Since the emergence of digital game studies, a number of debates have engaged scholars. The debate between ludic (play) and narrative (story) paradigms remains the one that famously ""never happened."" This collection of new essays critically frames that debate and urges game scholars to consider it central to the field. The contributors examine various digital games, assessing the applicability of play versus narrative approaches or considering the failure of each. The essays consider the broader history of game studies, while applying notions of play and story to recent games in an attempt to foster serious debate and analysis.

Master Agile Product Owner Behaviors that Lead to Marketplace Winners! Organizations pour vast resources into building new products and services. Yet too many are poorly conceived, don't delight (or even satisfy) customers, and fail in the marketplace. The solution is more effective agile product ownership and product management. This book is an expert guide to the behaviors, stances, and practices of world-class agile product development, reflecting deep in-the-trenches experience from world-renowned experts. Chris Lukassen and Robbin Schuurman introduce powerful tools, ideas, and skills for delivering superior products and services, and for avoiding pitfalls that keep you from seeing what customers really need and want. Learn through a start-to-finish, Scrum-based case study, drawing on concepts the authors created for their breakthrough Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner-Advanced (PSPO-A) training course. This innovative approach has already helped thousands of product owners excel--and it can transform the way you create products. Replace negative product owner behaviors with approaches that lead to excellence Represent customers more empathetically and effectively Connect customers, values, and features more coherently Tell better stories, set clearer goals, and create more valuable roadmaps Innovate business models, run better experiments, and scale products more successfully Make more successful decisions, involve the right people, and rely on better data Become a great agile collaborator, across governance, budgeting, contracting, and beyond Influence customers, users, stakeholders, and teams to improve your overall effectiveness Optimize every organizational role related to product ownership Product owners, managers, and team leads will find this guide indispensable along with Agile/Scrum coaches, consultants, and executives wanting to generate more value from product management across the organization.

Have you ever wanted to learn how to program but never found quite the right book to get you started? Programming: A Primer gets you going straight away with the fundamentals of what programming is, basic programming with Python and the fundamental aspects of practical web development. In this book, you'll learn about:Programming: A Primer offers an easy way into coding for anyone with an interest in using technology to solve problems, whether a school or new undergraduate computer science student or a working professional. It gives everyone, regardless of background, the ideal foundations and motivation needed to get to grips with programming.A companion website can be found here: .

Have you ever wanted to learn how to program but never found quite the right book to get you started? Programming: A Primer gets you going straight away with the fundamentals of what programming is, basic programming with Python and the fundamental aspects of practical web development. In this book, you'll learn about:Programming: A Primer offers an easy way into coding for anyone with an interest in using technology to solve problems, whether a school or new undergraduate computer science student or a working professional. It gives everyone, regardless of background, the ideal foundations and motivation needed to get to grips with programming.A companion website can be found here: .

Languages like C#, VB .NET, and Delphi include built-in support for events, and these events become very powerful when they connect the objects and components of a system. Events make it possible for such parts to interact without any coupling. And the resulting parts can be developed and tested individuallywhich keeps the code clean and simple.

Component-based development (CBD) is an extension of object-oriented programming. CBD does away with the language and vendor-specific limitations of OOP, and makes software reuse more practical and accelerates the development process. Event-based programming is the next logical step in CBD, and makes components more reusable due to their decoupled nature. But event-based systems are easier to develop, which means theyre cheaper and more reliable than traditional OOP or CBD systems.

This book teaches you how to develop software based on parts that interact primarily through an event mechanism. Youll learn how to use events in many different situations, to solve recurring development problems without coupling. The book introduces Signal Wiring Diagram, a novel form of software diagram similar to the circuit diagrams used by hardware designers. The book concludes with a series of case studies, incorporating all featured concepts. In a nutshell, youll want to pick up a copy of this book because it Provides source code in both C# and VB .NET Shows how to use an event-based paradigm to reduce or completely eliminate coupling between classes and components Describes components, including coordinators, workers, builders, binders, and routers Contains three complete case studies that model concepts being used to design small, medium, and largesystems

As science becomes increasingly computational, the limits of what is computationally tractable become a barrier to scientific progress. Many scientific problems, however, are amenable to human problem solving skills that complement computational power. By leveraging these skills on a larger scale - beyond the relatively few individuals currently engaged in scientific inquiry - there is the potential for new scientific discoveries. This book presents a framework for mapping open scientific problems into video games. The game framework combines computational power with human problem solving and creativity to work toward solving scientific problems that neither computers nor humans could previously solve alone. To maximize the potential contributors to scientific discovery, the framework designs a game to be played by people with no formal scientific background and incentivizes long- term engagement with a myriad of collaborative on competitive reward structures. The framework allows for the continual coevolution of the players and the game to each other: as players gain expertise through gameplay, the game changes to become a better tool. The framework is validated by being applied to proteomics problems with the video game Foldit. Foldit players have contributed to novel discoveries in protein structure prediction, protein design, and protein structure refinement algorithms. The coevolution of human problem solving and computer tools in an incentivized game framework is an exciting new scientific pathway that can lead to discoveries currently unreachable by other methods.

This book introduces the basics in game usability and overall game UX mindset and techniques, as well as looking at current industry best practices and trends. Fully updated for its second edition, it includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for UX and communicate results to higher-ups effectively. The book begins with an introduction to UX strategy considerations for games, and to UX design, before moving on to cover core user research and usability techniques as well as how to fit UX practices into the business process. It provides considerations of player differences and offers strategies for inclusion as well as chapters that give platform and context specific advice. With a wealth of new interviews with industry leaders and contributions from the very best in game UX, the book also includes brand new chapters on: Accessibility Mobile Game Usability Data Science Virtual and Augmented Reality Esports This book will be vital reading for all professional game developers and game UX advocates, as well as those students aspiring to work in game development and game UX.

Heterogeneous Computing with OpenCL 2.0 teaches OpenCL and parallel programming for complex systems that may include a variety of device architectures: multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and fully-integrated Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). This fully-revised edition includes the latest enhancements in OpenCL 2.0 including: * Shared virtual memory to increase programming flexibility and reduce data transfers that consume resources * Dynamic parallelism which reduces processor load and avoids bottlenecks * Improved imaging support and integration with OpenGL Designed to work on multiple platforms, OpenCL will help you more effectively program for a heterogeneous future. Written by leaders in the parallel computing and OpenCL communities, this book explores memory spaces, optimization techniques, extensions, debugging and profiling. Multiple case studies and examples illustrate high-performance algorithms, distributing work across heterogeneous systems, embedded domain-specific languages, and will give you hands-on OpenCL experience to address a range of fundamental parallel algorithms.

Create applications for all major smartphone platforms

Creating applications for the myriad versions and varieties of mobile phone platforms on the market can be daunting to even the most seasoned developer. This authoritative guide is written in such as way that it takes your existing skills and experience and uses that background as a solid foundation for developing applications that cross over between platforms, thereby freeing you from having to learn a new platform from scratch each time. Concise explanations walk you through the tools and patterns for developing for all the mobile platforms while detailed steps walk you through setting up your development environment for each platform. Covers all the major options from native development to web application developmentDiscusses major third party platform development acceleration tools, such as Appcelerator and PhoneGapZeroes in on topics such as developing applications for Android, IOS, Windows Phone 7, and Blackberry

"Professional Mobile Cross Platform Development" shows you how to best exploit the growth in mobile platforms, with a minimum of hassle.

You don't have to accept slow Ruby or Rails performance. In this comprehensive guide to Ruby optimization, you'll learn how to write faster Ruby code--but that's just the beginning. See exactly what makes Ruby and Rails code slow, and how to fix it. Alex Dymo will guide you through perils of memory and CPU optimization, profiling, measuring, performance testing, garbage collection, and tuning. You'll find that all those "hard" things aren't so difficult after all, and your code will run orders of magnitude faster. This is the first book ever that consolidates all the Ruby performance optimization advice in one place. It's your comprehensive guide to memory optimization, CPU optimization, garbage collector tuning, profiling, measurements, performance testing, and more. You'll go from performance rookie to expert. First, you'll learn the best practices for writing Ruby code that's easy not only on the CPU, but also on memory, and that doesn't trigger the dreaded garbage collector. You'll find out that garbage collection accounts for 80% of slowdowns, and often takes more than 50% of your program's execution time.And you'll discover the bottlenecks in Rails code and learn how selective attribute loading and preloading can mitigate the performance costs of ActiveRecord. As you advance to Ruby performance expert, you'll learn how profile your code, how to make sense out of profiler reports, and how to make optimization decisions based on them. You'll make sure slow code doesn't creep back into your Rails application by writing performance tests, and you'll learn the right way to benchmark Rails. And finally, you'll dive into the Ruby interpreter internals to really understand why garbage collection makes Ruby so slow, and how you can tune it up. What You Need: Some version of Ruby. The advice from this book applies to all modern Ruby versions from 1.9 to 2.2. 80% of the material will also be useful for legacy Ruby 1.8 users, and there is 1.8-specific advice as well.

When traditional web development techniques don't cut it, try React. Use React to create highly interactive web pages faster and with fewer errors. With a little JavaScript experience under your belt, you'll be up and running in no time creating dynamic web applications. Craft isolated components that make your apps easier to develop and maintain, with plenty of guidance on best practices. Set up automated tests, and make pages render fast for your users. See how to use your React skills to integrate with other front-end technologies when needed. Dive right into React by defining components, the basic building blocks of a React application. Integrate modern JavaScript language features such as classes and arrow functions in your app. Analyze the relationships in your data to isolate state, and sync the data model with what your users see. Once you're familiar with how a React application works, organize your code base with modules. Configure a production build and deliver your app as efficiently as possible with Webpack. Master testing with React-specific advice and tools to catch the most bugs with the least amount of code. Learn the basics of the Redux library. Define actions and manage an immutable central state with reducers, then connect Redux to your React components to build even larger and more complex interfaces. Package your React code as a standalone widget so anyone can use it in their own applications. Reuse existing JavaScript code in your React components, and build a new React view on top of an existing data model shared with a legacy application. When you finish this book, you'll be well on your way to solving your front-end problems with React. What You Need: Node.js 6.x or later, and a modern web browser

This is the first of two comprehensive volumes that provide a thorough and multi-faceted research into the emerging field of augmented reality games and consider a wide range of its major issues. These first ever research monographs on augmented reality games have been written by a team of 70 leading researchers, practitioners and artists from 20 countries. In Volume I, the phenomenon of the Pokemon GO game is analysed in theoretical, cultural and conceptual contexts, with emphasis on its nature and the educational use of the game in children and adolescents. Game transfer phenomena, motives for playing Pokemon GO, players' experiences and memorable moments, social interaction, long-term engagement, health implications and many other issues raised by the Pokemon GO game are systematically examined and discussed. Augmented Reality Games I is essential reading not only for researchers, practitioners, game developers and artists, but also for students (graduates and undergraduates) and all those interested in the rapidly developing area of augmented reality games.

Computer games represent a significant software application domain for innovative research in software engineering techniques and technologies. Game developers, whether focusing on entertainment-market opportunities or game-based applications in non-entertainment domains, thus share a common interest with software engineers and developers on how to best engineer game software. Featuring contributions from leading experts in software engineering, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to computer game software development that includes its history as well as emerging research on the interaction between these two traditionally distinct fields. An ideal reference for software engineers, developers, and researchers, this book explores game programming and development from a software engineering perspective. It introduces the latest research in computer game software engineering (CGSE) and covers topics such as HALO (Highly Addictive, sociaLly Optimized) software engineering, multi-player outdoor smartphone games, gamifying sports software, and artificial intelligence in games. The book explores the use of games in software engineering education extensively. It also covers game software requirements engineering, game software architecture and design approaches, game software testing and usability assessment, game development frameworks and reusability techniques, and game scalability infrastructure, including support for mobile devices and web-based services.

In social sciences the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is an ever growing phenomenon. Emanating from the need of knowledge about society and economy, we are constantly striving to create ideas and methods for a better use of information. This study analyses different practices such as business process management, business process modelling or relationship marketing. It also discusses the use of ICT in a variety of examples taken from different fields such as education, web clipping, public safety, tactic knowledge, or protection of intellectual property and offers an outline of state-of-the-art applications of ICT in social sciences.

Computational Social Science is an interdisciplinary field where social science questions are investigated with modern computational tools. The book provides insight into different social problems and calls for new practices offered by computational social science, discussing methods for efficient management of complex engineering design, cybersecurity and the prediction of malicious threads of information systems. It is also a study of awareness of privacy in social networks, prosodic modelling for speech synthesis, the structure of co-occurrence networks and cloud applications. The authors propose an extension of synergy models in IMC environment to n-communication channels, and identification and evaluation of knowledge management through information system analysis.

One side-effect of having made great leaps in computing over the last few decades, is the resulting over-abundance in software tools created to solve the diverse problems. Problem solving with computers has, in consequence, become more demanding; instead of focusing on the problem when conceptualizing strategies to solve them, users are side-tracked by the pursuit of even more programming tools (as available).Computer-Based Problem Solving Process is a work intended to offer a systematic treatment to the theory and practice of designing, implementing, and using software tools during the problem solving process. This method is obtained by enabling computer systems to be more Intuitive with human logic rather than machine logic. Instead of software dedicated to computer experts, the author advocates an approach dedicated to computer users in general. This approach does not require users to have an advanced computer education, though it does advocate a deeper education of the computer user in his or her problem domain logic.This book is intended for system software teachers, designers and implementers of various aspects of system software, as well as readers who have made computers a part of their day-today problem solving.

Complete, trusted preparation for the Java Programmer II exam OCP: Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 8 Programmer II Study Guide is your comprehensive companion for preparing for Exam 1Z0-809 as well as upgrade Exam 1Z0-810 and Exam 1Z0-813. With full coverage of 100% of exam objectives, this invaluable guide reinforces what you know, teaches you what you don't know, and gives you the hands-on practice you need to boost your skills. Written by expert Java developers, this book goes beyond mere exam prep with the insight, explanations and perspectives that come from years of experience. You'll review the basics of object-oriented programming, understand functional programming, apply your knowledge to database work, and much more. From the basic to the advanced, this guide walks you through everything you need to know to confidently take the OCP 1Z0-809 Exam and upgrade exams 1Z0-810 and 1Z0-813. Java 8 represents the biggest changes to the language to date, and the latest exam now requires that you demonstrate functional programming competence in order to pass. This guide has you covered, with clear explanations and expert advice. * Understand abstract classes, interfaces, and class design * Learn object-oriented design principles and patterns * Delve into functional programming, advanced strings, and localization * Master IO, NIO, and JDBC with expert-led database practice If you're ready to take the next step in your IT career, OCP: Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 8 Programmer II Study Guide is your ideal companion on the road to certification.

Over the last three decades, Professor Peter Cheung has made significant contributions to a variety of areas, such as analogue and digital computer-aided design tools, high-level synthesis and hardware/software codesign, low-power and high-performance circuit architectures for signal and image processing, and mixed-signal integrated-circuit design.However, the area that has attracted his greatest attention is reconfigurable systems and their design, and his work has contributed to the transformation of this important and exciting discipline. This festschrift contains a unique collection of technical papers based on presentations at a workshop at Imperial College London in May 2013 celebrating Professor Cheung's 60th birthday. Renowned researchers who have been inspired and motivated by his outstanding research in the area of reconfigurable systems are brought together from across the globe to offer their latest research in reconfigurable systems. Professor Cheung has devoted much of his professional career to Imperial College London, and has served with distinction as the Head of Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering for several years. His outstanding capability and his loyalty to Imperial College and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering are legendary. Professor Cheung has made tremendous strides in ensuring excellence in both research and teaching, and in establishing sound governance and strong financial endowment; but above all, he has made his department a wonderful place in which to work and study.

Are you interested in learning to program computers? PROGRAMMING FOR THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNER, SECOND EDITION is a friendly guide that will teach you the fundamentals of computer programming through the hands-on (and fun!) development of computer games. This book teaches programming using Just BASIC, a free, easy-to-learn software that lets you create programs for computers running Windows. Popular author and educator Jerry Ford, Jr., teaches you fundamental programming principles and gives you a broad view of computer programming and its many possibilities. As you work through this book, you will not only learn the basics of programming, but you'll also build a foundation from which you can advance into other programming languages with confidence. Get started programming today with PROGRAMMING FOR THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNER, SECOND EDITION.

In this book, Graham Mayeda demonstrates how Watsuji Tetsuro and Kuki Shuzo, two twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, criticize and interpret Heideggerian philosophy, articulating traditional Japanese ethics in a modern idiom.

The complete off-the-shelf resource for delivering the compulsory core units of the new BTEC Nationals.Used alongside the students' text, 'BTEC Nationals - IT Practitioners', this pack offers a complete suite of lecturer support material and photocopiable handouts for the compulsory core units of the new BTEC National specifications, for National Awards, Certificates and Diplomas. The authors provide all the resources needed by a busy lecturer, as well as a bank of student-centred practical work and revision material, which will enable students to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding they require. Officially endorsed by Edexcel, the pack is freely photocopiable within the purchasing institution, as well as supplied in its entirety on CD Rom, and will include: * Worksheets to support and develop work in the students' book * Planned projects which will enable students to display a wide range of skills and use their own initiative * Assessment materials * Reference material for use as hand-outs * Background on running the new HNC/HND courses * Tutor's notes supporting activities in the students' book and resource pack

The Handbook of Logic in Computer Science is a multi-volume work covering all the major areas of the application of logic to theoretical computer science. It comprises six volumes, each containing five or six chapters giving an in-depth overview of one of the major topics in the field. The handbook is the result of many years of cooperative effort by eminent researchers in the area, and will no doubt be the standard reference work in logic and theoretical computer science for years to come. Volume 4: Semantic Modelling covers the fundamental topics of semantic modelling in logic and computation. Contents include models for concurrency, concrete process algebra, correspondence between operational and denotational semantics, effective algebras, and abstract interpretation.

Your software needs to leverage multiple cores, handle thousands of users and terabytes of data, and continue working in the face of both hardware and software failure. Concurrency and parallelism are the keys, and Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks equips you for this new world. See how emerging technologies such as actors and functional programming address issues with traditional threads and locks development. Learn how to exploit the parallelism in your computer's GPU and leverage clusters of machines with MapReduce and Stream Processing. And do it all with the confidence that comes from using tools that help you write crystal clear, high-quality code. This book will show you how to exploit different parallel architectures to improve your code's performance, scalability, and resilience. Learn about the perils of traditional threads and locks programming and how to overcome them through careful design and by working with the standard library. See how actors enable software running on geographically distributed computers to collaborate, handle failure, and create systems that stay up 24/7/365. Understand why shared mutable state is the enemy of robust concurrent code, and see how functional programming together with technologies such as Software Transactional Memory (STM) and automatic parallelism help you tame it. You'll learn about the untapped potential within every GPU and how GPGPU software can unleash it. You'll see how to use MapReduce to harness massive clusters to solve previously intractible problems, and how, in concert with Stream Processing, big data can be tamed. With an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the different models and hardware architectures, you'll be empowered to tackle any problem with confidence. What You Need: The example code can be compiled and executed on *nix, OS X, or Windows. Instructions on how to download the supporting build systems are given in each chapter.

Chaocan Xiang is an Associate Professor at the College of Computer Science, Chongqing University, China. He received his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from Nanjing Institute of Communication Engineering, China, in 2009 and 2014, respectively. He subsequently studied at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2017 (supervised by Prof. Kang G. Shin, IEEE Life Fellow, ACM Fellow). His research interests mainly include UAVs/vehicle-based crowdsensing, urban computing, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and big data. He has published more than 50 papers, including over 20 in leading venues such as IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE INFOCOM, and ACM Ubicomp. He has received a best paper award and a best poster award at two international conferences. Panlong Yang is a full Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. He has been supported by the NSF Jiangsu through a Distinguished Young Scholarship and was honored as a CCF Distinguished Lecturer in 2015. He has published over 150 papers, including 40 in CCF Class A. Since 2012, he has supervised 14 master’s and Ph.D. candidates, including two excellent dissertation winners in Jiangsu Province and the PLA education system. He has been supported by the National Key Development Project and NSFC projects. He has nominated by ACM MobiCom 2009 for the best demo honored mention awards, and won best paper awards at the IEEE MSN and MASS. He has served as general chair of BigCom and TPC chair of IEEE MSN. In addition, he has served as a TPC member of INFOCOM (CCF Class A) and an associate editor of the Journal of Communication of China. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE (2019). Fu Xiao received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Technology from the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, in 2007. He is currently a Professor and Dean of the School of Computer, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He has authored more than 60 papers in respected conference proceedings and journals, including IEEE INFOCOM, ACM Mobihoc, IEEE JASC, IEEE/ACM ToN, IEEE TPDS, IEEE TMC, etc. His main research interest is in the Internet of Things. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery. Xiaochen Fan received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2013, and his Ph.D. from the University of Technology Sydney, NSW, Australia, in 2021. His research interests include mobile/pervasive computing, deep learning, and Internet of Things (IoT). He has published over 25 peer-reviewed papers in high-quality journals and IEEE/ACM international conference proceedings.

A one-stop reference for the latest JavaScript features and techniques JavaScript: The New Toys explores the newest features of the world's most popular programming language while also showing you how to track what's coming and get involved. Author T.J. Crowder, the top JavaScript contributor on Stack Overflow, walks you through the significant changes and additions to the language along with key tools and techniques to help you get up to date with modern JavaScript. Beginning with a high-level overview of new features, you'll learn what's new, how new features come about, who's responsible, how to stay on top of what's coming next, and how to use new features even in old browsers. The bulk of the coverage consists of point-by-point "just the facts" explanations of each new feature, plus expert recommendations for tweaking old habits to integrate new techniques. Each feature is introduced with the problem it solves and the details of how it works including brief source code demonstrating syntax and behavior. With comprehensive coverage of the new features and techniques, this book provides an invaluable resource for web programmers everywhere. Modern JavaScript is a fast-changing language, both in terms of what's officially specified and what browsers support at any given time. This book addresses all of the new and updated features of ES2015 and ES2016 plus the finalized features of ES2017 so far. * Discover the unexpected advantages of the new let and const declarations * Learn how classes solve common problems, and get details on syntax * Delve into the use and mechanics of arrow functions and lexical this * Adopt new best practices for using Promises, and avoid common pitfalls All major browsers support JavaScript, but support for individual functions and releases is all over the map. JavaScript: The New Toys shows you what's new, how to use it, but how to keep incomplete browser support from holding you back.