles. He revisits current topics in game research, including narrative, rules, and play, from this new perspective. Video Game Spaces provides a range of necessary arguments and tools for media scholars, designers, and game researchers with an interest in 3D game worlds and the new challenges they pose.
Download or read book Masters of the Game written by Kim Eisler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veteran legal issues reporter Kim Eisler takes us behind the scenes into mega law firm Williams & Connolly, guiding us on a journey through the many storied cases that have served to shape current policies in public and private sector alike For the past twenty years, author and journalist Kim Eisler has covered the law firm of Williams & Connolly, first at American Lawyer Magazine, then for Legal Times and since 1993 as National Editor of Washingtonian Magazine. More than any other writer, Kim has unprecedented and unusual contacts and relationships with the partners, as well as a background knowledge and familiarity with the firm's history and personnel over the past two decades. In Masters of the Game, Eisler sets out to demonstrate how the disciples of Edward Bennett Williams went beyond anyone's expectations and came to occupy key roles in American culture and business. In the last ten years of his life, Williams, the founder of Williams and Connolly, often said he was building not just a law firm but a monument. Masters of the Game is not only about a law firm, but about how the philosophy and practices of this particular law firm have spread out beyond Washington to dominate business, finance, sports and the American psyche itself through its influence with past, present and future political, corporate and media figures.
Download or read book The Gameful World written by Steffen P. Walz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if every part of our everyday life was turned into a game? The implications of “gamification.” What if our whole life were turned into a game? What sounds like the premise of a science fiction novel is today becoming reality as “gamification.” As more and more organizations, practices, products, and services are infused with elements from games and play to make them more engaging, we are witnessing a veritable ludification of culture. Yet while some celebrate gamification as a possible answer to mankind's toughest challenges and others condemn it as a marketing ruse, the question remains: what are the ramifications of this “gameful world”? Can game design energize society and individuals, or will algorithmic incentive systems become our new robot overlords? In this book, more than fifty luminaries from academia and industry examine the key challenges of gamification and the ludification of culture—including Ian Bogost, John M. Carroll, Bernie DeKoven, Bill Gaver, Jane McGonigal, Frank Lantz, Jesse Schell, Kevin Slavin, McKenzie Wark, and Eric Zimmerman. They outline major disciplinary approaches, including rhetorics, economics, psychology, and aesthetics; tackle issues like exploitation or privacy; and survey main application domains such as health, education, design, sustainability, or social media.
Download or read book Half Real written by Jesper Juul and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-08-19 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth analysis of game development and rules and fiction in video games—with concrete examples, including The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto, and more A video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world, but we slay a dragon (for example) only in the world of the game. In this thought-provoking study, Jesper Juul examines the constantly evolving tension between rules and fiction in video games. Discussing games from Pong to The Legend of Zelda, from chess to Grand Theft Auto, he shows how video games are both a departure from and a development of traditional non-electronic games. The book combines perspectives from such fields as literary and film theory, computer science, psychology, economic game theory, and game studies, to outline a theory of what video games are, how they work with the player, how they have developed historically, and why they are fun to play. Locating video games in a history of games that goes back to Ancient Egypt, Juul argues that there is a basic affinity between games and computers. Just as the printing press and the cinema have promoted and enabled new kinds of storytelling, computers work as enablers of games, letting us play old games in new ways and allowing for new kinds of games that would not have been possible before computers. Juul presents a classic game model, which describes the traditional construction of games and points to possible future developments. He examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players, and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world. Juul’s lively style and eclectic deployment of sources will make Half-Real of interest to media, literature, and game scholars as well as to game professionals and gamers.
