Abstract The use of tablet computers have increased significantly in numerous parts of society during recent years, and the educational sector is no exception. Use of games in educational situations has intrigued scholars of different disciplines, presenting both favouring and opposing opinions. Whilst the educational effectiveness of the game media is discussed, research done in the area of cognitive development, psychology and pedagogy argue for the importance of play and the positive eff
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Keywords : Game design, Educational games for children, Playfulness, Educational games in Sweden
This book focuses on a little known and hardly discussed period from the history of video games: the ends of the 70's, and more specifically the 1976-1980 years of the home consoles. The books explains how, after Ralph Baer's pioneer invention of the Magnavox Odyssey, and the success of Pong in arcades, home video games takes over TV sets around the world thanks to... General Instrument. Indeed, the introduction of a new integrated chip, copying Pong and sold for a few dollars only, allowed many
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Keywords : pong, globalization, economic history, home console, 70's, japan, france, usa
ABSTRACT This thesis addresses the problems of the development of serious games, focusing particularly on bridging the gap between of two separate communities: developers and domain experts, that is, educators. Nowadays, students are used to “consume” a large number of games for different purposes (mainly for leisure), and they are expecting a certain quality level in the games (e.g. media assets, story, effects, etc.) and affecting the attitude of playing the game if it does no
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Keywords : Educational video games, Serious games, Game design, Human-Computer interaction, Game engine
Following the first book in the series, this book continues to explore the history of controversial video games. This second volume focuses on games about "torture" (Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, Chiller, Manhunt, Mad World...) and horror-themed games (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, The House of the Dead, Sanitarium, Rule of Rose...). Each game and the media controversy that accompanied it are presented using a variable number of pages. Here, this book tends to suffer from the same flaw as t
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Keywords : violence, torture, horror, controversy, addiction, media
"Les Oubliés de la Playhistoire" is French TV show broadcasted over the Nolife network, that highlights many unknown and intriguing video games. This companion book is packed with two DVDs gathering the 41 episodes of its first season. The books first details the birth of the TV show, thanks to the interview of the various people involved in the project. Each game featured in the first season of the show is then presented over two pages with a short text and several images. The
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Keywords : oublies de la playhistoire, nolife, underdogs
A 260 pages book dedicated to the history of the Genesis / Megadrive, the famous 16 bits Sega home console. The book is divided in 4 sections. The first one details the birth of the machine, while the second one is focused on the ads used by Sega to promote it ("Genesis Does!"). The third section presents a selection of emblematic Genesis titles. Each game is described over a single page with a short text and several screenshots. As this section is organized chronologically, it's a gre
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Keywords : history, genesis, megadrive, sega, sonic, streets of rage, advertising
This book presents 100 music albums based on famous video games original soundtracks. The author reviews each album over two pages, featuring beautiful illustrations. The author successfully shares his passion for video game music through this book. The text is easy to read and full of interesting information. My only complaint lies in the author's choice to focus on game OST published in separate CDs, which tends to heavily bend his OST selection towards Japanese console games, and J-RPG in par
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Keywords : music, video game, album
Game-based learning has the potential to improve the education and performance of engineers and decision makers in the systems engineering field. This paper reviews the arguments for the use of educational gaming, with particular attention to the aspects of game-based learning that are well suited to tackling the complex sociotechnical systems engineering problems that currently are trusted only to experts with years of experience. It also describes the development of an educational game, Space
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Keywords : systems engineering education, systems thinking, educational games, game-based learning
Eric Chahi, a famous video games designer (Out of this World, anyone?), recently took part in the Retro Game Jam, a 32h video game creation competition held during november 2013 in Montpellier (France). In the video below, he discusses his feelings about this experience and presents the various prototypes of his game in order to explain his personal game creation process. A rare and very interesting testimony from a living videogame legend about the recent "Game Jam" phenomena (video i
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Keywords : eric chahi, game jam
Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA (Enhanced Edition) is a book on the history of SEGA as a console manufacturer. After a brief introduction telling the birth of the company, this thick 480 pages book details the story of all its home consoles: SG-1000, Master System, Mega Drive / Genesis with its Sega CD and Sega 32X addons, Saturn and the Dreamcast. While the beginnings of SEGA and its first two consoles are explained rather quickly over 30 pages, the main part of the bo
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Keywords : history of videogames, sega, genesis, sega cd, sega 32x, saturn, dreamcast