Category: investigação

David Jones – Videogame Preservation Case Study (uma leitura)

Texto interessante que descreve um cenário que está a surgir um pouco por todo o mundo, a preservação dos videojogos.
“The study of gaming culture is also rapidly growing as an academic field and we play a role in that. Academic attention is beginning to be paid to the structures and narratives of games, their hardware and software and the social practices that surround their creation and consumption. Most games have a relatively short lifespan, but they are cultural objects and each one represents a valuable artefact reflecting the technological, socioeconomic and historical issues of its creation and consumption.”

+infos(fonte): LINK

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Investigação acerca dos videojogos e a nossa saúde..

Um local interessante para pesquisar/investigar acerca dos videojogos e alguns dos factores da nossa saúde :) Interessante ver que nos últimos anos o numero de artigos que se preocupam com o uso de videojogos têm vindo a subir..

+infos(PubMed): LINK

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Video (“videocast”?), acerca da histórias de alguns dos videojogos

PatmanQC

Encontrei um canal porreiro que apresenta umas histórias acerca dos videojogos que saíram no mundo das arcades :) Eu recomendo a história acerca dos seguintes: Moon Patrol, Zaxxon, Spy Hunter, Cabal, Golden Axe, Outrun ou o Ghosts and Goblins

+infos(canal videos): LINK

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Um conversa sobre o sucesso no mundo dos negócios dos videojogos Indie

Um conversa por parte de Tanya X e Richard Atlas, sobre o sucesso no mundo dos negócios dos videojogos Indie.

+infos(video): LINK

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Studying Indie Games na Noruega

Vai decorrer na Noruega, mais concretamente no Department of Art and Media Studies, na universidade de Norwegian University of Science and Technology, um Workshop “Studying Indie Games” onde vão ser apresentados os seguintes temas:

  • Games about Games: On the Forms and Functions of Metareference in Recent Indie Games por Theresa Krampe (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
  • Getting in Touch with Indie Games: Narrative Artefacts and Materiality por Hanns Christian Schmidt (University of Cologne)
  • Exploring Indie Horror Games: On Perturbations in Fran Bow (2015) and Five Nights at FreddyÕs (2014) por Stephanie Lotzow
  • Indie Games and the homo ludens digitalis: Sharpening the Tools of Media Aesthetics por Christopher Lukman (University of MŸnster)
  • The World Is Your PlayDohÓ: Procedural Content Generation and Player Agency in Astroneer (2019) por Bettina Bodi

 

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histórias sobre os videojogos, pela Ars Technica

Para quem gosta de jogos, e no meu caso um bom RTS, tem aqui um conjunto de histórias acerca das várias opções que foram sendo tomadas :)

recomendo para já:
S1-E3, How Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Solved Pathfinding – LINK

S1-E6, How Sid Meier Almost Made Civilization a Real-Time Strategy Game – LINK

+infos(oficial): LINK

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IndieCade Europe

indicade europe

IndieCade Europe um canal com os vídeos de um festival/conferência que decorre na Europa.

+infos(IndieCade Europe): LINK

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The most influential games of the decade

The most influential games of the decade, por Gene Park , Elise Favis e Mikhail Klimentov

“From the introduction of groundbreaking in-game elements to refining how games make money, these are the titles that made the biggest impact on both players and the industry since 2010.

Gaming is now humanity’s favorite form of entertainment, and the medium’s legacy was cemented this past decade. While the early 2000s saw video games honing their ability to tell stories and build worlds in 3-D, this last decade built off those nuts and bolts of game making and propelled the medium toward bigger ambitions like open-world design, virtual and augmented reality and an influx of new genres such as battle-royale multiplayer.

Video games have experienced a rapidly changing landscape in technology, business models (i.e. microtransactions and the sale of seasonal battle passes), and its market which now includes more female gamers and an older average audience. We’ve seen an increase in diversity in games themselves, too, from the varied races and backgrounds for characters in Overwatch to blockbusters like Horizon: Zero Dawn, which features a headstrong female lead.

This past decade achieved several milestones with its wide array of games. Some, like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, are titles that we believe will have a lasting impact on the gaming world for years to come. While these were taken into consideration for this article, we haven’t seen their influence fully resonate just yet, as open-world games take years to polish before they’re shipped and the next generation is still on its way.

So, which games have made the biggest mark on the industry from 2010 through 2019? After much deliberation, here is a list of titles we believe aren’t just quality games, but ones that have shaped the medium and continue to do so in extraordinary ways.

2010 Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Video games are often known for being power fantasies. Even the game that popularized survivor horror, Resident Evil, gave you a rocket launcher and an exploding mansion as its coda. Indie studio Frictional Games dared to make you powerless, with just a lantern in hand to light the way.

It gave you no methods of attack. Hiding in the dark would make you lose your sanity. And don’t even think about glancing at the creatures that stalk you. Amnesia was an unrelenting assault of nightmares. You stand in a flooded basement and see ripples in the water, realizing you’re stuck in there with an invisible horror. All this was a breath of fresh air for a genre whose default dynamic was to slash/shoot/explode your way through terror.

Early this century, publishers were wary of funding survival horror games, and the best franchises were either abandoning the genre (like Resident Evil) or were left abandoned on the roadside (like Silent Hill). Amnesia inspired the phenomenon of horror with a first-person camera perspective, including Alien: Isolation, Outlast and the ill-fated P.T., the “playable teaser” for the infamously canceled Silent Hills directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro.

We are living in Hideo Kojima’s dystopian nightmare. Can he save us?

Amnesia also helped launch the careers of the Internet’s most influential personalities today, most notably PewDiePie. With 102 million subscribers, Felix Kjellberg initially gained viral attention by freaking out over the game, especially the water scene described above. These videos also boosted interest in the game, and publishers noticed. And gamers realized that playing and reacting to horror games was a great way to get views on YouTube. A new celebrity class was born, and the Internet hasn’t been the same since.

2010 Minecraft
What genre is Minecraft? If you call it a survival game, you neglect the sizable portion of its player base which spends its time futzing about in the creative mode, or building elaborate trick doors with redstone. The compromise pick would be to call it a sandbox, but that just takes us back to square one. A sandbox is a blank canvas.

Minecraft represents, in the history of gaming, the ultimate blank canvas. It is The Everything Game by merit of the perfect simplicity of its base formula: building with blocks.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that The Everything Game just appeared, one day, fully formed. One of Minecraft’s most enduring legacies is the early access model. In the immediate wake of Minecraft’s success, gamers enjoyed an early access boomlet, where players got unprecedented say over future development. It’s not hard to draw the line from indie games in early access to the AAA rebranding of the term “games as a service,” discussed a little later in this article with a look at Destiny, this trend’s most apparent beneficiary.

Few games better encapsulate the 2010s than the ever-popular Minecraft. Analogues and echoes of the decade’s most pressing questions can be found somewhere in its story. The game provided an ideal medium for content creators, who would toil and shape and star in productions that elevated them to stardom and turned YouTube into a juggernaut. Minecraft Let’s Plays picked up the torch after Halo 3 machinima died down, arguably spawning streaming culture. Before Fortnite finally pushed its top creators into the pantheon of celebrity, Minecraft laid the foundation.

We see too the darker trends around social media and celebrity. Minecraft’s most famous creator, Markus Persson, better known as Notch, became the prototypical too-rich, too-disconnected-and-too-online guy, emblematic of a decade dominated by Kanye West and Elon Musk.

Other games will come for Minecraft’s crown. Fortnite has made its bid — but absent a base mode with Minecraft’s flexibility, it has leaned wholly into entertainment and brand collaborations. Minecraft is singular. In the context of the 2010′s, it was a forerunner, the canvas on which, in retrospect, some of the biggest challenges and changes of the decade see their clearest expression.

2011 Dark Souls
Eventually, every video game is compared to Dark Souls. Comparing anything to Dark Souls was a pervasive meme, but in every meme lies some truth. Yes, Dark Souls provided the template for the “Souls-like” genre, games that harshly punish you and set you back for failure. But ideas about player progress, online interactions and environmental storytelling eventually made its way to the rest of the industry.

With no direct contact with each other, players could leave messages, warnings and other thoughts to lift others going through the same, harrowing experience, planting the seed for Hideo Kojima’s grand vision for player interaction in this year’s Death Stranding. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the best Star Wars game in the last decade, wasn’t shy about its Souls inspiration. And with its exhausting difficulty, From Software challenged and asked us to redefine the very concepts of “fun” and “reward.” It forced us to earn every inch of progress by learning from our mistakes.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a good game. So why am I so unhappy playing it?

The game’s story seemed impenetrable at first, but years of analysis has revealed a game layered in mythology and meaning. Every item and enemy is placed with intent. Every room and staircase has purpose. And From Software left out just enough details to spur our imagination, inspiring hundreds of Internet bards to tell tales of their own adventures and the meaning they derived from the game. For some, it was an allegory about the will to survive during depression. For others, it was a nihilistic nightmare railing against the aging belief systems of humanity.

But ask anyone who beat it, and they likely won’t talk about the graphics or the sound or the controls. Dark Souls is the decade’s greatest reminder that video games are more than just stories being told: they are personal, lived experiences.

2011 Skyrim
The fifth Elder Scrolls game from Bethesda Studios became the benchmark for role-playing adventures games in the last decade. While it was really just an evolution of the previous four games, fantasy games went mainstream in a way they never had before Skyrim. Skyrim is, for many, the American role playing game’s Final Fantasy 7. And it was the mother of a thousand memes.

Todd Howard, creative director of Skyrim, said the team hoped Skyrim would enter the pantheon of timeless fantasy worlds.

“The game reflects back on the player as much as possible, ‘who would you be, what would you do in that world?’” Howard said to The Post. “That’s the thing games do better than other entertainment.”

And the game was everywhere, with Howard appearing at news conferences for every known tech company to announce a new version of Skyrim.

But Skyrim caused an explosion in the community modding scene. As Bethesda finally moved on to other games, Skyrim’s players kept the game alive by turning dragons into Thomas the Tank Engine or Macho Man Randy Savage. No other offline game was so online.

If Skyrim seems like the game that just won’t die, it’s because its players refuse to let it die.

“It’s incredible to see so many [people] still playing, even after eight years,” Howard said. “We still marvel at what people are able to do with the game. Maybe that’s why it’s endured for so long.”

2012 Candy Crush Saga
Candy Crush Saga’s humble beginning as a Facebook game makes sense, considering no other title on this list has been as disruptive to the business of selling video games. Candy Crush Saga popularized the “freemium” model within the mobile gaming market: Give the core gameplay away free, but charge for peripheral virtual items that either enhance, quicken or beautify the player’s experience. It married online shopping and gaming to the point where the two were indistinguishable. Mobile gaming eventually created “pay to win” games, referring to video games insidiously designed to slow your progression, encouraging you to pay to win. It is one of the industry’s most despised — and most profitable — practices.

Although a single-digit percentage of players were making these purchases, half a billion people had the game just one year after it released. By 2017, it was downloaded by a third of the human race, at 2.7 billion. Thanks to this small percentage of billions, developer King raked in millions a month.

Activision Blizzard’s purchase of Candy Crush Saga’s Swedish developer in 2015, for $5.9 billion, immediately made it the biggest game publisher in the world. And soon the wildly successful freemium model started to creep into the PC and console space, shaping some of the other games on this list.

It helps that the game is colorful, fun and constantly engaging. Dark Souls and Candy Crush represent the two extreme ends of the gamer populace: casual and hardcore gamers. And regardless of whether they’re aware of it, Candy Crush Saga turned millions of unsuspecting people into gamers.

2012 The Walking Dead: Season One
Reviving adventure games is no small feat, but Telltale’s The Walking Dead was one of the major players that helped reinvigorate the genre. The game told the story of young Clementine and her friendship with Lee, a man whose story began in handcuffs until a zombie apocalypse broke out. The two venture out on a heart-wrenching journey together as they attempt to survive a crippling world’s harsh realities.

Before its release, “adventure games are dead” was a common sentiment in the games industry. The genre had its golden era in the 1980s and early ‘90s, but it then quickly dwindled in popularity. Sales of subsequent adventure games often fell flat, including LucasArts’s Grim Fandango, despite its cult following. Telltale’s The Walking Dead, against all odds, changed everything: It spurred similar games like Life is Strange, Firewatch and Oxenfree — some of which were made by former Telltale developers themselves.

Dontnod Entertainment, the creators of Life is Strange, believes that without The Walking Dead its own choice-driven adventure game may have never existed.

“When we worked on the first Life is Strange, games like The Walking Dead and Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain were influences for us,” co-director Raoul Barbet said in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “It especially showed us that there was a will from the player to have some games based on choice and storytelling. So I definitely think that without those games, we might not have ended up creating Life is Strange.”

The Walking Dead was a big hit financially, too, popularizing the release of updates in episodic form for far less money than the typical price tag of $60 for a full game. Within its first 20 days of release, the first episode (five were released in total) sold one million copies. In early 2013, Telltale had earned approximately $40 million in revenue solely from the debut season.

The Walking Dead showed the games industry that there was a hunger for deeper, stronger, and choice-driven storytelling, and it became one of Telltale’s crown jewels — one it tried to replicate time and time again, until the studio closed down in late 2018. The studio isn’t completely gone, however: A new iteration of Telltale is now working with independent studio AdHoc (made up of ex-Telltale designers) to produce the once-cancelled The Wolf Among Us 2.

2014 Destiny
Recent years have introduced the concept of video games as a service or “live service games.” Destiny crystallized that model, despite its early missteps.

When released, reviews of Destiny were harsh. Activities were boring, the loot was inadequate, the story was nonsense. Destiny’s disastrous launch was an omen that these persistent “games as a service” titles will be really hard to not only make, but maintain. Destiny’s early missteps were repeated not only by its competitors, but even by Bungie itself for Destiny 2.

But Bungie would right the ship, which also demonstrated the beauty of the “games as a service” model. The developers responded to community feedback and ultimately chiseled the game into something closer to its original vision of a “shared world shooter.” Seasons changed its evolving and expanding story, and Bungie introduced challenges to give anyone a reason to log in every day.

“I vividly remember first hearing about Destiny as a Bungie employee,” said Luke Smith, game director for Destiny 2. “[Co-founder] Jason Jones said the next game was going to be a hobby, like golf. The hobby construction of a game immediately resonated with me. Community and a return to aspects like what we saw in World of Warcraft in a shooter? That was all I needed to hear to get in.”

Destiny 2 is now free, and remains one of the healthiest, vibrant communities, as it won The Game Award in 2019 for best community support. The story of gaming’s decade is incomplete without Destiny turning its high-profile failure into an ever-moving goal post for anyone else who would dare to mimic Bungie’s aspirations.

2015 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The world of The Witcher 3 is so large it can be almost daunting, but this magnitude set a new standard for open-world design. Its sprawling narrative seamlessly fits inside the world, both through emergent storytelling and scripted moments, as you travel from one village to the next. During development, creator CD Projekt Red looked to Skyrim, which released just a few years beforehand, as inspiration. But they didn’t want to just copy what Skyrim got right.

“We drew inspiration from a whole range of titles, and Skyrim was definitely among them; it was the benchmark for open-world games back then,” The Witcher 3 writer Jakub Szamałek told The Post. “At the same time, while there’s a lot to learn from the folks from Bethesda, we knew we didn’t want to simply copy their game. Most importantly, we put a much greater emphasis on the narrative aspect of the game.”

The Witcher 3 tells the story of Geralt, a powerful monster-killing sorcerer who makes his way through a medieval-inspired land to find a young woman named Ciri. Depending on your choices — and some can be heart wrenching — the world adapts around you. It also features side quests that are as meaningful as the main line quest, bringing depth to every corner of the game’s immense world. Most of all, The Witcher 3 set the high bar for storytelling in subsequent open-world games like last year’s Red Dead Redemption 2, dispelling the notion that open worlds and quality storytelling couldn’t coexist.

“I guess before The Witcher 3, it was commonly assumed that ambitious narratives and open world games don’t mix well: you can have one, but not the other,” Szamałek said. “I think we demonstrated that while it is difficult, as well as time- and resource-consuming, it’s within the realm of possibility. Over the past few years we’ve seen more games that combine sprawling open worlds with well-crafted stories, and if in some small part it is due to the success of The Witcher 3, well, I couldn’t be more pleased, both as a game developer and a gamer.”

2016 Pokémon Go
When discussing the influence of Pokémon Go, it’s best to address the question of augmented reality (AR) upfront, so here goes: Pokémon Go is the clearest evidence of AR’s irrelevance.

When the game came out, the hype was tremendous. With its massive success (over 540 million downloads to date), Pokémon Go was the game that launched a thousand decks, prompting questions from every tech, media and software company as to how AR could factor into its work. And then the hype died down. It is funny, in retrospect, that AR’s killer app is such a capitulation. The game allows you to turn off its AR capabilities, and frankly, is all the better for it. Nobody wants to be the overeager jerk on the subway platform, sweatily pivoting back and forth trying to find the Pidove hiding among the commuters.

Worse yet, Pokémon Go is an obvious and not particularly artful exploitation of a beloved childhood property. We’ll see more and more of this over time (Exhibit A: Niantic’s Harry Potter game). And so its true influence isn’t really anything in the game — neither technology nor license. It’s in what the game demands of you: Pokémon Go is a game that’s meant to be played in between doing other things. You’re at a Starbucks, so might as well check into the Poke Stop. Think you’ve walked enough to hatch your eggs? Better check back in. It’s gaming in the micro-moments of your day.

But now, the twist: So many people, and people you would not expect, still keep up with Pokémon Go. Plenty of folks have found routine and comfort in the game. There’s something concerning, but also weirdly resilient, about finding nourishment in gruel so thin.

Pokémon is everywhere now. Long live Pokémon.

Pokémon Go is the “I’m always listening to podcasts or music because I don’t want to be alone with my own thoughts” of games. It’s unlikely that we’ll see many one-to-one Pokémon Go clones in the future. Instead, we’ll be besieged by games that try to cram themselves into the quiet moments and spaces of everyday life.

2017 Fortnite
No, Fortnite is not on here because it popularized the battle royale genre. Fortnite’s best-known mode is itself a result of the popularization of the genre, thanks to PlayerUnknown’s Battleground. But once Epic Games successfully aped the formula, Fortnite found new ways to keep players engaged. The game was free, but the battle pass system kept players subscribing every few months to log on and garner new rewards. Thanks to several controversies that coincided with the rollout of the game’s battle pass, the loot box practice of offering surprise rewards for real money became a pariah of the industry.

Fortnite offered 100 tiers of rewards for only $10 every few months in a “season,” and players got to see everything they would win along the way. The transparency and low commitment cost kept players coming back and — combined with direct payments for skins and other cosmetics offered outside of the battle pass — suddenly the industry found a winning formula. Soon, everyone from Call of Duty to Halo to Overwatch had a similar battle pass system.

Then there was the spectacle of the game. Every season would end with a global event witnessed by millions over streaming platforms like Twitch, elevating personalities like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Turner “Tfue” Tenney, Soleil “Ewok” Wheeler and many others alongside the game. Both the streamers and Fortnite smashed through screens and into the mainstream — and ultimately helped people like Blevins and Wheeler ink exclusive streaming contracts worth millions.

Over the last three years, Fortnite was everywhere. At one point, it boasted more than 200 million players a month, and became the biggest pop phenomenon of 2018. World Cup goals were celebrated with Fortnite dances. Former first lady Michelle Obama even did a dance. Major sports leagues worried about players not sleeping or training because of the game. It held an in-game concert, and then, this December, an in-game screening of a scene for the new Star Wars movie — the latest pop-culture crossover event for a game that’s also featured Netflix series “Stranger Things” and Marvel’s Avengers movies.

Epic Games declined to discuss Fortnite’s legacy, citing — as its team often does — that it prefers to let the game speak for itself. At the end of the decade, Fortnite is still speaking in volumes.

+infos(origem do texto): LINK 

+infos(washington post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/

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Estudos sobre gamedesign e assuntos relacionados!

A Carnegie Mellon University, mais concretamente o Carnegie Mellon University – Entertainment Technology Center, nos estados unidos tem uma série de documentos LIVRES acerca do design de videojogos. Nesta altura os títulos que encontrei foram:
Beyond Fun de Drew Davidson
Analog Game Studies, volume one, de Emma Leigh Waldron, Evan Torner, Aaron Trammell
Analog Game Studies, volume three, de Emma Leigh Waldron, Aaron Trammell, Evan Torner
Analog Game Studies, volume two, de Aaron Trammell, Emma Leigh Waldron, Evan Torner
Game Design Research de Petri Lankoski, Jussi Holopainen
Game Design Snacks de José P. Zagal
Game Jam Guide de Sara Cornish, Matthew Farber, Alex Fleming, Kevin Miklasz
Game Mods de Erik Champion
Game Research Methods de Petri Lankoski, Staffan Björk
Learning, Education and Games (Vol. 1) de Karen Schrier
Learning, Education and Games (Vol. 2) de Karen Schrier
Ludoliteracy de José P. Zagal
Missions for Thoughtful Gamers de Andrew Cutting
Mobile Media Learning de Seann Dikkers, John Martin, Bob Coulter
Mobile Media Learning de Christopher Holden, Seann Dikkers, John Martin, Breanne Litts
Possible Worlds in Video Games de Antonio José Planells de la Maza
Real Time Research de Seann Dikkers, Eric Zimmerman, Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler
Tabletop de Greg Costikyan, Drew Davidson
The Game Beat de Kyle Orland
Transmedia Storytelling de Max Giovagnoli
Well Played 1.0 de Drew Davidson
Well Played 2.0 de Drew Davidson
Well Played 3.0 de Drew Davidson

+infos(oficial): http://press.etc.cmu.edu/

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Handmade pixels: independent video games and the quest for authenticity

:) hoje é dia para divulgar por aqui livros, mais um: “Handmade pixels: independent video games and the quest for authenticity” de Jesper Juul

Acerca do livro:
“An investigation of independent video games—creative, personal, strange, and experimental—and their claims to handcrafted authenticity in a purely digital medium.

Video games are often dismissed as mere entertainment products created by faceless corporations. The last twenty years, however, have seen the rise of independent, or “indie,” video games: a wave of small, cheaply developed, experimental, and personal video games that react against mainstream video game development and culture. In Handmade Pixels, Jesper Juul examine the paradoxical claims of developers, players, and festivals that portray independent games as unique and hand-crafted objects in a globally distributed digital medium.

Juul explains that independent video games are presented not as mass market products, but as cultural works created by people, and are promoted as authentic alternatives to mainstream games. Writing as a game player, scholar, developer, and educator, Juul tells the story of how independent games—creative, personal, strange, and experimental—became a historical movement that borrowed the term “independent” from film and music while finding its own kind of independence.

Juul describes how the visual style of independent games signals their authenticity—often by referring to older video games or analog visual styles. He shows how developers use strategies for creating games with financial, aesthetic, and cultural independence; discusses the aesthetic innovations of “walking simulator” games; and explains the controversies over what is and what isn’t a game. Juul offers examples from independent games ranging from Dys4ia to Firewatch; the text is richly illustrated with many color images.”

Os conteúdos são:
Introduction
High-Tech Low-Tech Authenticity: The Creation of Independent Style at the Independent Games Festival
A selective History of Independen Games
How to Make and Independent Games
The Aesthetics of the Aesthetics of the Aesthetics of Video Games
Whoe Cares If It’s a Game?
Conclusions: Independent Evermore

+infos(oficial): LINK

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Time and Space in Video Games: A Cognitive-Formalist Approach

Outro livro que gostava de ter acesso: Time and Space in Video Games: A Cognitive-Formalist Approach (Studies of Digital Media Culture, Bd. 9) de Federico Alvarez Igarzábal

“Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accordance with rules. In this study, Federico Alvarez Igarzábal investigates the formal aspects of video games that determine how these changes are produced and sequenced. Theories of time perception drawn from the cognitive sciences lay the groundwork for an in-depth analysis of these features, making for a comprehensive account of time in this novel medium. The first book-length study exclusively dedicated to the topic, it is an indispensable resource for game scholars and game developers alike, while its reader-friendly style makes it readily accessible to the interested layperson.”

os conteúdos são:
Brain time in virtual space
“the state machine and the present moment”
“structuring gametime”
“cause, effect, and player-centric time
Interation in virtual space
“predictive thinking in virtual worlds”
“the goundhog day effect”
“the hybrid narrator”
Through the temporal landscape
“the speed of time”
“marshmallows and bullets”
“Chekhov’s BFG”
Conclusion

+infos(oficial): LINK
+infos(google books): LINK

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The Pyramid of Game Design

Gostava de ter acesso a este livro “The Pyramid of Game Design” de Nicholas Lovell:

“Game design is changing. The emergence of service games on PC, mobile and console has created new expectations amongst consumers and requires new techniques from game makers.

In The Pyramid of Game Design, Nicholas Lovell identifies and explains the frameworks and techniques you need to deliver fun, profitable games. Using examples of games ranging from modern free-to-play titles to the earliest arcade games, via PC strategy and traditional boxed titles, Lovell shows how game development has evolved, and provides game makers with the tools to evolve with it.

Harness the Base, Retention and Superfan Layers to create a powerful Core Loop.
Design the player Session to keep players playing while being respectful of their time.
Accept that there are few fixed rules: just trade-offs with consequences.
Adopt Agile and Lean techniques to “learn what you need you learn” quickly
Use analytics, paired with design skills and player feedback, to improve the fun, engagement and profitability of your games.
Adapt your marketing techniques to the reality of the service game era
Consider the ethics of game design in a rapidly changing world.
Lovell shows how service games require all the skills of product game development, and more. He provides a toolset for game makers of all varieties to create fun, profitable games. Filled with practical advice, memorable anecdotes and a wealth of game knowledge, the Pyramid of Game Design is a must-read for all game developers.

+infos(editora): LINK

 

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Ainda não terminou o ano mas..

A malta da STATISTA libertou mais umas informações acerca de um estudo que fizeram aos dev de videojogos, e não é que o PC aparece ainda como primeira opção e local de desenvolvimento atual :)

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The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software e Graduate Skills and Game-Based Learning

Gostava de ter acesso a este livro “The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software” de Nicoll, Benjamin e Keogh, Brendan

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.”

+infos(oficial): LINK

E a este livro “Graduate Skills and Game-Based Learning – Using Video Games for Employability in Higher Education” por Matthew Barr.

Graduate Skills and Game-Based Learning offers us a new tool for the heart and soul of graduate education, a tool for experimentation, risk-taking, creativity, and using failure as a form of learning. These are just the bits where we need the most help.

+infos(oficial): LINK

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Cecilia D’Anastasio, uma repórter no mundo dos videojogos


Vi esta referência a este video “The Dark Side of the Video Game Industry | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix” de um “comediante/show/serious talking” de alguém que fala um pouco da industria no mercado dos videojogos, recomendo a audição do mesmo, e a reflexão sobre:

game workers united

+infos(GMU oficial): https://www.gameworkersunite.org/

E recomendo a leitura (a quem interessar) desta repórter/escritora de nome Cecilia D’Anastasio. Ela em feito um conjunto de textos que aborda por um lado as mulheres no mundo de desenvolvimento de videojogos e também tem outras abordagens (textos) mais de reflexão sobre o que se tem passado nesta industria, que como as outras, tem os seus grandes problemas.

+infos(pagina oficial): http://www.cecianasta.com/articles

+infos(aceerca da Cecilia D’Anastasio): LINK

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DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association)

“DiGRA is the association for academics and professionals who research digital games and associated phenomena. It encourages high-quality research on games, and promotes collaboration and dissemination of work by its members.”

encontrei esta associação que reúne investigadores acerca de jogos :) .. vamos lá ver no que eles partilham ;)

+infos(oficial): http://www.digra.org/

+infos(biblioteca aberta): http://www.digra.org/digital-library/

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Uma história acerca de jogos Real Time Strategy (RTS)

Encontrei estas referências para vídeos acerca da Historia de los RTS (Estrategia en Tiempo Real) Parte 1 e Parte 2 :) a ver/ouvir em breve..
Link para a parte 1

Link para a parte 2

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Curso online Game Design and Theory (pago)

O autor dos famosos SIMs, desde o SimCity apresenta um curso online “WILL WRIGHT – TEACHES GAME DESIGN AND THEORY” :)

as secções do curso são:
01_The Fundamentals of Game Design
02_Generating Game Concepts
03_Early Prototyping
04_The Relationship Between Story and Games
05_Exploring Player Psychology
06_Design Player-Centered Experiences
07_Develop a Game Language
08_Designing a Visual Aesthetic
09_Game Mechanics
10_Game Demo: Morey
11_Iteration and Scoping
12_Prototyping Case Study: Proxi
13_Playtesting
14_Designing a Sound Aesthetic
15_Pitching Ideas
16_Game Demo: Flooded Market
17_Choosing and Understanding Your Platform
18_System Design
19_Leadership and Collaboration
20_The Future of Game Design
21_Final Thoughts

+infos(loja): LINK

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Curso de Game Design mas sobre “non­digital games” (MIT)

MIT Game Design

A malta do MIT (mais concretamente Philip B. Tan e Richard Eberhardt) têm disponivel online um curso acerca do Game Design. Não é necessário qualquer registo basta apenas aceder ao endereço para se ter acesso a toda a informação.

Acerca do curso:
“This course is built around practical instruction in the design and analysis of non­digital games. It provides students the texts, tools, references, and historical context to analyze and compare game designs across a variety of genres. In teams, students design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games to better understand the interaction and evolution of game rules. Covers various genres and types of games, including sports, game shows, games of chance, card games, schoolyard games, board games, and role­playing games.”

Algumas das referências de livros:
Brathwaite, Brenda, and Ian Schreiber. Challenges for Game Designers: Non­digital Exercises for Video Game Designers. Cengage Learning, 2008. ISBN: 9781584505808.
Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 2nd ed. CRC Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780240809748.
Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262240451.
Costikyan, Greg, and Drew Davidson, eds. Tabletop Analog Game Design. Lulu.com, 2011. ISBN: 9781257870608.

+infos(fonte): LINK

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(investigação)

a ler:
Four Ways to Teach with Video Games por Max Lieberman

a consumir:
https://www.indietoaster.com/en/category/video-games/

a aprender:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6uPzySunA0

 

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Geração Spectrum (muito mais do que uma exposição)

“O Museu da Pedra, numa associação do Município de Cantanhede a um coleccionador de Cantanhede, orgulha-se de trazer a público a coleção “Geração Spectrum” para que seja visitada pelos nossos munícipes e visitantes ao concelho.

Esta exposição, saudosamente intitulada de LOAD “”, homenageia e descreve o aparecimento dos primeiros computadores que na década de 80 começaram a surgir na casa de muitos Portugueses. Mas vai mais além e detalha a importância que Portugal teve nesta revolução tecnológica visto que muitos computadores vendidos por todo o Mundo foram por cá montados ou desenvolvidos.

A exposição será formalmente inaugurada na tarde de dia 27/04 com uma tertúlia a partir das 15h00.

A participação é livre, limitada aos lugares disponíveis.”

O autor, coleccionador e responsável é o João Diogo Ramos

 João Diogo Ramos

o programa de inauguração conta com..

+infos(o portal): www.geracaospectrum.com

+infos(collectorsbridge.com): LINK

+infos(rede social): LINK

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Curso de desenvolvimento de videojogos (em Portugal)

Está a decorrer no IEFP de Vila Nova de Gaia o período de inscrição para o curdo de “Desenvolvimento de videojogos” divido em duas partes: “Design e desenvolvimento” e “Design e programação avançados” durante o período de julho num total de 200 horas.

 

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Uma campanha que vem do outro lado do mundo!

Está a decorrer uma campanha numa plataforma de crowdfunding com o nome “Bem Vindo Ao Game Design – Livro e Cursos Online” por João Victor Santos Pinho Teixeira. O objectivo é o de apoiar a publicação de um livro relacionado com o desenvolvimento de videojogos.

+infos(oficial): LINK 

 

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Um texto interessante acerca do uso de videojogos

Encontrei este post acerca do uso de videojogos e as possíveis mudanças que eles podem trazer. Com o título “Can gaming inspire social change?” por Anjuli Borgonha.

+infos(oficial): LINK

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