Themed Experience

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Narrative strategies for vast fictional worlds across a variety of media, from World of Warcraft to The Wire. The ever-expanding capacities of computing offer new narrative possibilities for virtual worlds. Yet vast narratives--featuring an ongoing and intricately developed storyline, many characters, and multiple settings--did not originate with, and are not limited to, Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Marvel's Spiderman, and the complex stories of such television shows as Dr. Who, The Sopranos, and Lost all present vast fictional worlds. Third Person explores strategies of vast narrative across a variety of media, including video games, television, literature, comic books, tabletop games, and digital art. The contributors--media and television scholars, novelists, comic creators, game designers, and others--investigate such issues as continuity, canonicity, interactivity, fan fiction, technological innovation, and cross-media phenomena. Chapters examine a range of topics, including storytelling in a multiplayer environment; narrative techniques for a 3,000,000-page novel; continuity (or the impossibility of it) in Doctor Who; managing multiple intertwined narratives in superhero comics; the spatial experience of the Final Fantasy role-playing games; World of Warcraft adventure texts created by designers and fans; and the serial storytelling of The Wire. Taken together, the multidisciplinary conversations in Third Person, along with Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin's earlier collections First Person and Second Person, offer essential insights into how fictions are constructed and maintained in very different forms of media at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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Digital entertainment, from video games to simulation rides, is now a central feature of popular culture. Computer-based or digital technologies are supplanting the traditional production methods of television, film and video, provoking intense speculation about their impact on the character of art. Examining the digital imaging techniques across a wide range of media, including film, music video, computer games, theme parks and simulation rides, Visual Digital Culture explores the relationship between evolving digital technologies and existing media and considers the effect of these new image forms on the experience of visual culture. Andrew Darley first traces the development of digital computing from the 1960s and its use in the production of visual digital entertainment. Through case studies of films such as Toy Story, key pop videos such as Michael Jackson's Black or White, and computer games like Quake and Blade Runner, Andrew Darley asks whether digital visual forms mark a break with traditional emphases on story, representation, meaning and reading towards a focus on style, image performance and sensation. He questions the implications of digital culture for theories of spectatorship, suggesting that these new visual forms create new forms of spectatorship within mass culture.

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Game designers, authors, artists, and scholars discuss how roles are played and how stories are created in role-playing games, board games, computer games, interactive fictions, massively multiplayer games, improvisational theater, and other "playable media." Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and story--something played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play. Second Person--so called because in these games and playable media it is "you" who plays the roles, "you" for whom the story is being told--first considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interaction--for the singular "you"--including the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Façade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game). In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall. Appendixes contain three fully-playable tabletop RPGs that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form.

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As a game designer or media storyteller, you know that the story is everything. However, figuring out how to tell it interactively - can be challenging. This work provides examples of contemporary games that rely on different technologies - and learn the storytelling lessons to be garnered from each of the past methodologies.

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Got Game shows how growing up immersed in video games has profoundly shaped the attitudes and abilities of this new generation. Though little-noticed, these ninety million rising professionals, through sheer numbers, will inevitably dominate business - and are already changing the rules. While many of these changes are positive - such as more open communication and creative problem-solving - they have caused a generation gap that frustrates gamers and the boomers who manage them. Got Game identifies the distinct values and traits that define the gamer generation - from an increased appetite for risk to unexpected leadership skills - and reveals management techniques today's leaders can use to bridge the generation gap and unleash gamers' hidden potential.

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The multidisciplinary nature of learning-games development is key to successful projects. In this book, field leaders in serious games and professionals in entertainment games share practical guidelines and lessons from their own experiences researching and developing learning games. This volume includes: * The key elements of design and development that require particular attention from multiple disciplines to ensure success * An overview of successful models and methods, and the trade-offs made throughout the process, to guide development * Cohesive, multidisciplinary views of the issues that arise and of the techniques applied in order to produce effective learning games grounded in specific experiences, community consensus, and analysis of successful learning games that have already been released * The stories behind the games, to illustrate how final design and development decisions were reached. Aimed at professionals and academics interested in developing and researching learning games, it offers a comprehensive picture of the state of the art.

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The inspiring memoir from legendary entrepreneur, gaming pioneer, and space adventurer Richard Garriott -- "game god" (PC Gamer) and inspiration for Ready Player One -- Explore/Create invites us on a grand adventure, introducing us to the wondrous and magical Richard Garriott's story begins with an Apple II and a dream. At eighteen, he spent his entire life savings -- two hundred dollars -- to produce Akalabeth, his first video game. That covered the floppy discs and the Ziploc bags the game was sold in; his mother drew the cover-art. The first week they sold maybe a dozen copies, but soon after, the California Pacific Computer Company came calling, asking to publish the game. These were the Wild West days of the game industry -- hard partying, outrageous personalities, and fledgling studios trying to make a quick buck. Never could Richard have foreseen that this would become a multibillion-dollar industry with the top games eclipsing even Hollywood's highest grossing films. He would go on to launch Ultima, a seminal series of role-playing games. Ultima Online was the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), and one of Time's 100 greatest video games ever. Throughout, Richard has aspired to build the most lifelike gaming worlds possible, allowing players to interact with every object on the screen, experience consequences for moral transgressions, and fully personalize their gaming journey. Away from the screen, Richard has also pushed the limits of human experience. A lifelong adventurer, he has plumbed the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to see the remains of the Titanic and hunted for meteorites in Antarctica, and in 2008 he became one of the first private citizens to travel into space. In 2014, Maxim named him one of the "Six Most Interesting Men You Can Actually Meet." Here, in his own words, is his extraordinary life story. Filled with interactive tie-ins and challenges, Explore/Create is unlike any other memoir, an unforgettable ode to exploration and discovery that will spark the creative impulse in all of us.

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This unique take on quests, incorporating literary and digital theory, provides an excellent resource for game developers. Focused on both the theory and practice of the four main aspects of quests (spaces, objects, actors, and challenges) each theoretical section is followed by a practical section that contains exercises using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset. Howard has created a Syllabus, designed for a college-level course, that instructors can use and modify as desired.

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Games allow players to experiment and play with subject positions, values and moral choice. In game worlds players can take on the role of antagonists; they allow us to play with behaviour that would be offensive, illegal or immoral if it happened outside of the game sphere. While contemporary games have always handled certain problematic topics, such as war, disasters, human decay, post-apocalyptic futures, cruelty and betrayal, lately even the most playful of genres are introducing situations in which players are presented with difficult ethical and moral dilemmas. This volume is an investigation of "dark play" in video games, or game play with controversial themes as well as controversial play behaviour. It covers such questions as: Why do some games stir up political controversies? How do games invite, or even push players towards dark play through their design? Where are the boundaries for what can be presented in a games? Are these boundaries different from other media such as film and books, and if so why? What is the allure of dark play and why do players engage in these practices?

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Game studies is a rapidly developing field across the world, with a growing number of dedicated courses addressing video games and digital play as significant phenomena in contemporary everyday life and media cultures. Seth Giddings looks to fill a gap by focusing on the relationship between the actual and virtual worlds of play in everyday life. He addresses both the continuities and differences between digital play and longer-established modes of play. The 'gameworlds' title indicates both the virtual world designed into the videogame and the wider environments in which play is manifested: social relationships between players; hardware and software; between the virtual worlds of the game and the media universes they extend (e.g. Pokemon, Harry Potter, Lego, Star Wars); and the gameworlds generated by children's imaginations and creativity (through talk and role-play, drawings and outdoor play). The gameworld raises questions about who, and what, is in play. Drawing on recent theoretical work in science and technology studies, games studies and new media studies, a key theme is the material and embodied character of these gameworlds and their components (players' bodies, computer hardware, toys, virtual physics, and the physical environment). Building on detailed small-scale ethnographic case studies, Gameworlds is the first book to explore the nature of play in the virtual worlds of video games and how this play relates to, and crosses over into, everyday play in the actual world.

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Digital Play offers a critical analysis of interactive media. Inspired by the work of Raymond Williams, the book traces the development of video gaming from its humble origins in hacker circles to its current status as a $20 billion global cultural industry. Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter systematically debunk cyber-guru optimism about globally networked digital communications by analysing the management practices of the corporations that designed and marketed video games to youthful audiences. They reveal that the ascent of this new communications industry has been anything but smooth and inevitable. From Atari to Microsoft, Space Invaders to The Sims, the authors uncover the successive crises that forced game makers, faced with constant instabilities in the global entertainment sector, to become increasingly innovative.

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Animation variously entertains, enchants, and offends, yet there have been no convincing explanations of how these films do so. Shadow of a Mouse proposes performance as the common touchstone for understanding the principles underlying the construction, execution, and reception of cartoons. Donald Crafton's interdisciplinary methods draw on film and theater studies, art history, aesthetics, cultural studies, and performance studies to outline a personal view of animated cinema that illuminates its systems of belief and world making. He wryly asks: Are animated characters actors and stars, just like humans? Why do their performances seem live and present, despite our knowing that they are drawings? Why is animation obsessed with distressing the body? Why were California regional artists and Stanislavsky so influential on Disney? Why are the histories of animation and popular theater performance inseparable? How was pictorial space constructed to accommodate embodied acting? Do cartoon performances stimulate positive or negative behaviors in audiences? Why is there so much extreme eating? And why are seemingly insignificant shadows vitally important? Ranging from classics like The Three Little Pigs to contemporary works by Svankmajer and Plympton, these essays will engage the reader's imagination as much as the subject of animation performance itself.

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From the early light and magic shows to the latest in computer graphics, here is the first history of animations. Hundreds of illustrations feature animated characters from Betty Boop to Roger Rabbit.

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This text deconstructs the media process into basic components, allowing students to learn the concepts of media production and to apply them to any medium.

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This is the complete practical introduction to virtual reality and multimedia for those wishing to build systems. It covers the foundations and engineering needed to design and construct projects incorporating video, audio and textural elements and including the use of the latest hardware, to create an artificial world for education, information or entertainment. Production and authoring platforms are described, computer animation and hypertext are covered, but those looking for pages of software listings and computerspeak will be disappointed. This book is about the nuts and bolts: sound and video cards, head mounted displays, CrystalEyes glasses, other 3D glasses for entertainment, audio and video production, and realistic auditory and visual stimulation including stereoscopy. The creation of Cyberspace, and strategies to achieve a complete Cyberatmosphere are presented. Three-dimensional sound generation and video techniques that have never previously been published are revealed. This is the handbook for anyone working in the industry, or hoping to enter it. It also provides a guide for those hoping to 'cross-fertilise' the industry, coming from audio, video, computing or engineering backgrounds.

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The uses of multimedia are rapidly increasing. Its power to present information in ways not previously possible and its integration of resources, allow for the creation of rich learning environments. Perspectives on Multimedia: Communication, Media and Information Technology provides a critical examination of the latest multimedia developments and approaches, such as Interface Technology and QoS architectures. Topics covered include: The key concepts intrinsic to digital forms of multimedia: integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, narrativity and hybridity. The development of Information Technology (IT) usage in society and in the business community. How modern IT enables private companies and public organisations to support business operations, create new business opportunities, and to promote more proactive service management. Multimedia from a computer science perspective and how computer science provides the technical foundation for the computer software and hardware that drives the information age. Gives a broad range of perspectives on key issues for interactive multimedia in organisations and industry today. This book will be of interest to practitioners involved in multimedia development in an organisation, management consultants giving professional advice on digital solutions and information technology matters to their customer organisations and academics focusing on business and technical aspects of multimedia frameworks.

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This text expands upon the theme of social construction of knowledge developed in Edward Barrett's three previous volumes. The 13 contributions: focus on specific applications of multimedia technology to cultural institutions such as museums, universities or corporate environments; analyze narrative and other navigational structures in various interactive multimedia systems and make recommendations for the design of future systems based on these analyses; and present innovative uses of multimedia that break out of the confines of a single terminal to develop interactive transformational environments.

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Outlines the approach for working with clients to develop clear, cogent, and creative communication. Divided into three parts, this book offers a methodology for artistic and professional work and also offers technical advice for translating this to the web.

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This work explores the diverse ways in which young people are active social agents in the production of youth culture in the digital age. It collects an international range of empirical accounts describing the ways in which young people utilize and appropriate new technology. The contributors draw on a range of theoretical perspectives including cultural studies, social anthropology and feminism.

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Top media scholars explore the leading edge of digital media studies to provide a broad, authoritative survey of the study of the field and a compelling preview of future developments. This book is divided into five key areas - video games, digital images, the electronic word, computers and music, and new digital media - and offers an invaluable guide for students and scholars alike.

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Provides a synopsis of the various technologies in perceptual-based multimedia design.

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At a time when computers are more widespread than ever, intelligent interactive systems have become a necessity. The term 'multimedia systems' refers to the coordinated storage, processing, transmission and retrieval of multiple forms of information, such as audio, image, video, animation, graphics and text. The growth of multimedia services has been exponential, as technological progress keeps up with the consumer's need for content. The solution of 'one fits all' is no longer appropriate for the wide ranges of users with various backgrounds and needs, so one important goal of many intelligent interactive systems is dynamic personalization and adaptivity to users.This book presents 37 papers summarizing the work and new research results presented at the 6th International Conference on Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services (KES-IIMSS2013), held in Sesimbra, Portugal, in June 2013. The conference series focuses on research in the fields of intelligent interactive multimedia systems and services and provides an internationally respected forum for scientific research in related technologies and applications.

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Beyond the Image Machine is an eloquent and stimulating argument for an alternative history of scientific and technological imaging systems. Drawing on a range of hitherto and marginalised examples from the world of visual representation and the work of key theorists and thinkers, such as Latour, de Certeau, McLuhan and Barthes, David Tomas offers a disarticulated and deviant view of the relationship between archaic and new representations, imaging technologies and media induced experience. Rejecting the possibility of absolute forms of knowledge, Tomas shows how new media technologies have changed the nature of established disciplines. The book develops Tomas's own theory of transcultural space and makes several original contributions to current debates on the culture of advanced technology.

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Designing Gamified Systems is a fundamental guide for building essential skills in game and interaction design to revitalize and reimagine real world systems ¿ from cities and corporations to schools and the military. Author Sari Gilbert develops a set of core principles and tools for using game thinking and interactive design to build motivation, explain hard concepts, broaden audiences, deepen commitments and enhance human relationships. Designing Gamified Systems includes: Topics such as gamified system design, behavioral psychology, marketing, business strategy, learning theory and instructional design Interviews with leaders and practitioners in this emerging field who explain how the job of the game designer is being redefined Exercises designed to both encourage big-picture thinking about gamified systems and help you experience and understand the challenges and nuances involved in designing them A companion website (www.gamifiedsystems.com) with additional materials to supplement learning and practice

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Games are poised for a major evolution, driven by growth in technical sophistication and audience reach. Characters that create powerful social and emotional connections with players throughout the game-play itself (not just in cut scenes) will be essential to next-generation games. However, the principles of sophisticated character design and interaction are not widely understood within the game development community. Further complicating the situation are powerful gender and cultural issues that can influence perception of characters. Katherine Isbister has spent the last 10 years examining what makes interactions with computer characters useful and engaging to different audiences. This work has revealed that the key to good design is leveraging player psychology: understanding what's memorable, exciting, and useful to a person about real-life social interactions, and applying those insights to character design. Game designers who create great characters often make use of these psychological principles without realizing it. Better Game Characters by Designgives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players' reactions to characters, helping produce stronger designs and better results. ften make use of these psychological principles without realizing it. Better Game Characters by Designgives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players' reactions to characters, helping produce stronger designs and better results.

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Game Story & Character Development-the newest installment in Cengage Learning's acclaimed Game Development Essentials series-shows how to create compelling stories and characters specifically for games. The book examines the history of storytelling, traditional and game-specific story structure, and all aspects of character development, including physical, psychological, sociological, and verbal. Filled with commentary from game industry professionals-and featuring a companion CD containing game story documentation and demos-Game Story & Character Development is an essential guide for game designers, writers, students, and professionals.

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Creating enticing game art can mean the difference between getting a game published or rejected. This book is ideal for many, including beginning art students who wish to learn the fundamental techniques used in creating concept art for game design and artists looking for a new challenge. Readers will learn how to create game art and design clear, concise storyboards as well as how their art is used in a game design document. This book will appeal to today's artists looking for challenging outlets for their creativity and artistic skills. Traditional artists and animators have flocked to the field of game art upon discovering that it offers exciting, rewarding, and lucrative opportunities to bring their creative vision to life through games. This book also will offer game programmers a look behind the scenes of the 'other side' of game development so they can better understand how game art is created and works with their own programming code.

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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.

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Like virtual reality, augmented reality is becoming an emerging platform in new application areas for museums, edutainment, home entertainment, research, industry, and the art communities using novel approaches which have taken augmented reality beyond traditional eye-worn or hand-held displays. In this book, the authors discuss spatial augmented reality approaches that exploit optical elements, video projectors, holograms, radio frequency tags, and tracking technology, as well as interactive rendering algorithms and calibration techniques in order to embed synthetic supplements into the real environment or into a live video of the real environment. Special Features: - Comprehensive overview - Detailed mathematical equations - Code fragments - Implementation instructions - Examples of Spatial AR displays

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Builders of the Vision traces the intellectual history and contemporary practices of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Numerical Control since the years following World War II until today. Drawing from primary archival and ethnographic sources, it identifies and¿documents the crucial ideas shaping digital design technologies since the first numerical control and CAD systems were developed under US Air Force research contracts at MIT between 1949 and 1970: the cybernetic theorization of design as a human-machine endeavor; the vision of computers as "perfect slaves" taking care of the drudgery of physical labor; the techno-social utopias of computers as vehicles of democracy and social change; the entrepreneurial urge towards design and construction integration; and the managerial ideologies enabling today¿s transnational geographies of practice. Examining the contrasting, and often conflicting, sensibilities that converge into CAD and BIM discourses - globalism, utopianism, entrepreneurialism, and architects¿ desires for aesthetic liberation - Builders of the Vision shows that software systems and numerically controlled machines are not merely "instruments," or "tools," but rather versatile metaphors reconfiguring conceptions of design, materiality, work, and what it means to be creative. Crucially, by revealing software systems as socio-technical infrastructures that mediate the production of our built environments, author Daniel Cardoso Llach builds a strong case for the fields of architecture, media, and science and technology studies to critically engage with both the politics and the poetics of technology in design. Builders of the Vision will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners across disciplines interested in the increasingly complex socio-technical systems that go into imagining and building of our artifacts, buildings, and cities.

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Graphic designers at all levels offer advice on how to survive when their hands seem tied. The book identifies the key areas of restraint in graphic design projects: budgets, deadlines, client relationships and artwork, plus unexpected limitations like computer failure or loss of key personnel.

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Learn to create augmented reality apps using Processing open-source programming language Augmented reality (AR) is used all over, and you may not even realize it. Smartphones overlay data onto live camera views to show homes for sale, restaurants, or historical sites. American football broadcasts use AR to show the invisible first-down line on the field to TV viewers. Nike and Budweiser, among others, have used AR in ads. Now, you can learn to create AR prototypes using 3D data, Processing open-source programming language, and other languages. This unique book is an easy-to-follow guide on how to do it. Guides you through the emerging technology of Augmented Reality (AR) Shows you how to use 3D data with the Processing programming environment and other languages to create AR prototypes for the web, smartphones, Macs, and PCs Helps 3D artists and designers who want to move into the AR market but don't have programming skills Covers the essentials of 3D programming, creating objects for an AR library, building and exporting 3D models, and much more Explains how to interactively link 3D to physical, virtual, and streaming environments Author Tony Mullen is both an artist and a programmer and perfectly suited to explain how to bridge these two worlds, as he so deftly does in Prototyping with Augmented Reality.

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For hundreds of years historians have used prose and narrative to convey history. This is about to change, thanks to new technology, digital scholarship, and computerized "visualization." Text itself has inherent limitations: The very use of words - their meaning and the connections among them - shapes and restricts how historians think and communicate ideas. The rise of the computer is radically altering how human beings receive and process information. Digital environments and virtual reality are adding a third dimension to communication and creating a new visual language. This visionary and thoroughly accessible book examines this entire revolutionary phenomenon and how historians will utilize the new medium of computers and the new language of visualization to transform our understanding of history. Drawing on familiar graphic models - maps, flow charts, museum displays, and films - the author shows how images can often convey ideas and information more efficiently and accurately than words. With emerging digital technology, these images will become more sophisticated, manipulable, and multidimensional, and provide historians with new tools and environments to construct historical narratives. Just as the transition from prehistoric cave paintings to the spread of literacy changed how people think and process information, so has - and will - the computer. Moving beyond the traditional book based on linear narrative, digital scholarship based on visualization and hypertext will offer multiple perspectives, dimensions, and experiences that will transform how historians work and how people imagine and learn about history.

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Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, the first true computer animation program. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry. In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito -- himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years -- describes the evolution of CG. His story features a memorable cast of characters -- math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.