This bible is dedicated to the PC Engine home console (also known as TurboGrafx 16). This first volume starts by telling you the story of the birth of this console, and also presents all the different models and accessories available. But the main part of the book is a full listing of every game ever released for this console on the HuCARDs format (more that 300 games). Each game is presented with a screenshot alongside with a small text describing it. A reference book for anyone interested by t
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Keywords : bible, pc engine, turbografx 16, hucards, history
Who said that you had to be famous in order to write down your own autobiography? In this book, Mat Dickie, an indie video game creator, tells us about his personal life alongside with the various games he created during his 10 years career. While we can smile at the fact that the oversized ego of this unknown author led him to write such a book, it's a quite interesting book for the videogame history specialists. It tells us the life of a British kid born in the 80's, fan of videogames, who sta
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Keywords : mat dickie, biography, indie, wrestling, religion
A comical book. It's a parody of the videogame strategy guides, dedicated to the greatest "game" of them all: the real life. This book will give you advices to achieve many difficult goals such as "walking" (level: "baby"), "asking a girl out" (level: "teenager") or "finding a job" (level: young grown-up). While it's not the most revolutionary book out there, it's a nice book, with some either funny or deep chapters, and a few excellent
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Keywords : humor, strategy guide, real life
This book is a hands-on guide dedicated to the job of "traditional" games creator: board games, card games, role-playing games... It's divided in 5 sections. The first one gives a tour of this profession through famous games case studies: Trivial Pursuit, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons and The Pokemon Trading Card Game. They are accompanied by interviews with a game author (Reiner Knizia) and a publisher (Mike Gray from Hasbro). The second part presents with more details
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Keywords : game creator, job, traditional games, board games, card games, industry
This book offers many practical exercises aiming to improve your Game Design skills. Each of the 21 book chapters is dedicated to one particular topic: game design basis, atom structure of games, puzzles, balancing between skill and luck, serious games, storytelling, multiplayer... After an explanation of the topic, the book chapter presents 5 exercises, focused on "non-digital" game creation, thus allowing to quickly put into practice these concepts. It's a very interesting and unique
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Keywords : game design, examples, exercices
An excellent book about the design of games written by Jesse Schell, a game designer who worked on Disneyland attractions and on the kids MMO Toontown Online, among others. With over 500 book pages, the author details the different aspects of the professional game design process, and explain how a game designer can influence them: game design documents, mechanics, interface, characters, the "client" funding the game, player's emotions, the game designer's artistic motivation... Besides
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Keywords : game design, examples, in-depth, jesse schell, disney
Over a series of 7 books, Florent Gorges wrote the most complete history of Nintendo. The texts are easy to read and full of unique information, and are illustrated with many pictures of all the games and toys created by the company. This first book in the series is focused on the numerous creations made by Nintendo before entering the video and electronic games market: playing cards, toys, arcades, and some weird stuffs like office supplies. An absolute must-read book.This book was translated i
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Keywords : history, nintendo, toys, cards
The "deck of lenses" isn't a book, but a set of 100 cards that complete the book "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses", by the same author. Each card represents one of the "lens" invented by Jesse Schell. A "lens" is a kind of "viewing angle" allowing the game designer to focus on a particular aspect of his game. These "lenses" are composed by a series of questions. For example, the "lens of judgement" makes the game d
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Keywords : jesse schell, game design tool, cards, lens
This is an heavy-weight (450 pages) book dedicated to the history of computer role-playing games. The purpose of the book isn't to provide information about how the game were made (there is no developer interview here), but to picture a general overview of the role-playing game genre through a detailed presentation of the most influential titles. The book is organized in chronological order. Each chapter focuses on a selection of games coming from a specific era: the pen-and-paper role-playing g
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Keywords : history, computer, role playing game, rpg, ultima, might & magic, goldbox, mud
A tiny (80 pages) scientific book gathering 8 contributions from researchers who are studying Serious Games for education.
Keywords : serious games, education, scientific research