Now in full color, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic book takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video games, and examines the elements they share with traditional games such as checkers. At the heart of his exploration, veteran game designer Raph Koster takes a close look at the concept of fun and why it’s the most vital element in any game.Why do some games become boring quickly, while others remain fun for years? How do games serve as fundamental and ...

Few game designers have shared as many lessons learned as Raph Koster. In a quarter-century of writings and talks, he has offered up game design lessons, online community theories, and candid self-evaluation.This first volume of a three-book set of selected essays collects previously written postmortems and many brand new pieces. They are accompanied by historical material such as posts written for players, chat logs, speeches, design sketches, and more. The result is an inspiring ...

Want to design your own video games? Let expert Scott Rogers show you how!If you want to design and build cutting-edge video games but aren’t sure where to start, then the SECOND EDITION of the acclaimed Level Up! is for you! Written by leading video game expert Scott Rogers, who has designed the hits Pac Man World, Maximo and SpongeBob Squarepants, this updated edition provides clear and well-thought out examples that forgo theo...

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...

Over 100 recipes to accelerate the process of learning game design with UDK.Key FeaturesAn intermediate, fast-paced UDK guide for game artistsThe quickest way to face the challenges of game design with UDKAll the necessary steps to get your artwork up and running in gamePart of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possibleBook Descrip...

“McGonigal is a clear, methodical writer, and her ideas are well argued. Assertions are backed by countless psychological studies.” —The Boston Globe“Powerful and provocative . . . McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better.” —San Jose Mercury News“Jane McGonigal's insights have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same exp...

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common ...

“Csikszentmihalyi arrives at an insight that many of us can intuitively grasp, despite our insistent (and culturally supported) denial of this truth. That is, it is not what happens to us that determines our happiness, but the manner in which we make sense of that reality. . . . The manner in which Csikszentmihalyi integrates research on consciousness, personal psychology and spirituality is illuminating.” —Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThe bestsell...

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON AI * FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2023From Dr. Fei-Fei Li, one of TIME's 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL in AI, comes "a powerful plea for keeping humanity at the centre of our latest technological transformation" (Financial Times).Wired called Dr. Fei-Fei Li “one of a tiny group of scientists—a group perhaps small enough to fit around a kitchen table—who are responsible f...

The Law of Justice Online, also known as LJO, is the hottest new VRMMORPG of the season, and office worker Yuta Sasaki is one of the lucky few granted access to the official launch. After some careful research, Yuta is chomping at the bit to start his virtual life as a Tamer, a class that harnesses the powers of wild monsters. Luckily, upon building his character, Yuta manages to land not only his chosen class, but a heap of bonuses to boot! He soon finds, however, that his abilities are n...

**“After reading Mitchell’s guide, you’ll know what you don’t know and what other people don’t know, even though they claim to know it. And that’s invaluable.” —The New York TimesA leading computer scientist brings human sense to the AI bubble.**No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scie...

The never-more-necessary return of one of our most vital and eloquent voices on technology and culture, the author of the seminal Close to the MachineThe last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, a...