For over 25 years, World of Warcraft has offered a land rich in mystery and wonder. Now players can get an in-depth look at the artifacts, gear, weaponry, and trinkets they have collected...and some they might not have just yet . With exquisite art and a brand new story, this book covers the continent of the Eastern Kingdom, from Stormwind to Stranglethorn, plaguelands to palaces, and all the lands in between.

Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice is intended for a second course in computer graphics at the undergraduate or graduate level, introducing shader programming in general, but focusing on the GLSL shading language. While teaching how to write programmable shaders, the authors also teach and reinforce the fundamentals of computer graphics. The second edition has been updated to incorporate changes in the OpenGL API (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) and also has a chapter on the new tessellation shaders, including many practical examples.

The book starts with a quick review of the graphics pipeline, emphasizing features that are rarely taught in introductory courses, but are immediately exposed in shader work. It then covers shader-specific theory for vertex, tessellation, geometry, and fragment shaders using the GLSL 4.x0 shading language. The text also introduces the freely available glman tool that enables you to develop, test, and tune shaders separately from the applications that will use them. The authors explore how shaders can be used to support a wide variety of applications and present examples of shaders in 3D geometry, scientific visualization, geometry morphing, algorithmic art, and more.

Features of the Second Edition:

• Written using the most recent specification releases (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) including code examples brought up-to-date with the current standard of the GLSL language.
• More examples and more exercises
• A chapter on tessellation shaders
• An expanded Serious Fun chapter with examples that illustrate using shaders to produce fun effects
• A discussion of how to handle the major changes occurring in the OpenGL standard, and some C++ classes to help you manage that transition

The authors thoroughly explain the concepts, use sample code to describe details of the concepts, and then challenge you to extend the examples. They provide sample source code for many of the book s examples at www.cgeducation.org

- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles

- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles

The best of the best in gaming from a single decade: 19881998! As most gamers know, this ten-year period is incredibly crucial. It was during this time that the NES reached its zenith with such titles as Contra and Super Mario Bros. 3, the Sega Genesis blew everyone away with Sonic the Hedgehog, the Super Nintendo released to critical acclaim, the Sony PlayStation took video games to the next level, and the Nintendo 64 broke new ground with 3-D Mario and Zelda. Amazing! This book covers the era in great detail, with each game getting an in-depth essay that includes history, development info, nostalgic stories, and much more. The author wrote more than a dozen of the essays, with other writers and industry notables contributing essays on their favorite games as well. Finally, the follow-up to The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 19771987 is here!

Videogames were once made with a vast range of tools and technologies, but in recent years a small number of commercially available 'game engines' have reached an unprecedented level of dominance in the global videogame industry. In particular, the Unity game engine has penetrated all scales of videogame development, from the large studio to the hobbyist bedroom, such that over half of all new videogames are reportedly being made with Unity. This book provides an urgently needed critical analysis of Unity as 'cultural software' that facilitates particular production workflows, design methodologies, and software literacies. Building on long-standing methods in media and cultural studies, and drawing on interviews with a range of videogame developers, Benjamin Nicoll and Brendan Keogh argue that Unity deploys a discourse of democratization to draw users into its 'circuits of cultural software'. For scholars of media production, software culture, and platform studies, this book provides a framework and language to better articulate the increasingly dominant role of software tools in cultural production. For videogame developers, educators, and students, it provides critical and historical grounding for a tool that is widely used yet rarely analysed from a cultural angle.

Understanding Game Scoring explores the unique collaboration between gameplay and composition that defines musical scoring for video games. Using an array of case studies reaching back into the canon of classic video games, this book illuminates the musical flexibility, user interactivity and sound programming that make game scoring so different from traditional modes of composition. Mack Enns explores the collaboration between game scorers and players to produce the final score for a game, through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic scores for Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986). This book is recommended reading for students and researchers interested in the composition and production of video game scores, as well as those interested in ludo-musicology.

"In this not-too-long and easy-to-read book, author Celia Hodent presents a clear overview of the challenges, demands, and rewards of becoming a user experience professional. If this field interests you, there’s no better place to start than with the volume you now hold in your hand."

Alan Cooper, Ancestry Thinker, Software Alchemist, Regenerative Rancher, Author of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

The main objective of What UX is Really About: Introducing a Mindset for Great Experiences is to provide a quick introduction to user experience (UX 101) for students, professionals, or simply curious readers who want to understand this trendy yet commonly misunderstood practice better. Readers will learn that UX is much more than a set of techniques, guidelines, and tools. It is a mindset; a philosophy that takes the perspective of the humans that will use a product. It is about solving their problems, offering them a pleasurable experience, and building a win-win, long-lasting relationship between them and the company developing the product. Above all, it is about improving people’s lives with technology. What UX is Really About is informative, concise, and provides readers with a high-level overview of the science, design, and methodologies of UX.

KEY FEATURES:

• The most approachable and concise introduction book about UX.

• Easy to read and aims to popularize the UX mindset while debunking its main misconceptions.

• Small format size makes it easy to carry around.

• Includes content relatable and meaningful to the readers by taking many examples from everyday life with a conversational and light writing style.

• Tackles the psychology, design, research, process, strategy, and ethics behind offering the best experience with products, systems, or services.

• Includes a glossary.

Celia Hodent holds a PhD in psychology, and is a leading expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to product development, with over 13 years of experience in the development of UX strategy in video game studios, such as Ubisoft, LucasArts, and Epic Games (Fortnite). She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies to help ensure their products are engaging, successful, and respectful of users. Celia conducts workshops and provides guidance on the topics of game-based UX, playful learning ("gamification"), ethics, implicit biases, and inclusion in tech. Celia is the author of The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design and The Psychology of Video Games.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 What Is UX?

Chapter 2 What UX Is Not

Chapter 3 The Science behind UX

Chapter 4 The Process and Methodologies of UX

Chapter 5 Ethics and the UX Mindset

Chapter 6 Conclusion

Implementing physical simulations for real-time games is a complex task that requires a solid understanding of a wide range of concepts from the fields of mathematics, physics, and software engineering. This book is a gems-like collection of practical articles in the area of game physics. Each provides hands-on detail that can be used in practical applications.

The chapters cover topics such as collision detection, particle-based simulations, constraint solving, and soft-body simulation. An introductory section provides the mathematical foundations and offers some background for the problems inherent in successful physics simulation. The contributors write based on their experience in developing tools and runtime libraries either in game companies or middleware houses that produce physics software for games on PCs and consoles.

Game Dev Stories: Interviews About Game Development and Culture Volumes 1 and 2 are a collection of interviews from renowned author David L. Craddock as he explores all corners of the video game industry. Collected from the author's archives, Game Dev Stories gathers conversations with individuals from all corners of the industry: Who they are, the paths they paved, and their contributions to this multibillion-dollar industry. This text offers viewpoints from well-known individuals like John Romero, Tom Hall, and Matt Householder. From artists and writers to programmers and designers, Game Dev Stories offers amazing insights and understanding to what occurs behind the screens of your favorite games and may help inspire future game developers in pursuing their dreams.

You're part of a new venture, an independent gaming company, and you are about to undertake your first development project. The client wants a serious game, one with instructional goals and assessment metrics. Or you may be in a position to green light such a project yourself, believing that it can advance your organization's mission and goals. This book provides a proven process to take an independent game project from start to finish. In order to build a successful game, you need to wear many hats. There are graphic artists, software engineers, designers, producers, marketers - all take part in the process at various (coordinated) stages, and the end result is hopefully a successful game. Veteran game producers and writers (Iuppa and Borst) cover all of these areas for you, with step by step instructions and checklists to get the work done. The final section of the book offers a series of case studies from REAL indy games that have been developed and launched succesfully, and show exactly how the principles outlined in the book can be applied to real world products. The book's associated author web site offers ancillary materials & references as well as serious game demos and presentations.

- Authors are top game designers
- Aspiring game writers and designers must have this complete bible

There are other books about creating video games out there.
Sure, they cover the basics. But The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design goes way beyond the basics. The authors, top game designers, focus on creating games that are an involving, emotional experience for the gamer. Topics include integrating story into the game, writing the game script, putting together the game bible, creating the design document, and working on original intellectual property versus working with licenses. Finally, there's complete information on how to present a visionary new idea to developers and publishers. Got game? Get The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design.

Game Dev Stories: Interviews About Game Development and Culture Volumes 1 and 2 are a collection of interviews from renowned author David L. Craddock as he explores all corners of the video game industry. Collected from the author's archives, Game Dev Stories gathers conversations with individuals from all corners of the industry: Who they are, the paths they paved, and their contributions to this multibillion-dollar industry. This text offers viewpoints from well-known individuals like John Romero, Tom Hall, and Matt Householder. From artists and writers to programmers and designers, Game Dev Stories offers amazing insights and understanding to what occurs behind the screens of your favorite games and may help inspire future game developers in pursuing their dreams.

"Studying Videogames" is the first book to look at videogames as media texts. Written specifically for advanced level/undergraduate students it covers a broad range of games, industry contexts, and research findings. The book challenges conventional media-analysis approaches; sets out the history, present, and future of games; and interrogates claims about their "social effects." Featuring student activities, interviews with key players in the industry, and an extended case study of the Grand Theft Auto cycle, "Studying Videogames" seriously engages with this powerful media.

In depth investigation into a famous series of video games In just three episodes, the Bioshock series managed to score some big points amongst players' hearts. Spiritual successor of System Shock 2, the first Bioshock was an Irrational Games' game, lead by Ken Levine. Set in the 50's ambiance, with Art Deco levels, progression in Bioshock is possible through open and smart game mechanics, inciting the player to be creative and to use its environment. The saga is also filled with many profound and philosophical themes, while involving the player in every one of its aspects, many things granting the triptych of an iconic saga.

The author takes readers on an in-depth walkthrough of the Torque Game Engine---one of the most popular, powerful, and easy to use game engines available today. With clear explanations of how to use Torque to create your own games and detailed discussions of the engine's inner workings, this book is a must read for any programmer interested in making games for fun or profit. It offers step-by-step examples, detailed system descriptions, in-depth references, practical tips, tricks, and more that provide readers all they need to understand the Torque Game Engine. See the Support page on the author's website for a revision of Chapter 15 (Torque Lighting). Downloadable resources are included with the book.

This comprehensive work provides the fundamentals of computer facial animation and brings into sharper focus techniques that are becoming mainstream in the industry. Over the past decade, since the publication of the first edition, there have been significant developments by academic research groups and in the film and games industries leading to the development of morphable face models, performance driven animation, as well as increasingly detailed lip-synchronization and hair modeling techniques. These topics are described in the context of existing facial animation principles.

The second edition provides an up-to-date source for professionals and academic researchers working in the field of facial animation.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of big data in game development as the increasing proliferation of Internet-enabled gaming devices has made it easier than ever before to collect large amounts of player-related data. At the same time, the emergence of new business models and the diversification of the player base have exposed a broader potential audience, which attaches great importance to being able to tailor game experiences to a wide range of preferences and skill levels. This, in turn, has led to a growing interest in data mining techniques, as they offer new opportunities for deriving actionable insights to inform game design, to ensure customer satisfaction, to maximize revenues, and to drive technical innovation. By now, data mining and analytics have become vital components of game development. The amount of work being done in this area nowadays makes this an ideal time to put together a book on this subject. Data Analytics Applications in Gaming and Entertainment seeks to provide a cross section of current data analytics applications in game production. It is intended as a companion for practitioners, academic researchers, and students seeking knowledge on the latest practices in game data mining. The chapters have been chosen in such a way as to cover a wide range of topics and to provide readers with a glimpse at the variety of applications of data mining in gaming. A total of 25 authors from industry and academia have contributed 12 chapters covering topics such as player profiling, approaches for analyzing player communities and their social structures, matchmaking, churn prediction and customer lifetime value estimation, communication of analytical results, and visual approaches to game analytics. This book's perspectives and concepts will spark heightened interest in game analytics and foment innovative ideas that will advance the exciting field of online gaming and entertainment.

Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multi-million-pound industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humour, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization and beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a videogame should be "a series of interesting decisions", Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his ten rules of good game design.

This book presents the most up-to-date coverage of procedural content generation (PCG) for games, specifically the procedural generation of levels, landscapes, items, rules, quests, or other types of content. Each chapter explains an algorithm type or domain, including fractal methods, grammar-based methods, search-based and evolutionary methods, constraint-based methods, and narrative, terrain, and dungeon generation. The authors are active academic researchers and game developers, and the book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of courses on games and creativity; game developers who want to learn new methods for content generation; and researchers in related areas of artificial intelligence and computational intelligence.

The Meaning of Video Games takes a textual studies approach to an increasingly important form of expression in today's culture. It begins by assuming that video games are meaningful-not just as sociological or economic or cultural evidence, but in their own right, as cultural expressions worthy of scholarly attention. In this way, this book makes a contribution to the study of video games, but it also aims to enrich textual studies. Early video game studies scholars were quick to point out that a game should never be reduced to merely its "story" or narrative content and they rightly insist on the importance of studying games as games. But here Steven E. Jones demonstrates that textual studies-which grows historically out of ancient questions of textual recension, multiple versions, production, reproduction, and reception-can fruitfully be applied to the study of video games. Citing specific examples such as Myst and Lost, Katamari Damacy, Halo, Facade, Nintendo's Wii, and Will Wright's Spore, the book explores the ways in which textual studies concepts-authorial intention, textual variability and performance, the paratext, publishing history and the social text-can shed light on video games as more than formal systems. It treats video games as cultural forms of expression that are received as they are played, out in the world, where their meanings get made.

Role-play as a Heritage Practice is the first book to examine physically performed role-enactments, such as live-action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and hobbyist historical reenactment (RH), from a combined game studies and heritage studies perspective. Demonstrating that non-digital role-plays, such as TRPG and LARP, share many features with RH, the book contends that all three may be considered as heritage practices. Studying these role-plays as three distinct genres of playful, participatory and performative forms of engagement with cultural heritage, Mochocki demonstrates how an exploration of the affordances of each genre can be valuable. Showing that a player's engagement with history or heritage material is always multi-layered, the book clarifies that the layers may be conceptualised simultaneously as types of heritage authenticity and as types of in-game immersion. It is also made clear that RH, TRPG and LARP share commonalities with a multitude of other media, including video games, historical fiction and film. Existing within, and contributing to, the fiction and non-fiction mediasphere, these role-enactments are shaped by the same large-scale narratives and discourses that persons, families, communities, and nations use to build memory and identity. Role-play as a Heritage Practice will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, memory, nostalgia, role-playing, historical games, performance, fans and transmedia narratology.

In this compelling book, Graeme Kirkpatrick argues that computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. Tracing the origins of gaming to the revival of play in the 1960s counter culture, Computer Games and the Social Imaginary describes how the energies of that movement transformed computer technology from something ugly and machine-like into a world of colour and fun'. In the process, play with computers became computer gaming a new cultural practice with its own values. From the late 1980s gaming became a resource for people to draw upon as they faced the challenges of life in a new, globalizing digital economy. Gamer identity furnishes a revivified capitalism with compliant and streamlined' workers, but at times gaming culture also challenges the corporations that control game production. Analysing topics such as the links between technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this insightful text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.