Group items tagged

"At a DICE Summit conversation this morning, Valve cofounder Gabe Newell and TV and movie director J.J. Abrams announced plans to collaborate on future game and movie projects, including potential Portal and Half-Life movies."

"As yet games have not achieved the engagement factor seen in the movie industry, the holy grail for any games designer is to engage, excite and attract their players without running into the downside of addiction. There are two major factors to achieving this goal that need to be considered: a) Does the player "Believe" the game b) The emotional "roller-coaster" ride experienced by the player If these are achieved then the game becomes a XXX game. This paper seeks to investigate the factors affecting these two goals and offers guidelines in order to achieve a successful implementation, avoiding the obvious design pitfalls."

Abstract "Background music is often used to generate a specific atmosphere or to draw our attention to specific events. For example in movies or computer games it is often the accompanying music that conveys the emotional state of a scene and plays an important role for immersing the viewer or player into the virtual environment."

Abstract "In this white paper we introduce Situational Games (sitgames). Situational games are played for a reason, on the spot, and in interac- tion with the actual situation at that spot. We argue that the elementary properties of sitgames make them suitable for rst class serious digital games with quantiable results. Situation provides a point of reference for the assessment of events and discourse, while interaction (gaming) provides the necessary active attitude to actually achieve a change in behaviour. Both are occasions of \the book is better than the movie".

Description in Google Books: "The Video Game Industry provides a platform for the research on the video game industry to draw a coherent and informative picture of this industry. Previously this has been done sparsely through conference papers, research articles, and popular science books. Although the study of this industry is still stigmatized as frivolous and 'only' game oriented, those who grew up with video games are changing things, especially research agendas, the acceptance of studies, and their interpretation. This book describes and defines video games as their own special medium. They are not pinball from which they grew, nor movies which they sometimes resemble. They are a unique form of entertainment based on meaningful interactions between individuals and machine across a growing sector of the population. The Video Game Industry provides a reference foundation for individuals seriously interested in the industry at the academic level. As a result, this book will serve as a reference in curricula associated with video game development for years to come. "

"SmartGlass, a software-based application that extends Xbox 360 experiences onto smartphones and tablets, does shine best when paired with television or movie entertainment. That's where programmers have fleshed out the most whiz-bang features at this time, but game designers have clever plans for this tech, too."

"Video game accessibility may not seem of significance to some, and it may sound trivial to anyone who does not play video games. This assumption is false. With the digitalization of our culture, video games are an ever increasing part of our life. They contribute to peer to peer interactions, education, music and the arts. A video game can be created by hundreds of musicians and artists, and they can have production budgets that exceed modern blockbuster films. Inaccessible video games are analogous to movie theaters without closed captioning or accessible facilities. The movement to have accessible video games is small, unorganized and misdirected. Just like the other battles to make society accessible were accomplished through legislation and law, the battle for video game accessibility must be focused toward the law and not the market."

Excerpt from the 2011 book by Harold Goldberg, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, arguing about the potential for video games, how some scenes in games are executed better than in wel-known films, and showing how movies and pop music were not considered culturally serious until they were, and that the same future exists for games, with the potential coming from such advances in 3D technology or holography.