LudoScience

Casual Game Design (Book reference)

This book focuses on the design of "Casual Games", i.e. video games aimed to people playing them casually. The three first chapters deals with the definition of casual games, their professional creation process, and a broader study of the various play from they can offer. The nine following chapters are then dedicated to each sub-category of casual games: management, match-3, puzzles, hidden objects, construction, social games, etc. While the text is easy to read and understand, this b [...]

Keywords : game design, casual games, examples, analysis, industry

---

Jeux vidéo : quand l'écologie se la joue en ligne (Video game: Green games online) (Broacasting our studies)

   Fini le temps où il fallait tuer des méchants ou conduire plus vite que les autres. La nouvelle génération de jeux en ligne apprend à vivre sans pétrole, sans OGM ou à réduire sa facture d’électricité. Plongée dans le « serious gaming ».

Keywords : Serious Games, Serious Play, Green games, Ecology

---

B4GD (Link)

What Happens Before Game Design? What is it that happens before the design of a video game?...

Keywords : Blog

---

Video games for collection exploration: Games for and out of data repositories (Broacasting our studies)

In this paper, we establish a link between video games and data collections. In particular, we examine video games as potential interfaces for collection exploration, i.e. as a platform for a more insightful and exploratory interaction with a repository. Furthermore, we question if a more structural relationship between the game and the collection is possible: Can we produce video games based on the structure of a repository? We explore these ideas on theoretical grounds and by means of a protot [...]

Keywords : Video games, Data collections, Data exploration, Human Factors, Theory, Experimentation

---

Publicidad in-Game. Los videojuegos como soporte publicitario (Broacasting our studies)

ABSTRACT: Video games have become a prime choice of entertainment not only for young people but also in adults or women. Development Studies advertisers and organizations that mediate between them have discovered the potential of videogames as a medium for marketing communication. Thus, the advergame and the in-game advertising have become a powerful and dynamic medium for communicating ideas, products, services or items in an original manner, which also offers video game development studios an [...]

Keywords : Advertainment, Advergame, In-game advertising, Product placement, Videogames

---

Mythologie des jeux vidéo (Book reference)

This book aims to deconstruct the "positive discourses about video games", that helped it to be regarded in a less negative way as the time went by. While the topic is very interesting, the extremely small size of this book (96 pages in very small A6 format) prevents him to reach this goal. Instead of a rigorous analysis that such a topic requires, the authors limit themselves to some broad and bold critics (such as the french university being under the order of the video game industry [...]

Keywords : critic, video game, positive discourse, media

---

Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice (Book reference)

This book is dedicated to level design, i.e. the design of levels, maps and other "playing spaces" for video games. Written as an introductory book, it first details the basis of level design, before discussing how it can be used to "embody" the mechanisms defined by game rules, to tell a story, or even to spark off emotions in player's mind. An interesting book for beginners discovering this topic.  

Keywords : level design, introduction

---

Low cost video game technology to measure and improve motor skills in children (Broacasting our studies)

Video games are ubiquitous in modern day life. Unfortunately, several children are overweight or even obese because they spend a lot of time watching television or playing non-physical video games, instead of perfoming physical activities. Furthermore, this lack of exercise affects their development. The fact that children are becoming overweight or obese is a health concern for many countries that are economical developed (like England) or are in development (like Mexico). In this paper we pres [...]

Keywords : Costs, Medical treatment, Pediatrics, Minimally invasive surgery, TV, Games, Airplanes, Virtual reality

---

NOLIFE (Link)

French TV chanel dedicated to the video games and to the Japan culture

Keywords : Television

---

Matt Chat (Link)

Matt Chat knows a lot about video games. He describes some mytic titles like Myst, M.U.L.E., Defender of the Crown...

Keywords : Video, Retro gaming

---