Making it HUGE in Video Games

Making it HUGE in Video Games PDF Author: Chance Thomas
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000965635
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Making it HUGE in Video Games recounts the astonishing journey of an unassuming, middle-of-the-bell-curve young man, rising from mundane beginnings to scale the dizzying heights of artistic distinction and financial success in the worldwide video game industry. This is the story of Chance Thomas, a moderately talented musician who struggled and grew to compose original scores for some of the most well-known entertainment properties in the world. Detailed personal accounts and instructive side bars carry readers across the jagged peaks and valleys of an absolutely achievable career in video games. World-famous IP’s get personal treatment here – The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Avatar, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, DOTA 2, King Kong, The Settlers, and many more. Readers will discover unvarnished true stories about starting out, pitching and pursuing gigs, negotiating contracts, composing and producing scores, multinational corporations and personalities, funny anecdotes, daunting challenges, glorious successes, and instructive failures. Autobiographical details throughout provide intimate perspective, vibrant color, and inspiration. The book is written in a comfortable, conversational style. Think of this as a career guidebook wrapped around a personal retrospective; a professional how-to manual woven into a memoir.

Making it HUGE in Video Games

Making it HUGE in Video Games PDF Author: Chance Thomas
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000965635
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
Making it HUGE in Video Games recounts the astonishing journey of an unassuming, middle-of-the-bell-curve young man, rising from mundane beginnings to scale the dizzying heights of artistic distinction and financial success in the worldwide video game industry. This is the story of Chance Thomas, a moderately talented musician who struggled and grew to compose original scores for some of the most well-known entertainment properties in the world. Detailed personal accounts and instructive side bars carry readers across the jagged peaks and valleys of an absolutely achievable career in video games. World-famous IP’s get personal treatment here – The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Avatar, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, DOTA 2, King Kong, The Settlers, and many more. Readers will discover unvarnished true stories about starting out, pitching and pursuing gigs, negotiating contracts, composing and producing scores, multinational corporations and personalities, funny anecdotes, daunting challenges, glorious successes, and instructive failures. Autobiographical details throughout provide intimate perspective, vibrant color, and inspiration. The book is written in a comfortable, conversational style. Think of this as a career guidebook wrapped around a personal retrospective; a professional how-to manual woven into a memoir.

Level Up!

Level Up! PDF Author: Scott Rogers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470970928
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
Design and build cutting-edge video games with help from video game expert Scott Rogers! If you want to design and build cutting-edge video games but aren’t sure where to start, then this is the book for you. Written by leading video game expert Scott Rogers, who has designed the hits Pac Man World, Maxim vs. Army of Zin, and SpongeBob Squarepants, this book is full of Rogers's wit and imaginative style that demonstrates everything you need to know about designing great video games. Features an approachable writing style that considers game designers from all levels of expertise and experience Covers the entire video game creation process, including developing marketable ideas, understanding what gamers want, working with player actions, and more Offers techniques for creating non-human characters and using the camera as a character Shares helpful insight on the business of design and how to create design documents So, put your game face on and start creating memorable, creative, and unique video games with this book!

Choice Theory

Choice Theory PDF Author: William Glasser, M.D.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062031023
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Dr. William Glasser offers a new psychology that, if practiced, could reverse our widespread inability to get along with one another, an inability that is the source of almost all unhappiness. For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship–destroying external control psychology. For example, if you are in an unhappy relationship right now, he proposes that one or both of you could be using external control psychology on the other. He goes further. And suggests that misery is always related to a current unsatisfying relationship. Contrary to what you may believe, your troubles are always now, never in the past. No one can change what happened yesterday.

Extra Lives

Extra Lives PDF Author: Tom Bissell
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307474313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.

Composing Music for Games

Composing Music for Games PDF Author: Chance Thomas
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1315318628
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
Composing Music for Games is a guidebook for launching and maintaining a successful career as a video game composer. It offers a pragmatic approach to learning, intensified through challenging project assignments and simulations. Author Chance Thomas begins with the foundation of scoring principles applicable to all media, and then progresses serially through core methodologies specific to video game music. This book offers a powerful blend of aesthetic, technique, technology and business, which are all necessary components for a successful career as a video game composer.

Mathematics Education for a New Era

Mathematics Education for a New Era PDF Author: Keith Devlin
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1439867712
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Stanford mathematician and NPR Math Guy Keith Devlin explains why, fun aside, video games are the ideal medium to teach middle-school math. Aimed primarily at teachers and education researchers, but also of interest to game developers who want to produce videogames for mathematics education, Mathematics Education for a New Era: Video Games as a Med

A Composer's Guide to Game Music

A Composer's Guide to Game Music PDF Author: Winifred Phillips
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262534495
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
A comprehensive, practical guide to composing video game music, from acquiring the necessary skills to finding work in the field. Music in video games is often a sophisticated, complex composition that serves to engage the player, set the pace of play, and aid interactivity. Composers of video game music must master an array of specialized skills not taught in the conservatory, including the creation of linear loops, music chunks for horizontal resequencing, and compositional fragments for use within a generative framework. In A Composer's Guide to Game Music, Winifred Phillips—herself an award-winning composer of video game music—provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, the most important qualification for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. Phillips offers detailed coverage of essential topics, including musicianship and composition experience; immersion; musical themes; music and game genres; workflow; working with a development team; linear music; interactive music, both rendered and generative; audio technology, from mixers and preamps to software; and running a business. A Composer's Guide to Game Music offers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music within the constraints of a new medium.

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels PDF Author: Jason Schreier
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062651242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER “The stories in this book make for a fascinating and remarkably complete pantheon of just about every common despair and every joy related to game development.” — Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer and developer of Nuclear Throne Developing video games—hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous. Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart. Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

Control Freak

Control Freak PDF Author: Cliff Bleszinski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982149167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The designer of Unreal and Gears of War offers an eye-opening personal account of the video game industry as it grew from niche hobby to hundred-billion-dollar enterprise. Video games are dominating the planet. In 2020, they brought in $180 billion dollars globally—nearly $34 billion in the United States alone. So who are the brilliant designers who create these stunning virtual worlds? Cliff Bleszinski—or CliffyB as he is known to gamers—is one of the few who’ve reached mythical, rock star status. In Control Freak, he gives an unvarnished, all-access tour of the business. Toiling away in his bedroom, Bleszinski created and shipped his first game before graduating high school, and at just seventeen joined a fledgling company called Epic Games. He describes the grueling hours, obscene amounts of Mountain Dew and obsessive focus necessary to achieve his singular creative visions. He details Epic’s rise to industry leader, thanks largely to his work on bestselling franchises Unreal and Gears of War (and, later, his input on a little game called Fortnite), as well as his own awkward ascent from shy, acne-riddled introvert to sports car-driving celebrity rubbing shoulders with Bill Gates. As he writes, “No one is weirder than a nerd with money.” While the book is laced with such self-deprecating humor, Bleszinski also bluntly addresses the challenges that have long-faced the gaming community, including sexism and a lack of representation among both designers and the characters they create. Control Freak is a hilarious, thoughtful, and inspiring memoir. Even if you don’t play games, you’ll walk away from this book recognizing them as a true art form and appreciating the genius of their creators.

The PlayStation Dreamworld

The PlayStation Dreamworld PDF Author: Alfie Bown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509518061
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
From mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.