LudoScience

Persuasive Games - The Expressive Power of Videogames (Book reference)

This book is a detailed study of the expressive potential of video games. The author analyses many examples of games broadcasting messages, related to politics, advertising and education. This study allows Ian Bogost, a media researcher and game designer, to introduce the concept of "procedural rhetoric", i.e. the use of games rules to broadcast messages. This book is very brilliant: full of relevant examples, it features an analysis that will undoubtedly inspires any creator or resear [...]

Keywords : serious game, procedural rhetoric, analysis, research, example

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Pix'n Love (Book reference)

Pix'n Love is a journal dedicated to the history of videogames. It uses a format that is half-way between a book and a regular journal. The 128 pages of each issue explores in great details the history of a selection of games and machines, ranging from the highly popular ones (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Megaman, Rayman, etc.) to the nearly unknown games. Each article is generally written after the interview of the creators, allowing Pix'n Love to provide the reader with a lot of novel and unique i [...]

Keywords : history, interview, novel

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Gam.B.A.S. 2.0 (Our projects)

Direct successor of the Gam.B.A.S. project,this new project aimes to build a new software tool able to ease the creation of videogames. To achieve this goal, it relies on the idea of "Gameplay Bricks", in order to allow real-time creation and modification of the rules of the game through an high-level of abstraction.      A short video clip of the only created prototype (2008):    Publications related to this project Damien Djaouti "Serious Ga [...]

Keywords : game design, game creation software

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Interactive storytelling and videogames (Lesson)

A presentation of many interactive storytelling techniques used in videogames. -= Presentation slides (in french) =- (Flash file - click inside the window to give it the keyboard focus,then use the left and right arrow keys to browse through the slides)   

Keywords : interactive storytelling

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History of Videogames (Lesson)

An historical timeline related videogames evolution from 1952 to 2001. Features more than 150 videos and interactive games to illustrate the history.   

Keywords : history

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Push START - 30 ans de jeux vidéo (Book reference)

An illustration-only book which features screenshots and illustrations from the most famous videogames of the last 30 years. 

Keywords : pictures, history

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Citizen Game (Book reference)

The autobiography of Nicolas Gaume, founder of the french game studio Kalisto, which created some of the finest videogames during the 90's: Pac-in-time, Nightmare Creatures, Ultim@te Race Pro, Dark Earth, etc. Praised for the quality of its creations, this studio unfortunately closed its door in the 2000's, mainly due to the financial crisis caused by the burst of the ".com economy" bubble. This rare book is a detailed legacy of the quick transformation of the AAA videogames industry f [...]

Keywords : biography, nicolas gaume, kalisto, french touch

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Le game design de jeux vidéo : Approches de l'expression vidéoludique (Book reference)

A scientific book that gathers contributions from 18 researchers who are studying different sides of videogames (design, use, interactivity, storytelling, emotions, gender, etc.). 

Keywords : science, humanities

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Video Games And Interactive Media: A Glimpse at New Digital Entertainment (Book reference)

A small book (150 pages) laying down a general introduction to the universe of videogames. The author details the history of videogames (with the contribution of the Le Diberder brothers and their "cycles theory" on this topic), the various jobs of the videogames industry and the process of game design, and in a last chapter try to analyze the future of videogames as a communicational tool. It's the English translation of a french book published in 2004 under the title "Jeux [...]

Keywords : introduction, jobs, history, schools

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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

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