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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
A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Book reference)
In this one-of-a-kind book, each text-written page is accompanied by an illustration that ease the understanding of the text. Besides its unique shape, this book is also brilliant content-wise. Raph Koster, a famous American Game Designer specialized in MMORPGs (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2), presents a theory to explain why people like to play. According to him, the "theory of fun" is due to the fact that the human brain is happy when he learns, and games happens to [...]Keywords : psychologie, theory of fun, drawings, raph koster
Videogames: In the Beginning (Book reference)
The autobiography of Ralph Baer, the inventor of home video game consoles. Released in 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey is one of the starting points of the history of video games. First of all, it's the first video console solely dedicated to games. Moreover, one of its titles, Ping-Pong, was a direct source of inspiration for Atari to create Pong. Through a book featuring many pictures, Ralph Baer details us the process he followed to invent this first console ever. As a natural-born engineer, he ke [...]Keywords : ralph baer, magnavox odyssey, first video game, simon, lawsuit, biography
Jouer / Apprendre (Book reference)
An essay written by Gilles Brougère, a researcher specialized about games, dealing with the relations between playing and learning. This book addresses play as a general activity, ranging from kids play in preschools to video games. The author stars with the definition of "game" and "play", before diving into the relationships between play and leisure, education and leisure, and, last but not least, play and education. Through the idea of "informal learning", [...]Keywords : essay, learning science, learning, game, play, education, leisure, school
Histoire des jeux vidéo (Book reference)
A tiny 60 pages book released by the french national postal services alongside with a videogames-themed stamps collection. The book presents some of the most famous videogames thanks to a lot of images. And here the series of stamps released alongside with this book (the stamps were packaged within the book):Keywords : pictures, histoire, french national postal service
Game Design: Theory & Practice - Second Edition (Book reference)
This large 500 pages book dissects the various aspects of Game Design: brainstorming for ideas, what players are seeking, artificial intelligence, storytelling, writing Game Design Document... Written by industry veteran Richard Rouse III (who designed the action-horror games The Suffering, among others), this book is full of wise and relevant advices for Game Designers, whether they are working alone as indies or in a big team. The originality of this book lies in the in-depth interviews of [...]Keywords : game design, analysis, richard rouse III, centipede, sims, ed logg, doug church