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Games Creatures Play

Author : Charlaine Harris

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 362 pages

File Size : 47,95 MB

Release : 2014-04-01

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1101638877

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Book Description

Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner are your announcers for this collection of the most peculiar plays ever made—including a story featuring Sookie Stackhouse and Manfred Bernardo… Sports fans live and die by their teams’ successes and failures—though not literally. But these fifteen authors have written spirited—in more ways than one—tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched. This anthology includes tales of unusual athletics by: JAN BURKE • DANA CAMERON • ADAM-TROY CASTRO • BRENDAN DuBOIS • CHARLAINE HARRIS • TONI L. P. KELNER • CAITLIN KITTREDGE • WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER • ELLEN KUSHNER • MERCEDES LACKEY • JOE R. LANSDALE • LAURA LIPPMAN • SEANAN McGUIRE • BRANDON SANDERSON • SCOTT SIGLER



Monster of the Week

Author :

Publisher :

Page : pages

File Size : 46,27 MB

Release : 2015-01-27

Category :

ISBN : 9781613170922

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Book Description

Most people don't believe in monsters, but you know the truth. They're real, and it's your task to bring them down. This revised edition of Monster of the Week brings that adventure to life.Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for 3-5 people. Hunt high school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of Supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully.This book contains everything you need to tackle Bigfoot, collar a chupacabra, and drive away demons. In this revised edition, you'll find:



Playing Nature

Author : Alenda Y. Chang

Publisher : U of Minnesota Press

Page : 293 pages

File Size : 50,88 MB

Release : 2019-12-31

Category : Games & Activities

ISBN : 145296226X

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Book Description

A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.



Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

Author : R.V. Kelly 2

Publisher : McFarland

Page : 209 pages

File Size : 24,18 MB

Release : 2014-11-04

Category : Games & Activities

ISBN : 0786455284

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Book Description

This book is about the fastest growing form of electronic game in the world--the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). The evolution of these self-contained three-dimensional virtual worlds, often inhabited by thousands of players, is described here. This work also delves into the psychology of the people who inhabit the game universe and explores the development of the unique cultures, economies, moral codes, and slang in these virtual communities. It explains how the games are built, the spin-offs that players create to enhance their game lives, and peeks at the future of MMORPGs as they evolve from a form of amusement to an educational, scientific, and business tool. Based on hundreds of interviews over a three-year period, the work explores reasons people are attracted to and addicted to these games. It also surveys many existing and upcoming games, identifying their unique features and attractions. Two appendices list online addiction organizations and MMORPG information sites.



Taro Gomi's Play All Day

Author : Taro Gomi

Publisher : Chronicle Books

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 45,99 MB

Release : 2010-09-01

Category : Juvenile Nonfiction

ISBN : 9780811871211

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Book Description

Taro Gomi invites children to punch out more than 60 fantastic playthings, including ring-toss games, finger puppets, boxes, picture frames, a zoo's worth of animals, and more! Packed with Gomi's fun, accessible artwork and a delightful variety of games and toys, this book will appeal to children of all ages, engaging their imaginations and entertaining them all day long.



Rules of Play

Author : Katie Salen Tekinbas

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 680 pages

File Size : 23,37 MB

Release : 2003-09-25

Category : Computers

ISBN : 9780262240451

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Book Description

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.



Playing Smart

Author : Julian Togelius

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 188 pages

File Size : 24,41 MB

Release : 2019-01-15

Category : Games & Activities

ISBN : 0262350157

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Book Description

THE FUTURE OF GAME DESIGN IN THE AGE OF AI: Can games measure intelligence? And how will artificial intelligence inform games of the future? In Playing Smart, Julian Togelius explores the connections between games and intelligence to offer a new vision of future games and game design. Video games already depend on AI. We use games to test AI algorithms, challenge our thinking, and better understand both natural and artificial intelligence. In the future, Togelius argues, game designers will be able to create smarter games that make us smarter in turn, applying advanced AI to help design games. In this book, he tells us how. Games are the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence. In 1948, Alan Turing, one of the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence, handwrote a program for chess. Today we have IBM’s Deep Blue and DeepMind’s AlphaGo, and huge efforts go into developing AI that can play such arcade games as Pac-Man. Programmers continue to use games to test and develop AI, creating new benchmarks for AI while also challenging human assumptions and cognitive abilities. Game design is at heart a cognitive science, Togelius reminds us—when we play or design a game, we plan, think spatially, make predictions, move, and assess ourselves and our performance. By studying how we play and design games, Togelius writes, we can better understand how humans and machines think. AI can do more for game design than providing a skillful opponent. We can harness it to build game-playing and game-designing AI agents, enabling a new generation of AI-augmented games. With AI, we can explore new frontiers in learning and play.



Handbook of Research on Emerging Trends and Applications of Machine Learning

Author : Solanki, Arun

Publisher : IGI Global

Page : 674 pages

File Size : 15,58 MB

Release : 2019-12-13

Category : Computers

ISBN : 1522596453

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Book Description

As today’s world continues to advance, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field that has become a staple of technological development and led to the advancement of numerous professional industries. An application within AI that has gained attention is machine learning. Machine learning uses statistical techniques and algorithms to give computer systems the ability to understand and its popularity has circulated through many trades. Understanding this technology and its countless implementations is pivotal for scientists and researchers across the world. The Handbook of Research on Emerging Trends and Applications of Machine Learning provides a high-level understanding of various machine learning algorithms along with modern tools and techniques using Artificial Intelligence. In addition, this book explores the critical role that machine learning plays in a variety of professional fields including healthcare, business, and computer science. While highlighting topics including image processing, predictive analytics, and smart grid management, this book is ideally designed for developers, data scientists, business analysts, information architects, finance agents, healthcare professionals, researchers, retail traders, professors, and graduate students seeking current research on the benefits, implementations, and trends of machine learning.



The Art of Game Design

Author : Jesse Schell

Publisher : CRC Press

Page : 522 pages

File Size : 43,65 MB

Release : 2008-08-04

Category : Art

ISBN : 0123694965

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Book Description

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.



Biologically Inspired Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games

Author : Charles, Darryl

Publisher : IGI Global

Page : 278 pages

File Size : 18,76 MB

Release : 2007-11-30

Category : Computers

ISBN : 159140648X

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Book Description

"This book examines modern artificial intelligence to display how it may be applied to computer games. It spans the divide that exists between the academic research community working with advanced artificial intelligence and the games programming community which must create and release new and interesting games, creating an invaluable collection supporting both technological research and the gaming industry"--Provided by publisher.