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
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Keywords : game design, design patterns, theoretical, 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
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Keywords : psychologie, theory of fun, drawings, raph koster
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
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Keywords : game design, analysis, richard rouse III, centipede, sims, ed logg, doug church
This book provides insightful thoughts and design advices for interactive storytelling applications, e.g. video games. Written by the legendary American game designer Chris Crawford, it's the result of 10 years of experimentation from the author in this area. He first draws a theoretical analysis of interactivity and storytelling structures, to then introduce an efficient yet easy to understand approach: thinking in "action verbs" to analyze and improve games interactivity. The book is
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Keywords : interactive storytelling, video game, story, design, theory, example, reference
The french written reference about the history of videogames. This must-have book has know five different editions between 1997 and 2012. It details the story of many famous videogames thanks to interviews with their designers: Pong, Tomb Raider, Tetris, Doom, Myst, Sim City, etc. The book also have a background story with the life of Philippe Ulrich, famous french game designer and founder of Cryo, who have lived through all the stages of the videogames history. A very interesting read with a l
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Keywords : french, history, phillipe ulrich
This book presents a historical, economic and artistic analysis of Japanese video games, hoping to explain why they are so successful all around the world. The author, who is an expert of this topic, offers us a combination of detailed history (the birth of Japanese video game industry), personal analysis of games series (Mario, Final Fantasy, etc.), and interviews with legendary game designers such as Shigeru Miyamoto and Fumito Ueda. The author then explores some "japanese-specific"
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Keywords : japan, analyse, shigeru miyamoto, fumito ueda, jrpg, akihabara, pokémon, music games
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 fam
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Keywords : game design, analysis, richard rouse III, centipede, sims, ed logg
The french written reference about the history of videogames. This must-have book has know five different editions between 1997 and 2012. It details the story of many famous videogames thanks to interviews with their designers: Pong, Tomb Raider, Tetris, Doom, Myst, Sim City, etc. The book also have a background story with the life of Philippe Ulrich, famous french game designer and founder of Cryo, who have lived through all the stages of the videogames history. A very interesting read wi
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Keywords : history, france
The first edition of a book that will later become the french written reference about the history of videogames under the title "La Saga des Jeux Vidéo". This must-have book has known five different editions between 1997 and 2012. It details the story of many famous videogames thanks to interviews with their designers: Pong, Tomb Raider, Tetris, Doom, Myst, Sim City, etc. The book also have a background story with the life of Philippe Ulrich, famous french game designer and
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Keywords : history, france, philippe ulrich
The book that founded (1938) the study of games in the humanities. The author states that games is an essential part of human culture, so he explores the role of game in societies. The concept of "magic circle", nowadays popular among researchers and game designers, comes from this book. Alongside with "Man, Play and Games", this is a book that any researcher working on games should read...This dutch-written book was first translated into English in 1949, and this translation
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Keywords : anthropology, sociology, definition