Becker Video Game Design

Ars Technica shares highlights from the Art of Video Games exhibit

"The past and future of videogames, part of the opening festivities for the Smithsonian American Art Museum's "Art of Video Games" exhibit."

proposal and accompanying conference paper

Abstract: "Many recent studies have shown that educational games are effective tools for learning. Nevertheless, it is hard to find any practical guidelines for the creation of such games. The goal of this paper is to develop such guidelines for the creation of educational adventure games."

RTF (Real Time Framework) with one of the cases implementation of multiplayer online games on multiple servers

Compiled by the Serious Games Association and offering free listings in 2012 to companies producing serious games and simulations

International trade association welcoming "developers, artists, programmers, publishers, project leads, administrators, faculty, human resource personnel, middleware and tool companies, service providers, vendors, researchers, analysts, marketing, advertising and public relations personnel, consultants and students."

An example of a browser-based game using HTML5 standards and JavaScript

"Editor's note: Ann DeMarle is director of the Emergent Media Center and associate professor of communication and creative media at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. "(CNN) Talking about Champlain's game development degree programs.

"GDC Europe 2012 is the premiere professional conference for the creators of video games within the European community. If you share our passion and commitment for video games, we want to hear from you. GDC Europe is now soliciting session proposals from potential speakers with deep industry expertise and a fresh and unique perspective on the state of the industry."

Using a brain-computer-interface, researchers attempt to discover what game elements evoke fear in players

Abstract: "A recent trend within computational intelligence and games research is to investigate how to affect video game players' in-game experience by designing and/or modifying aspects of game content. Analysing the relationship between game content, player behaviour and self-reported affective states constitutes an important step towards understanding game experience and constructing effective game adaptation mechanisms. This papers reports on further refinement of a method to understand this relationship by analysing data collected from players, building models that predict player experience and analysing what features of game and player data predict player affect best. We analyse data from players playing 780 pairs of short game sessions of the platform game Super Mario Bros, investigate the impact of the session size and what part of the level that has the major affect on player experience. Several types of features are explored, including item frequencies and patterns extracted through frequent sequence mining."

Abstract: "The purpose of this study is to create a brain-computer interface-dependent game that relies on user affect as a method of control. The paper first summarizes the existing research into BCI-based applications. It then describes the steps the researchers have been taking in order to develop a game that makes use of the OCZ Neural-Impulse Actuator to retrieve brain signals from a user in order to manipulate different powers utilizing arousal."

Advice from the Game Developer's Conference

Abstract: "This paper propose an educational computer game design model for Malaysian Science and Technology classroom. The model consist of three aspects of game design which are divided into two core component: Learn and Play. The two core components represent the elements of learning and playing in the educational computer game. Balance integration of both components is essential in developing a good educational computer game. The first aspect of game design is the game elements. Game elements referred to elements that form the base of the educational computer game which are the National Curriculum and also computer as the game design platform. The second aspect of game design is the game environments which comprises of teacher and students. Integration of both instructional (teacher's role) and playing (student's role) elements in the game will form the base of the game environments. The third aspect is the factors that need to be considered by the game designer and education expert in designing effective educational computer game. The model aim to guide educational computer game designer and educational expert in developing educational computer game for Malaysian classroom."

"a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources to advance the research, design and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies that promote health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio and headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara"

"LÖVE is an *awesome* framework you can use to make 2D games in Lua. It's free, open-source, and works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Contribute You can find the source code on Bitbucket. You can also filebugs and feature requests there."

Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design and Play Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture, 2012 Publisher Description: In this timely new book, Christopher Paul analyzes how the words we use to talk about video games and the structures that are produced within games shape a particular way of gaming by focusing on how games create meaning, lead to identification and division, persuade, and circulate ideas.

(all information is from the publisher's page) The first title in Continuum's Approaches to Game Studies series, *Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens The Digital Role-Playing Game* is a collection of scholarly essays that seeks to represent the far-reaching scope and implications of digital role-playing games as both cultural and academic artifacts.

Caroline Murphy's blog about game design and business