Making Deep Games

Making Deep Games PDF Author: Doris C. Rusch
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317607716
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Like movies, television, and other preceding forms of media, video games are undergoing a dynamic shift in its content and perception. While the medium can still be considered in its infancy, the mark of true artistry and conceptual depth is detectable in the evolving styles, various genres and game themes. Doris C. Rusch’s, Making Deep Games, combines this insight along with the discussion of the expressive nature of games, various case studies, and hands-on design exercises. This book offers a perspective into how to make games that tackle the whole bandwidth of the human experience; games that teach us something about ourselves, enable thought-provoking, emotionally rich experiences and promote personal and social change. Grounded in cognitive linguistics, game studies and the reflective practice of game design, Making Deep Games explores systematic approaches for how to approach complex abstract concepts, inner processes, and emotions through the specific means of the medium. It aims to shed light on how to make the multifaceted aspects of the human condition tangible through gameplay experiences.

Making Deep Games

Making Deep Games PDF Author: Doris C. Rusch
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317607708
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Like movies, television, and other preceding forms of media, video games are undergoing a dynamic shift in its content and perception. While the medium can still be considered in its infancy, the mark of true artistry and conceptual depth is detectable in the evolving styles, various genres and game themes. Doris C. Rusch’s, Making Deep Games, combines this insight along with the discussion of the expressive nature of games, various case studies, and hands-on design exercises. This book offers a perspective into how to make games that tackle the whole bandwidth of the human experience; games that teach us something about ourselves, enable thought-provoking, emotionally rich experiences and promote personal and social change. Grounded in cognitive linguistics, game studies and the reflective practice of game design, Making Deep Games explores systematic approaches for how to approach complex abstract concepts, inner processes, and emotions through the specific means of the medium. It aims to shed light on how to make the multifaceted aspects of the human condition tangible through gameplay experiences.

Making Deep Games

Making Deep Games PDF Author: Doris C. Rusch
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317607716
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
Like movies, television, and other preceding forms of media, video games are undergoing a dynamic shift in its content and perception. While the medium can still be considered in its infancy, the mark of true artistry and conceptual depth is detectable in the evolving styles, various genres and game themes. Doris C. Rusch’s, Making Deep Games, combines this insight along with the discussion of the expressive nature of games, various case studies, and hands-on design exercises. This book offers a perspective into how to make games that tackle the whole bandwidth of the human experience; games that teach us something about ourselves, enable thought-provoking, emotionally rich experiences and promote personal and social change. Grounded in cognitive linguistics, game studies and the reflective practice of game design, Making Deep Games explores systematic approaches for how to approach complex abstract concepts, inner processes, and emotions through the specific means of the medium. It aims to shed light on how to make the multifaceted aspects of the human condition tangible through gameplay experiences.

Chris Crawford on Game Design

Chris Crawford on Game Design PDF Author: Chris Crawford
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 9780131460997
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Chris Crawford on Game Design is all about the foundational skills behind the design and architecture of a game. Without these skills, designers and developers lack the understanding to work with the tools and techniques used in the industry today. Chris Crawford, the most highly sought after expert in this area, brings an intense opinion piece full of personality and flare like no other person in this industry can. He explains the foundational and fundamental concepts needed to get the most out of game development today. An exceptional precursor to the two books soon to be published by New Riders with author Andrew Rollings, this book teaches key lessons; including, what you can learn from the history of game play and historical games, necessity of challenge in game play, applying dimensions of conflict, understanding low and high interactivity designs, watching for the inclusion of creativity, and understanding the importance of storytelling. In addition, Chris brings you the wish list of games he'd like to build and tells you how to do it. Game developers and designers will kill for this information!

Rules of Play

Rules of Play PDF Author: Katie Salen Tekinbas
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262240451
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Theory of Fun for Game Design

Theory of Fun for Game Design PDF Author: Raph Koster
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1932111972
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.

Resonant Games

Resonant Games PDF Author: Eric Klopfer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262037807
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
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.

Game Poems

Game Poems PDF Author: Jordan Magnuson
Publisher: Amherst College Press
ISBN: 1943208530
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Scholars, critics, and creators describe certain videogames as being “poetic,” yet what that means or why it matters is rarely discussed. In Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice, independent game designer Jordan Magnuson explores the convergences between game making and lyric poetry and makes the surprising proposition that videogames can operate as a kind of poetry apart from any reliance on linguistic signs or symbols. This rigorous and accessible short book first examines characteristics of lyric poetry and explores how certain videogames can be appreciated more fully when read in light of the lyric tradition—that is, when read as “game poems.” Magnuson then lays groundwork for those wishing to make game poems in practice, providing practical tips and pointers along with tools and resources. Rather than propose a monolithic framework or draw a sharp line between videogame poems and poets and their nonpoetic counterparts, Game Poems brings to light new insights for videogames and for poetry by promoting creative dialogue between disparate fields. The result is a lively account of poetic game-making praxis. “Everyone who loves the true power of games will benefit from the treasure trove of insights in Game Poems.” — Jesse Schell, author of The Art of Game Design “Magnuson shines a sensitive and incisive light on small, often moving, videogames.” — D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D., Professor of Digital Media, Computing, and Artificial Intelligence, MIT “[Game Poems] tells a new story about games— that games can be lyrical, beautiful, emotionally challenging—to inspire creators and critics alike.” —Noah Wardrip-Fruin, author of How Pac-Man Eats “Even as the news swells with impending doom for creativity, writing, and text itself, this literate and crafty book pursues poetry not through implacable algorithms but in concrete and personal play. It should be an indispensable guide for anyone who aims to maintain the true, human promise of technical poetics.”—Stuart Moulthrop, coauthor of Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives “For far too long videogames have flourished – and commanded both capital and attention – in a kind of counterculture that they seem to have created as if ex nihilo for themselves and their players. But we are these players, and their culture has always been integrated with all of our own. In this evenhanded artist-scholar’s ars poetica Jordan Magnuson respects the material cultural specificity of videogames while regarding them through the ‘lens of poetry’ in order to discover – and help create – a practice and an art of Game Poems within the wider field. Magnuson formally, int(erv)entionally embraces this art as lyrically poetic.”—John Cayley, Brown University “In Game Poems, Magnuson listens carefully to videogames, and hears them speak to questions of art, language, and meaning that connect our written past to our software future. Read this book and you will hear it too.”—Frank Lantz, Director, NYU Game Center “Jordan Magnuson has created a work that ties together the worlds of poetry and videogames in a deep and enlightening way. For those of us who care about the potential of poetic games, Jordan greatly improves the language of how we talk about them and expands our ability to see what this unique form can become. This is one of my favorite books on game design and I apologize in advance to those whom I will end up cornering and not being able to stop talking to about it.”—Benjamin Ellinger, Game Design Program Director, DigiPen Institute of Technology “A groundbreaking and accessible book that helps us think about games as poems. With patient tenacity, Magnuson teases out what he felt for years as he engaged in his own practice of making videogames. His mission to help us apply a ‘lyric reading’ to games so that our engagement with, and appreciation of, games can be enhanced feels deeply personal. Drawing from a wide range of games and computational media scholars, poetry scholars, game creators, and poets, Magnuson provides a rigorous, balanced, and unique interdisciplinary contribution. A must-read for videogame scholars, practicing game makers, and anyone interested in the potential of ‘game poems.’”—Susana Ruiz, University of California, Santa Cruz “This book tenaciously wrenches videogame hermeneutics from the insatiable maws of rhetoric and narratology—to the cheers of poets everywhere. In elucidating the lyric characteristics of the "game poem," Magnuson demonstrates not just that poetry is a useful lens for understanding videogames, but also that videogames can be a useful lens for understanding poetry. A rewarding text for scholars, game designers, poets, and anyone in between.”—Allison Parrish, Interactive Telecommunications Program and Interactive Media Arts, NYU “A concise, passionate articulation - and defense! - of an artistic space between poems and videogames. If game scholars wish to prove that they are not engaged merely in an apologetics for violent pornography, they need only to teach this book.”—Chris Bateman, author of Imaginary Games and 21st Century Game Design “I feel I've found a kindred spirit in Jordan Magnuson and his practical recommendations for creating distilled, compelling, personal videogames – throw out the conventions of game design one at a time? Yes, please! The revelation for me in this book, however, is the heat and power of the language of poets and poetry brought close to videogame design. There's much in here worth pursuing to kindle the fires of new and exciting videogame poems, and Jordan is a capable and delightfully humble guide.”—Pippin Barr, author of How to Play a Video Game and The Stuff Games Are Made Of “With Game Poems, Jordan Magnuson lays to rest any last vestige of the notion that the implicit limits of games are as ‘entertainment products’. By taking games seriously as successors of the lyric poetry tradition, he opens up new avenues for how game designers can think about what they do, how critical game theorists can approach their many-faceted object of study, and how players can more fully engage with videogames.”—Soraya Murray, author of On Video Games “Game Poems shines an important light on a neglected area of videogame theory and provides unique guidance for those interested in exploring the poetic potential of videogames.”—Jenova Chen, designer of Flow, Flower, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light “Popular frameworks for video game scholarship consistently fail to account for the most avant-garde and affective works of interactive art. With Game Poems, Jordan Magnuson provides not only a lens to understand these diverse and important titles but also a guide to constructing the next generation of personal and incisive games. With numerous examples from decades of experimental games, including Magnuson's own minimalist and insightful work, this book is an excellent introduction to the form for neophytes as well as finally providing words to describe a movement that many experienced game poets previously understood only intuitively.”—Gregory Avery-Weir, creator of The Majesty of Colors and Looming “Jordan Magnuson is one of a surprisingly small group of artists who see in the technology of videogames a versatile medium capable of expressing much more than conventional games.”—Michaël Samyn, co-founder, Tale of Tales; co-creator of Sunset, The Graveyard, and The Path “So much has been written about what games are, and yet there’s always a new way of thinking about them. In Jordan Magnuson’s Game Poems we discover that games are also a lyrical form of art; that games can be understood as poetry, and that the making games as poetry creates new modes of artistic expression. Jordan Magnuson’s book is a fascinating exploration of games as poetry, and the poetry of play.”—Miguel Sicart, author of Play Matters, Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay, and Playing Software “In Game Poems, I found a new perspective on the kind of videogames that are dearest to me: short, personal, poetic games. By looking at games through the lens of lyric poetry, Jordan Magnuson puts into focus the workings of that mysterious hodgepodge of audio, visuals, and interactivity: the language of videogames. Both experienced and novice game makers will find approachable, practical advice on the craft of videogames. And anyone who plays short games will find new ways of appreciating and talking about them. I know I will be returning to it for inspiration when making my own small games!”—Adam Le Doux, creator of Bitsy “As a creator and researcher, Jordan Magnuson has been able to demonstrate through the utmost visual simplicity, by enhancing basic geometric forms, the empathetic capacity of the videogame medium. Game Poems explores this idea and the reconfiguration of the videogame beyond its ludic component, highlighting the artistic and poetic potential of games.”—Antonio César Moreno Cantano, University Complutense of Madrid “Poems ask us to slow down, pay attention, and take the time to appreciate our experiences. Emerging from Magnuson's need to find ways to talk about his own creative practice, this book is all about discovering ways to do this with videogames. Magnuson explores what it means to view videogames as poetry, and provides insight, as a practitioner, on how to make game poems that enable and encourage this type of reflection. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from literature and philosophy to game studies and game design, this book covers a lot of material, but always remains grounded in concrete examples and solid theory. The book ends with a call to “go make some game poems!” After reading the book, I was keen to do exactly that. I urge you to do the same!”—Alex Mitchell, National University of Singapore “To many, poetry is a dying – or dead – art form. Few people sit down at night to open their favorite poet’s chapbook with the latest streaming service at hand or their favorite videogame console sitting nearby. Spectacle seems to be the cultural norm, and this can be no more evident than in videogames: when the latest and greatest offers 60+ hours of spine-tingling excitement, why would someone want to launch a smaller-form game about expressions such as love, death, loneliness, or even God? But, as Jordan Magnuson, in his new book Games Poems, shows, poems have always been an integral piece of forming human culture. Poems have the ability to get right to the heart of the matter and, in fact, pierce the heart of the reader. Poems can be a form of cultural resistance, and even launch revolutions. Magnuson’s book highlights what it means to use the medium of game design as poetry. Magnuson presents several examples of the intricacies of poetry in general, as well as work that fuses the ideals of poetry with game design. Magnuson succinctly examines how the imagination, rhythm, intensity, style – and brevity – of poetry can enlighten the game design process in order to form possibility spaces within videogames that are pointed and powerful.”—Tim Samoff, Games and Interactive Media Program Director, Azusa Pacific University

How Pac-Man Eats

How Pac-Man Eats PDF Author: Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026204465X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
How the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean; with examples ranging from Papers, Please to Dys4ia. In How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin considers two questions: What are the fundamental ways that games work? And how can games be about something? Wardrip-Fruin argues that the two issues are related. Bridging formalist and culturally engaged approaches, he shows how the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean. Wardrip-Fruin proposes that games work at a fundamental level on which their mechanics depend: operational logics. Games are about things because they use play to address topics; they do this through playable models (of which operational logics are the primary building blocks): larger structures used to represent what happens in a game world that relate meaningfully to a theme. Game creators can expand the expressiveness of games, Wardrip-Fruin explains, by expanding an operational logic. Pac-Man can eat, for example, because a game designer expanded the meaning of collision from hitting things to consuming them. Wardrip-Fruin describes strategies game creators use to expand what can be said through games, with examples drawn from indie games, art games, and research games that address themes ranging from border policy to gender transition. These include Papers, Please, which illustrates expansive uses of pattern matching; Prom Week, for which the game's developers created a model of social volition to enable richer relationships between characters; and Dys4ia, which demonstrates a design approach that supports game metaphors of high complexity.

The Magic of Games

The Magic of Games PDF Author: UWK
Publisher: Edition Donau-Universität Krems
ISBN: 3903150975
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
The 15th Vienna Gamens Conference "The Future and Reality of Gaming" (FROG) 2021 has explored how magic and games seem almost inextricably intertwined. This volume collects 17 contributions that have emerged from the conference, and which together form a multi-faceted examination of the "Magic of Games".

Games and Ethics

Games and Ethics PDF Author: Maike Groen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3658281758
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The number of digital gamers is increasing worldwide, but public debates about digital games commonly focus on questionable game content or problematic gaming behavior. This book offers a broader ethical perspective on digital game cultures, presenting theoretical and empirical work on the ethical dimensions of the development, production and distribution of digital games, as well as issues relating to responsible gaming and the pedagogical use of digital games. Questions of the communicative-cultural change in game cultures are linked with questions of media education and media ethics. With such a comprehensive approach, the volume promotes ethical discourse on digital game cultures.