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Developing Serious Games (Book reference)
A book aiming to guide you through the different steps of the Serious Game creation process. Unfortunately, and despite its more than 450 pages, this book fails to deeply explore this topic. On one hand, the author wastes too many pages covering topics not directly related to the creation of Serious Games, such the various computer standards or an overview of the technological trends in 2006. On the other hand, the author doesn't go enough into the details when covering the central topics of the [...]Keywords : serious games, examples, design
The Game Design Reader - A Rules of Play Anthology (Book reference)
With nearly 1000 pages, this heavy book was baked for you by two of best videogames researchers. I gathers many articles that anyone serious about the study of games must (or at least should) have read. The articles gathers are quite different, ranging from scientific essays about the definition of videogames (Huinzingua, Caillois, Suits, etc.) to players gaming diaries and professional game developers postmortems (Valve Software on how they created Half-Life, Lucasart on their pioneering MMO &q [...]Keywords : research, game studies, history, definition
Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, And Inform (Book reference)
One of the flagship book of the current wave of Serious Games, focused on videogames. This 350 pages book start with a definition of Serious Games, through a comparative analysis with entertainment videogames. It then features a lot of games examples for each of the main Serious Games application domains in 2005: defense, government, corporate, education, healthcare, politics, religion and art. This book also gives some Serious Games design advices related to each of these domains. This bo [...]Keywords : serious game, definition, examples
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