Games at the Library

Every educator's imaginative instincts will be guided by this book's practical design method, which harnesses the power of play for student learning. Teachers from all disciplines and levels can create a full spectrum of engaging exercises through the authors' six accessible ALLURE steps: Ask where to apply the play. List the mental moves. Link the mental moves to the play. Understand how the learning principles operate. Run the activity-game. Evaluate the learner experience. Along with principles from game-based learning pedagogy, readers will explore a framework of original complex mechanic teaching templates that will help their fledgling instructional activities cross the bridge into fully formed games. Beginners and veterans will find multiple entry points, from adding a single playful element (student roles in discussions) to more elaborate designs (riddles and simulations). They will also learn different levels of producing physical tabletop components (cards, boards, plastic pieces) or light digital options (discussion board riddles, Google Slides games). Born from the authors' extensive experiences running professional development workshops, this guide has been frequently requested by classroom teachers, college instructors, librarians, and instructional designers. While examples are all drawn from secondary and higher education environments, the ALLURE method is also being used in workshops with elementary-level teachers, including homeschool instructors; business trainers; and digital and analogue game designers. Book Features: Offers hands-on, practical advice about how to be more playful with your students, with a focus on nondigital activities and games. Written in the language of instructional design, so advanced knowledge about games or technology is not required. Provides creative instructional techniques that will boost student engagement for both in-person and online instruction. Includes more than two dozen original illustrations and designs to aid understanding. Addresses the need for accessible, inclusive learning environments. To obtain a set of flashcards that summarize the book's concepts, or to read about other resources, see the authors' website: http://allureofplay.com.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the latest research on learning and instruction with computer games. Unlike other books on the topic, which emphasize game development or best practices, Handbook of Game-Based Learning is based on empirical findings and grounded in psychological and learning sciences theory. The contributors, all leading researchers in the field, offer a range of perspectives, including cognitive, motivational, affective, and sociocultural.

Principles for designing educational games that integrate content and play and create learning experiences connecting to many areas of learners' lives.Too often educational videogames are narrowly focused on specific learning outcomes dictated by school curricula and fail to engage young learners. This book suggests another approach, offering a guide to designing games that integrates content and play and creates learning experiences that connect to many areas of learners' lives. These games are not gamified workbooks but are embedded in a long-form experience of exploration, discovery, and collaboration that takes into consideration the learning environment. Resonant Games describes twenty essential principles for designing games that offer this kind of deeper learning experience, presenting them in connection with five games or collections of games developed at MIT's educational game research lab, the Education Arcade. Each of the games-which range from Vanished, an alternate reality game for middle schoolers promoting STEM careers, to Ubiquitous Bio, a series of casual mobile games for high school biology students-has a different story, but all spring from these fundamental assumptions- honor the whole learner, as a full human being, not an empty vessel awaiting a fill-up; honor the sociality of learning and play; honor a deep connection between the content and the game; and honor the learning context-most often the public school classroom, but also beyond the classroom.

Teaching in the Game-Based Classroom is a hands-on guide to leveraging students' embrace of video games toward successful school performance. Evidence tells us that game-based learning can help teachers design classes, develop transformative learning tools, and assess progress on multiple levels not dependent on one-size-fits-all bubble sheets. Authored by game-savvy teachers in partnership with classroom-experienced academics, the highly varied chapters of this book are concise yet filled with sound pedagogical approaches. Middle and high school educators will find engaging new ways of inspiring students' intrinsic motivation, skill refinement, positive culture-building, autonomy as learners, and more.

Unlimited Players provides writing center scholars with new approaches to engaging with multimodality in the writing center through the lenses of games, play, and digital literacies. Considering how game scholarship can productively deepen existing writing center conversations regarding the role of creativity, play, and engagement, this book helps practitioners approach a variety of practices, such as starting new writing centers, engaging tutors and writers, developing tutor education programs, developing new ways to approach multimodal and digital compositions brought to the writing center, and engaging with ongoing scholarly conversations in the field.   The collection opens with theoretically driven chapters that approach writing center work through the lens of games and play. These chapters cover a range of topics, including considerations of identity, empathy, and power; productive language play during tutoring sessions; and writing center heuristics. The last section of the book includes games, written in the form of tabletop game directions, that directors can use for staff development or tutors can play with writers to help them develop their skills and practices.   No other text offers a theoretical and practical approach to theorizing and using games in the writing center. Unlimited Players provides a new perspective on the long-standing challenges facing writing center scholars and offers insight into the complex questions raised in issues of multimodality, emerging technologies, tutor education, identity construction, and many more. It will be significant to writing center directors and administrators and those who teach tutor training courses.  

James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition, new games like World of WarCraft and Half Life 2 are evaluated and theories of cognitive development are expanded. Gee looks at major cognitive activities including how individuals develop a sense of identity, how we grasp meaning, how we evaluate and follow a command, pick a role model, and perceive the world.

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lensesshows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.

To create a great video game, you must start with a solid game design: A well-designed game is easier to build, more entertaining, and has a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Here to teach you the essential skills of player-centric game design is one of the industry's leading authorities, who offers a first-hand look into the process, from initial concept to final tuning. Now in its second edition, this updated classic reference by Ernest Adams offers a complete and practical approach to game design, and includes material on concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams analyzes the specific design challenges of all the major game genres and shows you how to apply the principles of game design to each one. You'll learn how to: Define the challenges and actions at the heart of the gameplay. Write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. Understand the essentials of user interface design and how to define a game's look and feel. Design for a variety of input mechanisms, including the Wii controller and multi-touch iPhone. Construct a game's core mechanics and flow of resources (money, points, ammunition, and more). Develop appealing stories, game characters, and worlds that players will want to visit, including persistent worlds. Work on design problems with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies. Make your game accessible to broader audiences such as children, adult women, people with disabilities, and casual players. "Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework I've seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and player--one that I've found useful for both teaching and research." -- Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Fa#65533;ade

Video games have captivated us for over 50 years, giving us entire worlds to explore, new ways to connect with friends, thought-provoking stories, or just a fun way to pass the time. Creating games is a dream for many, but making great games is challenging. The Game Designer's Playbook isabout meeting that challenge. More specifically, it's a book about game interaction design; in other words, shaping what players can do and how they do it to make a game satisfying and memorable. Our time with a game is built on interaction, from basic things like pushing buttons on a controller, tomaking complicated strategic decisions and engaging with the narrative. If you've ever felt the adrenaline rush from beating a perfectly tuned boss fight or been delighted by the fanfare of picking up that last collectible, you've experienced good interaction design firsthand.The Game Designer's Playbook is about learning what makes for great (or terrible!) interaction design in games, exploring things like controls, feedback, story, and tutorial design by analyzing existing games. It also looks at how newer and still-developing tech like VR and streaming are changingthe ways we play, and how you can bring great interaction design to your own games.

An engaging examination of how video game design can create strong, positive emotional experiences for players, with examples from popular, indie, and art games. This is a renaissance moment for video games -- in the variety of genres they represent, and the range of emotional territory they cover. But how do games create emotion? In How Games Move Us, Katherine Isbister takes the reader on a timely and novel exploration of the design techniques that evoke strong emotions for players. She counters arguments that games are creating a generation of isolated, emotionally numb, antisocial loners. Games, Isbister shows us, can actually play a powerful role in creating empathy and other strong, positive emotional experiences; they reveal these qualities over time, through the act of playing. She offers a nuanced, systematic examination of exactly how games can influence emotion and social connection, with examples -- drawn from popular, indie, and art games -- that unpack the gamer's experience. Isbister describes choice and flow, two qualities that distinguish games from other media, and explains how game developers build upon these qualities using avatars, non-player characters, and character customization, in both solo and social play. She shows how designers use physical movement to enhance players' emotional experience, and examines long-distance networked play. She illustrates the use of these design methods with examples that range from Sony's Little Big Planet to the much-praised indie game Journey to art games like Brenda Romero's Train. Isbister's analysis shows us a new way to think about games, helping us appreciate them as an innovative and powerful medium for doing what film, literature, and other creative media do: helping us to understand ourselves and what it means to be human.

""How to Play Video Games" explores the phenomena of video games and its impact on modern society"-- Provided by publisherWhat does Pokémon go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? How does BioShock infinite help us navigate world-building? From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Video games demand engagement like no other media technology, which raises the question, what is the role that video games play in our livse, from our homes to our phones, and in global culture writ large? How to play video games brings together forty original essays from today's leading scholars of video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand theft auto V, or music in The legend of Zelda: ocarina of time. See how Age of empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture now.

An argument that production tools shape the aesthetics and political economy of games as an expressive medium. In Making Games, Stefan Werning considers the role of tools (primarily but not exclusively software), their design affordances, and the role they play as sociotechnical actors. Drawing on a wide variety of case studies, Werning argues that production tools shape the aesthetics and political economy of games as an expressive medium. He frames game-making as a (meta)game in itself and shows that tools, like games, have their own "procedural rhetoric" and should not always be conceived simply in terms of optimization and best practices.

An in-depth exploration of the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. In Unboxed, Gordon Calleja explores the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. Calleja examines key aspects of board game experience-the nature of play, attention, rules, sociality, imagination, narrative, materiality, and immersion-to offer a theory of board game experience and a model for understanding game involvement that is relevant to the analysis, criticism, and design of board games. Drawing on interviews with thirty-two leading board game designers and critics, Calleja-himself a board game designer-provides the set of conceptual tools that board game design has thus far lacked. After considering different conceptions of play, Calleja discusses the nature and role of attention and goes on to outline the key forms of involvement that make up the board game playing experience. In subsequent chapters, Calleja explores each of these forms of involvement, considering both the experience itself and the design considerations that bring it into being. Calleja brings this analysis together in a chapter that maps how these forms of involvement come together in the moment of gameplay, and how their combination shapes the flow of player affect. By tracing the processes by which players experience these moments of rule-mediated, imagination-fueled sociality, Calleja helps us understand the richness of the gameplay experience packed into the humble board game box.

As for film and literature, the horror genre has been very popular in the video game. The World of Scary Video Games provides a comprehensive overview of the videoludic horror, dealing with the games labelled as "survival horror" as well as the mainstream and independent works associated with the genre. It examines the ways in which video games have elicited horror, terror and fear since Haunted House (1981). Bernard Perron combines an historical account with a theoretical approach in order to offer a broad history of the genre, outline its formal singularities and explore its principal issues. It studies the most important games and game series, from Haunted House (1981) to Alone in the Dark (1992- ), Resident Evil (1996-present), Silent Hill (1999-present), Fatal Frame (2001-present), Dead Space (2008-2013), Amnesia: the Dark Descent (2010), and The Evil Within (2014). Accessibly written, The World of Scary Video Games helps the reader to trace the history of an important genre of the video game.

The cultural contradictions of early video games: a medium for family fun (but mainly for middle-class boys), an improvement over pinball and television (but possibly harmful) Beginning with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong in 1972, video games, whether played in arcades and taverns or in family rec rooms, became part of popular culture, like television. In fact, video games were sometimes seen as an improvement on television because they spurred participation rather than passivity. These "space-age pinball machines" gave coin-operated games a high-tech and more respectable profile. In Atari Age, Michael Newman charts the emergence of video games in America from ball-and-paddle games to hits like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, describing their relationship to other amusements and technologies and showing how they came to be identified with the middle class, youth, and masculinity. Newman shows that the "new media" of video games were understood in varied, even contradictory ways. They were family fun (but mainly for boys), better than television (but possibly harmful), and educational (but a waste of computer time). Drawing on a range of sources--including the games and their packaging; coverage in the popular, trade, and fan press; social science research of the time; advertising and store catalogs; and representations in movies and television--Newman describes the series of cultural contradictions through which the identity of the emerging medium worked itself out. Would video games embody middle-class respectability or suffer from the arcade's unsavory reputation? Would they foster family togetherness or allow boys to escape from domesticity? Would they make the new home computer a tool for education or just a glorified toy? Then, as now, many worried about the impact of video games on players, while others celebrated video games for familiarizing kids with technology essential for the information age.

"In the early days of arcades and Nintendo, many players didn't recognize Japanese games as coming from Japan; they were simply new and interesting games to play. But since then, fans, media, and the games industry have thought further about the "Japaneseness" of particular games. Game developers try to decide whether a game's Japaneseness is a selling point or stumbling block; critics try to determine what elements in a game express its Japaneseness--cultural motifs or technical markers. Games were "localized," subjected to sociocultural and technical tinkering. In this book, Mia Consalvo looks at what happens when Japanese games travel outside Japan, and how they are played, thought about, and transformed by individuals, companies, and groups in the West. Consalvo begins with players, first exploring North American players' interest in Japanese games (and Japanese culture in general) and then investigating players' DIY localization of games, in the form of ROM hacking and fan translating. She analyzes several Japanese games released in North America and looks in detail at the Japanese game company Square Enix. She examines indie and corporate localization work, and the rise of the professional culture broker. Finally, she compares different approaches to Japaneseness in games sold in the West and considers how Japanese games have influenced Western games developers. Her account reveals surprising cross-cultural interactions between Japanese games and Western game developers and players, between Japaneseness and the market."--Booki jacket

An acclaimed critic argues that video games are the most vital art form of our time Video games have seemingly taken over our lives. Whereas gamers once constituted a small and largely male subculture, today 67 percent of American households play video games. The average gamer is now thirty-four years old and spends eight hours each week playing -- and there is a 40 percent chance this person is a woman. In Bit by Bit, Andrew Ervin sets out to understand the explosive popularity of video games. He travels to government laboratories, junk shops, and arcades. He interviews scientists and game designers, both old and young. In charting the material and technological history of video games, from the 1950s to the present, he suggests that their appeal starts and ends with the sense of creativity they instill in gamers. As Ervin argues, games are art because they are beautiful, moving, and even political -- and because they turn players into artists themselves.

Prior to the arrival of the Sega Genesis, video games were still largely considered "kid stuff," but with a far more mature and eclectic range of titles, and an understanding of what gamers wanted, Sega and its Genesis/Mega Drive console began to shift the expectations for what gaming could be. Never scared to innovate, Sega's impact on the industry continues to this day through the games they originally developed and the technology their consoles pushed into the mainstream. Featuring interviews with the creators of over 40 games on the Sega Genesis console including Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Altered Beast, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim and NHL 95, this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of some of the influential, iconic, and sometimes forgotten games on Sega's most important contribution to the game industry. The interviewees reveal the challenges of working with mega publishers, the uncertainties of public reception, and the creative processes that produced some of the 16-bit era's classic titles.

For fans of Tetris on Apple TV+, read the true story of Henk Rogers, Alexey Pajitnov, and the perfect game. Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you'll see those brightly colored geometric shapes everywhere. You'll see them in your dreams. Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once Tetris emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega--game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications, and outright theft. In this graphic novel, New York Times-bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture, and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world's most popular video game.

Role-playing game historian Ben Riggs unveils the secret history of TSR-- the company that unleashed imaginations with Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival. "Ben Riggs manages to walk the fine line between historical accuracy and fun about as well as anyone and SLAYING THE DRAGON is equal parts historical accuracy and entertainment. It was an essential read for me while directing and producing the Official D&D documentary but I'd recommend it to anyone regardless of the subject material. It's a wild and fun ride through the turbulent history of one the most influential brands in our lifetime." - JOE MANGANIELLO Co-created by wargame enthusiasts Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success, producing multiple editions of D&D, numerous settings for the game, magazines, video games, New York Times bestselling novels by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R. A. Salvatore, and even a TV show! But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom--only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. Unearthed from Ben Riggs's own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR. Go behind the scenes of their Lake Geneva headquarters where innovative artists and writers redefined the sword and sorcery genre, managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, ignoring their customer fanbase, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard. As epic and fantastic as the adventures TSR published, Slaying the Dragon is the legendary tale of the rise and fall of the company that created the role-playing game world.

How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity. Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming--coding, collaboration, and creativity--and the move from "computational thinking" toward "computational participation." Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industry's acceptance, and even promotion, of "modding" and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.

There is a growing recognition in the learning sciences that video games can no longer be seen as impediments to education, but rather, they can be developed to enhance learning. Educational and developmental psychologists, education researchers, media psychologists, and cognitive psychologists are now joining game designers and developers in seeking out new ways to use video game play in the classroom.In Learning by Playing, a diverse group of contributors provide perspectives on the most current thinking concerning the ramifications of leisure video game play for academic classroom learning. The first section of the text provides foundational understanding of the cognitive skills and content knowledge that children and adolescents acquire and refine during video game play. The second section explores game features that captivate and promote skills development among game players. The subsequent sections discuss children and adolescents' learning in the context of different types of games and the factors that contribute to transfer of learning from video game play to the classroom. These chapters then form the basis for the concluding section of the text: a specification of the most appropriate research agenda to investigate the academic potential of video game play, particularly using those games that child and adolescent players find most compelling. Contributors include researchers in education, learning sciences, and cognitive and developmental psychology, as well as instructional design researchers.

In New Studies on Video Games and Health, the first chapter analyzes investigations on the use of virtual reality in the context of learning and rehabilitation. The second chapter compares video game players and non-video game players across a range of measures of competitiveness to understand the differences and similarities between these groups' context general competitive profiles. The objective of the closing chapter is to identify and analyze how the techno scientific processes of corporeal virtualization, linked to video games, have interfered in the constitution of the bodies and what implications are involved in the body culture of movement and Physical Education.

"The possibilities of gaming for transformative and equity-driven instructional teaching practice are more robust than ever before. And yet, support for designing playful learning opportunities are too often not addressed or taught in professional development or teacher education programs. Considering the complex demands in public schools today and the niche pockets of extracurricular engagement in which youth find themselves, Playing with Teaching serves as a hands-on resource for teachers and teacher educators. Particularly focused on how games - both digital and non-digital - can shape unique learning and literacy experiences for young people today, this book's chapters look at numerous examples that educators can bring into their classrooms today. By exploring how teachers can support literacy practices through gaming, this volume provides specific strategies for heightening literacy learning and playful experiences in classrooms. The classroom examples of gameful teaching described in each chapter, not only provide practical examples of games and learning, but offer critical perspectives on why games in literacy classrooms matter today. Through depictions of cutting-edge of powerful and playful pedagogy, this book is not a how-to manual. Rather, Playing with Teaching fills a much-needed space demonstrating how games are applied in classrooms today. It is an invitation to reimagine classrooms as spaces to newly investigate playful approaches to teaching and learning with adolescents. Roll the dice and give playful literacy instruction a try. Contributors are: Jill Bidenwald, Jennifer S. Dail, Elizabeth DeBoeser, Antero Garcia, Kip Glazer, Emily Howell, Lindy L. Johnson, Rachel Kaminski Sanders, Jon Ostenson, Chad Sansing, and Shelbie Witte"-- Provided by publisher.

Games and social media can improve college access, attract and support students, and boost rates of completion. The college application process--which entails multiple forms, essays, test scores, and deadlines--can be intimidating. For students without substantial school and family support, the complexity of this process can become a barrier to access. William G. Tierney, Tracy Fullerton, and their teams at the University of Southern California approach this challenge innovatively. Using the tools of online games and social media, they have developed ways to make applying for college much less intimidating. While the vast majority of college students use social media and gaming in their everyday lives, colleges and universities have been slow to recognize and harness the power of either. Postsecondary Play explores the significance of games and social media in higher education, and particularly how they can be used to attract, retain, educate, and socialize students. Tierney, a past president of the American Educational Research Association, has gathered some of the best research on the emerging role of games and social media in the classroom and how these tools can boost student confidence and increase college access. Scholars writing from a wide variety of disciplines--college access, social media, game studies, and learning sciences--provide concrete examples to illustrate the new and complex ways in which students learn in response to social media and games. Tierney and the contributors find that, although games can be powerful tools for encouraging underserved students, quality game design and mastering the concept of play--the ability to develop skills while engaging in the game--are essential in the effective use of serious games in teaching and learning. Summarizing a decade of research in game design and learning, Postsecondary Play will appeal to higher education scholars and students of learning, online gaming, education, and the media.

You too can learn to design and developclassic arcade video games like Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Scramble. Collisiondetection, extra lives, power ups, and countless other essential design elements were inventedby the mostly anonymous designers at the early pioneering companies thatproduced these great games. In this book you'll go step by step, using modern,free software tools such as Unity to create five games in the classicstyle, inspired by retro favorites like: Pong, Breakout, SpaceInvaders, Scramble, and Pac-Man. All the source code, art,and sound sources for the projects are available on the companion files. You'lldiscover the fun of making your own games, putting in your own color graphics,adjusting the scoring, coding the AI, and creating the sound effects. You'llgain a deep understanding of the roots of modern video game design: the classicsof the '70s and '80s.  Features: Uses Unity, C#, Blender, GIMP, and Audacityto make five fun classic games 4-color throughout with companion files that include source code, art, and full projects (also available for downloading from the publisher by emailing proof of purchase to info@merclearning.com) Includes historical anecdotes direct from one of the fabled Atari coin-op programmers Detailed step-by-step instructions, dozens of exercises, and rules of classic game design Contains unique insights on applying classic game design concepts to modern games.

An examination of subversive games--games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games--games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry--and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of "playing house" include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists' alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns--including worldwide poverty and AIDS--can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice--which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium--can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.

How did games rise to become the central audiovisual form of expression and storytelling in digital culture? How did the practices of their artistic production come into being? How did the academic analysis of the new medium's social effects and cultural meaning develop? Addressing these fundamental questions and aspects of digital game culture in a holistic way for the first time, Gundolf S. Freyermuth's introduction outlines the media-historical development phases of analog and digital games, the history and artistic practices of game design, as well as the history, academic approaches, and most important research topics of game studies. With contributions by André Czauderna, Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman.

How to Play Video Games" explores the phenomena of video games and its impact on modern society"-- Provided by publisherWhat does Pokémon go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? How does BioShock infinite help us navigate world-building? From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Video games demand engagement like no other media technology, which raises the question, what is the role that video games play in our livse, from our homes to our phones, and in global culture writ large? How to play video games brings together forty original essays from today's leading scholars of video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand theft auto V, or music in The legend of Zelda: ocarina of time. See how Age of empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture now.

If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms.

"Despite the advent and explosion of videogames, boardgames-from fast-paced party games to intensely strategic titles-have in recent years become more numerous and more diverse in terms of genre, ethos and content. The growth of gaming events and conventions such as Essen Spiel, Gen Con and the UK Games EXPO, as well as crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter, has diversified the evolution of game development, which is increasingly driven by fans, and boardgames provide an important glue to geek culture. In academia, boardgames are used in a practical sense to teach elements of design and game mechanics. Game studies is also recognizing the importance of expanding its focus beyond the digital. As yet, however, no collected work has explored the many different approaches emerging around the critical challenges that boardgaming represents. In this collection, game theorists analyze boardgame play and player behavior, and explore the complex interactions between the sociality, conflict, competition and cooperation that boardgames foster. Game designers discuss the opportunities boardgame system designs offer for narrative and social play. Cultural theorists discuss boardgames' complex history as both beautiful physical artifacts and special places within cultural experiences of play."--Provided by publisher"

The Digital Age has created massive technological and disciplinary shifts in tabletop role-playing, increasing the appreciation of games like Dungeons & Dragons. Millions tune in to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players. Such shifts elicit new scholarly perspectives. This collection includes essays on the transmedia ecology that has connected analog with digital and audio spaces. Essays explore the boundaries of virtual tabletops and how users engage with a variety of technology to further role-playing. Authors map the growing diversity of the TRPG fandom and detail how players interact with RPG-related podcasts. Interviewed are content creators like Griffin McElroy of The Adventure Zone podcast, Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones, board game designers Nikki Valens and Isaac Childres and fan artists Tracey Alvarez and Alex Schiltz. These essays and interviews expand the academic perspective to reflect the future of role-playing.

Contributors examine the early days of video game history before the industry crash of 1983 that ended the medium's golden age.

Before the enormously successful NES console changed the video game landscape in the 1980s, Nintendo became famous for producing legendary arcade machines like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Drawing on original interviews, news reports and other documents, this book traces Nintendo's rise from a small business that made playing cards to the top name in the arcade industry. Twenty-eight game titles are examined in-depth, along with the people and events that defined the company for more than four decades.

This book is a potted history of video games, telling all the rollercoaster stories of this fascinating young industry that's now twice as big globally than the film and music industries combined. Each chapter explores the history of video games through a different lens, giving a uniquely well-rounded overview. Packed with pictures and stats, this book is for video gamers nostalgic for the good old days of gaming, and young gamers curious about how it all began. If you've ever enjoyed a video game, or you just want to see what all the fuss is about, this book is for you. There are stories about the experimental games of the 1950s and 1960s; the advent of home gaming in the 1970s; the explosion - and implosion - of arcade gaming in the 1980s; the console wars of the 1990s; the growth of online and mobile games in the 2000s; and we get right up to date with the 2010s, including such cultural phenomena as twitch.tv, the Gamergate scandal, and Fortnite. But rather than telling the whole story from beginning to end, each chapter covers the history of video games from a different angle: platforms and technology, people and personalities, companies and capitalism, gender and representation, culture, community, and finally the games themselves.

An official guide to the most iconic legends and legendary creatures from the world of Magic: The Gathering   The world of Magic: The Gathering is home to many fantastical characters and creatures, but perhaps none so intriguing as its legends. Legendary dragons, demons, angels, goblins, vampires, merfolk, wizards, and more roam the multiverse. These characters harken back to Magic's early history, having been introduced in one of the first Magic card sets (1994's Legends); new legends continue to tell epic stories in lore and on the battlefield through the present day. Magic: The Gathering: Legends showcases high-quality reproductions of the legendary card art from across the game's history--in many instances for the first time outside of the card frame--along with accompanying histories written by Jay Annelli. This collection also offers exclusive insight into the art and mythology behind some of Magic: The Gathering's most powerful, popular, and enduring legends, including Niv-Mizzet, Emmara Tandris, Marit Lage, Sisay, Atraxa, the Eldrazi titans, Edgar Markov, Queen Marchesa, Zurgo, Pia Nalaar, Zacama, King Algenus Kenrith, Snapdax, and many, many more.  

Videogame history is not just a history of one successful technology replacing the next. It is also a history of platforms and communities that never quite made it; that struggled to make their voices heard; that aggravated against the conventions of the day; and that never enjoyed the commercial success or recognition of their major counterparts. In *Minor Platforms in Videogame History*, Benjamin Nicoll argues that 'minor' videogame histories are anything but insignificant. Through an analysis of transitional, decolonial, imaginary, residual, and minor videogame platforms, Nicoll highlights moments of difference and discontinuity in videogame history. From the domestication of vector graphics in the early years of videogame consoles to the 'cloning' of Japanese computer games in South Korea in the 1980s, this book explores case studies that challenge taken-for-granted approaches to videogames, platforms, and their histories.

"This book illuminates the ways that games--from baseball cards to board games, poker to boxing, and croquet to strategies of war -- were integral to nineteenth-century life and culture in the US and UK"-- Provided by publisher.

Games with military themes date back to antiquity, and yet they are curiously neglected in much of the academic and trade literature on games and game history. This volume fills that gap, providing a diverse set of perspectives on war-gaming's past, present, and future. In Zones of Control, contributors consider war-games played for entertainment, education, and military planning, in terms of design, critical analysis, and historical contexts. They consider both digital and especially table-top games, most of which cover specific historical conflicts or are grounded in recognizable real-world geopolitics. Game designers and players will find the historical and critical contexts often missing from design and hobby literature; military analysts will find connections to game design and the humanities; and academics will find documentation and critique of a sophicated body of cultural work in which the the complexity of military conflict is represented in lucid systems and procedures. Topics include the history of playing at war; operations research and systems design; war-gaming and military history; war-gaming's ethics and politics; gaming irregular and non-kinetic warfare; and war-games as artistic practice.