From school lunchrooms to the White House press room, video games are an integral part of our popular culture, and the industry behind them touches all aspects of our lives, gamer and non-gamer alike. Business and entertainment, health and medicine, politics and war, social interaction and education, all fall under its influence.Virtual Ascendance tells the story of a formerly fringe enterprise that, when few were paying attention, exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry affe...

Minecraft is a great game to play alone, but it gets even better if you do so with your friends. Whether you are on PvP (player versus player) mode where your goal is to be the last man or in this case, the last Steve standing, or you are just trying to create a "better" world compared to those made by your friends, it would be to your advantage if you take note of the tips mentioned below. From farming tips to how to swiftly take out the enemy, you'll find everything you need below. Let's...

Ready to give your design skills a real boost? This eye-opening book helps you explore the design structure behind most of today's hit video games. You'll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiences - a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players.In clear and approachable prose, design pro Tynan Sylvester also looks at the day-to-day process necessary to keep your project on trac...

Playstation 4 or Xbox One -- Which of the exciting new video game consoles should YOU buy?For the first time ever, entertainment giants Sony and Microsoft are squaring off in a straight-up battle for video game supremacy, as both companies roll out their long awaited systems simultaneously. Hang on to your to your controllers... this is gonna be awesome!The United Gamers Federation has compiled everything you need to know to make an informed buying decision for the release ...

Video games are considered by many to be just entertainment-essentially void of skillful, artistic intervention. But as any gamer knows, there's incredible technical and graphic talent behind even a flickering Gameboy screen.You may have never heard Shigeru Miyamoto's name, but you've probably spent many a lazy afternoon absorbed in his work. Joining Nintendo as a video game designer in the late 1970s, Miyamoto created the powerhouse franchises Super Mario Bros., The L...

Advances in 3D visualization and physics-based simulation technology make it possible for game developers to create compelling, visually immersive gaming environments that were only dreamed of years ago. But today's game players have grown in sophistication along with the games they play. It's no longer enough to wow your players with dazzling graphics; the next step in creating even more immersive games is improved artificial intelligence, or AI.Fortunately, advanced AI game techniques ar...

Augmented Reality (AR) blurs the boundary between the physical and digital worlds. In AR’s current exploration phase, innovators are beginning to create compelling and contextually rich applications that enhance a user’s everyday experiences. In this book, Dr. Helen Papagiannis—a world-leading expert in the field—introduces you to AR: how it’s evolving, where the opportunities are, and where it’s headed.If you’re a designer, developer, entrepreneur, student, educator, business lead...

Get an inside look at the technological, social, and cultural impact of the hugely popular Nintendo Wii!The Nintendo Wii, introduced in 2006, helped usher in a moment of retro-reinvention in video game play. This hugely popular console system, codenamed Revolution during development, signaled a turn away from fully immersive, time-consuming MMORPGs or 40-hour FPS games and back toward family fun in the living room. Players using the wireless motion-sensitive contro...

Over one billion people use the Internet globally. Psychologists are beginning to understand what people do online, and the impact being online has on behaviour. It's making us re-think many of our existing assumptions about what it means to be a social being. For instance, if we can talk, flirt, meet people and fall in love online, this challenges many of psychology's theories that intimacy or understanding requires physical co-presence. "The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology" brings...

Expanding on the work in the volume Multiplayer, this new book explores several other areas related to social gaming in detail. The aim is to go beyond a typical "edited book" concept, and offer a very concise volume with several focal points that are most relevant for the current debate about multiplayer games, both in academia and society. As a result, the volume offers the latest research findings on online gaming, social forms of gaming, identification, gender issues and games...

(This book is available for a pay-as-you-want price at Leanpub. This ebook-only version does not include the videos so it is priced slightly lower than the suggested Leanpub price.)Learn the basics of HTML5 game programming with PhaserLearn how to make a simple top-down shoot 'em up from scratch with the Phaser HTML5 framework in a few hours: from adding sprites, handling player input, processing collisions, up to setting up a boss fight.Th...

This collection explores the relationship between digital gaming and its cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Encompassing key locations for global gaming production and consumption such as Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as increasingly significant sites including Australia and Singapore, the region provides a wealth of divergent examples of the role of gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies of specific games an...