LudoScience

Studies & Analysis (videogames)

Author(s) : Olivia Fontaine
Editor : Alpen
Publication date : 05-21-2007
Language : french

This tiny 88 pages book attempts to provide a introduction to the world of video games to people who doesn't know anything about them. It begins with a quick summary of the history of video games, followed by a detailed presentation of the main games genres. It then presents the main steps of the creation process of a video games, and ends with leads for their future. The book is written in a way that makes each topic covered over two pages only: video games from the 70's, the 80's, the 90's, action games, adventures games, the video game market, game engines, movement recognition interfaces, etc. While the shape of the book is good (beautiful color pictures), its content seems of average quality regarding the targeted audience. The history part is indeed quick and efficient, but also riddled with small errors, mainly in the dates (The Saturn being a 32/64 bits console? the PlayStation being released in 1996?). The genres descriptions is sometimes quite messy between the various genres and sub-genres (do we really need to dig into the difference between a manic shooter and a cute'em up without explaining how is Grand Theft Auto different from Max Payne ?). For the "creation of a video game" part, some topic are very well covered ("video game programming" and "gameplay") while some others are more confusing ("functional tests" and "middleware"). Overall, while the book remains interesting, it's not the best choice for someone who want to discover the world of video games. We would rather recommend them the classical "L'Univers des jeux vidéo" or the more recent "Les jeux vidéo" .