Get Ready for the Ride of Your Life! - Strategies for beating every scenario in the game - Tactics for maximizing your theme park's efficiency - Comprehensive statistics on every coaster to help you pick the right ride every time - Detailed information on the new scenario editor and its functions - Theme-based design suggestions, tips, and tricks
Maximum PC is the magazine that every computer fanatic, PC gamer or content creator must read. Each and every issue is packed with punishing product reviews, insightful and innovative how-to stories and the illuminating technical articles that enthusiasts crave.
Over the past two decades, much attention has been given to the new media culture of video games, due to their unique features and pervasive nature among young people. This book critically examines the role of video games in education, arguing that they encourage strategic thinking, planning, communicating, negotiation skills, multi-tasking and group decision-making. It is also observed that video games promote higher levels of attention and concentration among players. The book contains multiple perspectives and presents thought-provoking ideas, innovative approaches, systemic exploration, exemplary and promising efforts, and future-oriented scenarios. The book draws together distinguished researchers, educational and curriculum planners, game creators, educational and social psychologists, and instructional designers to explore how video games can transform the future of education.
"The Video Games Guide is the world's most comprehensive reference book on computer and video games. Each game entry includes the year of release, the hardware it was released on, the name of the developer/publisher, a one to five star quality rating, and a descriptive review of the game itself"--Provided by publisher.
MacLife is the ultimate magazine about all things Apple. It’s authoritative, ahead of the curve and endlessly entertaining. MacLife provides unique content that helps readers use their Macs, iPhones, iPods, and their related hardware and software in every facet of their personal and professional lives.
This collection offers a multi-faceted exploration of transmediations, the processes of transfer and transformation that occur when communicative acts in one medium are mediated again through another. While previous research has explored these processes from a broader perspective, Salmose and Elleström argue that a better understanding is needed of the extent to which the outcomes of communicative acts are modified when transferred across multimodal media toward fostering a better understanding of our knowledge of communication more generally. Building on this imperative as a point of departure, the book details a variety of transmediations, viewed through three different lenses. The first part of the volume looks at narrative transmediations, building on existing work done by Marie-Laure Ryan on transmedia storytelling. The second section focuses less on narratological instances and more on the spatial dynamics of transmediation and the role of embodiment in the process. The final third of the book explores the challenges of transmediating scientific data into narrative format in the context of environmental issues. Taken together, these sections highlight a range of case studies of transmediations and in turn, the complexity and variety of the process, informed by the different methodologies of the different disciplines to which these transmediations belong. This innovative volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multimodality, communication, intermediality, semiotics, and adaptation studies.
This book provides a unique approach to game design with its focus on in-depth analyses of top-selling games. Rather than examine programming or three-dimensional art composition, game designer and journalist Mark H. Walker takes a look at the factors that journalists, gamers, and designers feel made games such as Empire Earth, The Sims, Max Payne, and RollerCoaster Tycoon commercial and critical successes, including quality, topic, game play, cool factor, and marketing and public relations. Additionally, game industry insiders who are outside the technical development loop, as well as over 100 gamers of all ages, share their insights on what they believe makes a successful game. Features: Understand the characteristics of games that have sold well; Learn about the importance of choosing your game's genre and topic wisely; Discover how to make use of marketing and public relations in order to boost your game's sales; Find out how to make your game appeal to the broadest market possible; Study the analyses of top-selling games and discover what made them so successful.
To create a great video game, you must start with a solid game design: A well-designed game is easier to build, more entertaining, and has a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Here to teach you the essential skills of player-centric game design is one of the industry’s leading authorities, who offers a first-hand look into the process, from initial concept to final tuning. Now in its second edition, this updated classic reference by Ernest Adams offers a complete and practical approach to game design, and includes material on concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams analyzes the specific design challenges of all the major game genres and shows you how to apply the principles of game design to each one. You’ll learn how to: Define the challenges and actions at the heart of the gameplay. Write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. Understand the essentials of user interface design and how to define a game’s look and feel. Design for a variety of input mechanisms, including the Wii controller and multi-touch iPhone. Construct a game’s core mechanics and flow of resources (money, points, ammunition, and more). Develop appealing stories, game characters, and worlds that players will want to visit, including persistent worlds. Work on design problems with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies. Make your game accessible to broader audiences such as children, adult women, people with disabilities, and casual players. “Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework I’ve seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and player—one that I’ve found useful for both teaching and research.” — Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Façade
Simulations and the Future of Learning offers trainers andeducators the information and perspective they need to understand,design, build, and deploy computer simulations for this generation.Looking back on his recent first-hand experience as lead designerfor an advanced leadership development simulation, author ClarkAldrich has created a detailed case study of the creation anddeployment of an e-learning simulation that had the developmentcycle of a modern computer game. With this book Aldrich, a leaderin the e-learning field, has created an intriguing roadmap for thefuture of learning while taking us along on an entertainingrollercoaster ride of trial and error, success and failure.Simulations and the Future of Learning outlines the designprinciples and critical decisions around any simulation'scomponents— the interface, the physics and animation systems,the artificial intelligence, and sets and figures. Using thisaccessible resource, readers will learn how to create and evaluatesuccessful simulations that have the following characteristics:authentic and relevant scenarios; applied pressure situations thattap user's emotion and force them to act; a sense of unrestrictedoptions; and replayability.
The authors discuss the four main tasks of game design--imagining a game, defining how it works, describing its internal elements, and explaining it to others.
Games and simulations have emerged as new and effective tools for educational learning by providing interactivity and integration with online resources that are typically unavailable with traditional educational resources. Design, Utilization, and Analysis of Simulations and Game-Based Educational Worlds presents developments and evaluations of games and computer-mediated simulations in order to showcase a better understanding of the role of electronic games in multiple studies. This book is useful for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to gain a deeper comprehension of the relationship between research and practice of electronic gaming and simulations in the educational environment.
"Explores more than one hundred of the latest and most exciting video games, providing information of great interest to gamers and parents. Sorted by genre, each game is presented on a two-page spread including an informative game summary with challenges and hints, a description of key gameplay activities, average game score, parental age information and game complexity. Nine illustrative screen shots show the game in action; and if you like what you see, check out the list of similar games at the bottom of each page"--Publisher's website (viewed April 21, 2008).
