Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) have become a new genre of "play culture," integrating communication and entertainment in a playful, computer-mediated environment that evolves through user interaction. This book comprehensively reviews the origins, players, and social dynamics of MOGs, as well as six major empirical research methods used in previous works to study MOGs (i.e., observation/ethnography, survey/interviews, content and discourse analysis, experiments, network analysis, and case...

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 ...

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...

With the help of the Internet and accompanying tools, creating and publishing online maps has become easier and rich with options. A city guide web site can use maps to show the location of restaurants, museums, and art venues. A business can post a map for reaching its offices. The state government can present a map showing average income by area.Developers who want to publish maps on the web often discover that commercial tools cost too much and hunting down the free tools scattered acro...

This tutorial contains all-important information about how to use your Raspberry Pi to develop any application you like. It is broken down into several action-packed projects, each containing easy-to-follow steps, just to show you how easy and fun computer programming can be! If you are someone with a big imagination and would like to dive straight into the realm of technology and computers, then this is the book for you. With only a Raspberry Pi and no prior experience required, you will ...

Search is not just a box and ten blue links. Search is a journey: an exploration where what we encounter along the way changes what we seek. But in order to guide people along this journey, designers must understand both the art and science of search.In Designing the Search Experience, authors Tony Russell-Rose and Tyler Tate weave together the theories of information seeking with the practice of user interface design. - Understand how people search, and how the concepts of information see...

You understand the basic concepts of game design: gameplay, user interfaces, core mechanics, character design, and storytelling. Now you want to know how to apply them to the role-playing game genre. This focused guide gives you exactly what you need. It walks you through the process of designing for the role-playing game genre and shows you how to use the right techniques to create fun and challenging experiences for your players.

A step-by-step, example-based guide to building immersive 3D games on the Web using the Three.js graphics library.This book is for people interested in programming 3D games for the Web. Readers are expected to have basic knowledge of JavaScript syntax and a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. This book will be useful regardless of prior experience with game programming, whether you intend to build casual side projects or large-scale professional titles.

You understand the basic concepts of game design: gameplay, user interfaces, core mechanics, character design, and storytelling. Now you want to know how to apply them to the adventure game genre. This focused guide gives you exactly what you need. It walks you through the process of designing for the adventure game genre and shows you how to use the right techniques to create fun and challenging experiences for your players.

Data Scientists at Work is a collection of interviews with sixteen of the world's most influential and innovative data scientists from across the spectrum of this hot new profession. "Data scientist is the sexiest job in the 21st century," according to the Harvard Business Review. By 2018, the United States will experience a shortage of 190,000 skilled data scientists, according to a McKinsey report.Through incisive in-depth interviews, this book mines the what, h...

Learn Unity Programming with UnityScript is your step-by-step guide to learning to make your first Unity games using UnityScript. You will move from point-and-click components to fully customized features. You need no prior programming knowledge or any experience with other design tools such as PhotoShop or Illustrator - you can start from scratch making Unity games with what you'll learn in this book.Through hands-on examples of common game patterns, you'll learn and appl...

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...