Book picks similar to
The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology by Katie SalenJussi Holopainen
game-design
games
non-fiction
design
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
Bill Buxton - 2007
So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideation (getting the right design). Overall, the objective is to build the notion of informed design: molding emerging technology into a form that serves our society and reflects its values.Grounded in both practice and scientific research, Bill Buxton s engaging work aims to spark the imagination while encouraging the use of new techniques, breathing new life into user experience design. Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreamsThorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypes-without the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandonReaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and othersFull of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips that demonstrate the principles and methods"
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Chris Anderson - 2009
Reveals how to run an online business profitably in spite of the Internet's inherently free culture, disseminating the principles of a ''priceless economy'' in six categories that pertain to advertising, labor exchange, and advanced-version fees.
A History of Video Games in 64 Objects
World Video Game Hall of Fame - 2018
Pithy, in-depth essays and photographs examine each object’s significance to video game play—what it has contributed to the history of gaming—as well as the greater culture.A History of Video Games in 64 Objects explains how the video game has transformed over time. Inside, you’ll find a wide range of intriguing topics, including:The first edition of Dungeons & Dragons—the ancestor of computer role-playing gamesThe Oregon Trail and the development of educational gamingThe Atari 2600 and the beginning of the console revolutionA World of Warcraft server blade and massively multiplayer online gamesMinecraft—the backlash against the studio systemThe rise of women in gaming represented by pioneering American video game designers Carol Shaw and Roberta Williams’ game development materialsThe prototype Skylanders Portal of Power that spawned the Toys-to-Life video game phenomenon and shook up the marketplaceAnd so much more!A visual panorama of unforgettable anecdotes and factoids, A History of Video Games in 64 Objects is a treasure trove for gamers and pop culture fans. Let the gaming begin!
Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions
Bella Martin - 2012
Universal Methods of Design serves as an invaluable compendium of methods that can be easily referenced and used by cross-disciplinary teams in nearly any design project. Methods and techniques are organized alphabetically for ongoing, quick reference. Each method is presented in a two-page format. The left-hand page contains a concise description of the method, accompanied by references for further reading. On the right-hand page, images and cases studies for each method are presented visually. The relevant phases for design application are highlighted as numbered icons along the right side of the page, from phases 1 (planning) through 5 (launch and monitor).Build more meaningful products with these methods and more: A/B Testing, Affinity Diagramming, Behavioral Mapping, Bodystorming, Contextual Design, Critical Incident Technique, Directed Storytelling, Flexible Modeling, Image Boards, Graffiti Walls, Heuristic Evaluation, Parallel Prototyping, Simulation Exercises, Touchstone Tours, and Weighted Matrix. This essential guide:Dismantles the myth that user research methods are complicated, expensive, and time-consumingCreates a shared meaning for cross-disciplinary design teamsIllustrates methods with compelling visualizations and case studiesCharacterizes each method at a glanceIndicates when methods are best employed to help prioritize appropriate design research strategiesUniversal Methods of Design is an essential resource for designers of all levels and specializations.
Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy
Ann Rockley - 2002
Your customers expect the content you provide them to be adaptive --responding to the device, their location, their situation, and their personalized needs.Authors Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper provide insights and guidelines that will help you develop a unified content strategy--a repeatable, systematic plan that can help you reach your customers, anytime, anywhere, on any device.This up-to-date new edition of Managing Enterprise Content helps you: Determine business requirements Build your vision Design content that adapts to any device Develop content models, metadata, and workflow Put content governance in place Adapt to new and changed roles Identify tools requirements With this book you'll learn to design adaptable content that frees you from the tyranny of an ever increasing array of devices.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath - 2006
Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data
Hadley Wickham - 2016
This book introduces you to R, RStudio, and the tidyverse, a collection of R packages designed to work together to make data science fast, fluent, and fun. Suitable for readers with no previous programming experience, R for Data Science is designed to get you doing data science as quickly as possible.
Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. You’ll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what you’ve learned along the way.
You’ll learn how to:
Wrangle—transform your datasets into a form convenient for analysis
Program—learn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and ease
Explore—examine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test them
Model—provide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "signals" in your dataset
Communicate—learn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results
Game Programming Gems
Mark DeLoura - 2000
But instead of spending hours and hours trying to develop your own answers, now you can find out how the pros do it! Game Programming Gems is a hands-on, comprehensive resource packed with a variety of game programming algorithms written by experts from the game industry and edited by Mark DeLoura, former software engineering lead for Nintendo of America, Inc. and now the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Game Developer magazine. From animation and artificial intelligence to Z-buffering, lighting calculations, weather effects, curved surfaces, mutliple layer Internet gaming, to music and sound effects, all of the major techniques needed to develop a competitive game engine are covered. Game Programming Gems is written in a style accessible to individuals with a range of expertise levels. All of the source code for each algorithm is included and can be used by advanced programmers immediately. For aspiring programmers, there is a detailed tutorial to work through before attempting the code, and suggestions for possible modifications and optimizations are included as well.
Advice for a Young Investigator
Santiago Ramón y Cajal - 1897
Hailed as the father of modern anatomy and neurobiology, he was largely responsible for the modern conception of the brain. His groundbreaking works were New Ideas on the Structure of the Nervous System and Histology of the Nervous System in Man and Vertebrates. In addition to leaving a legacy of unparalleled scientific research, Cajal sought to educate the novice scientist about how science was done and how he thought it should be done. This recently rediscovered classic, first published in 1897, is an anecdotal guide for the perplexed new investigator as well as a refreshing resource for the old pro.Cajal was a pragmatist, aware of the pitfalls of being too idealistic--and he had a sense of humor, particularly evident in his diagnoses of various stereotypes of eccentric scientists. The book covers everything from valuable personality traits for an investigator to social factors conducive to scientific work.
Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress: Learn to Play the Most Complex Video Game Ever Made
Peter Tyson - 2012
The trick is getting started. In this guide, Fortress geek Peter Tyson takes you through the basics of this menacing realm, and helps you overcome the formidable learning curve.The book’s focus is the game’s simulation mode, in which you’re tasked with building a dwarf city. Once you learn how to establish and maintain your very first fortress, you can consult the more advanced chapters on resource management and training a dwarf military. You’ll soon have stories to share from your interactions with the Dwarf Fortress universe.Create your own world, then locate a site for an underground fortressEquip your party of dwarves and have them build workshops and roomsProduce a healthy food supply so your dwarves won’t starve (or go insane)Retain control over a fortress and dozens of dwarves, their children, and their petsExpand your fortress with fortifications, stairs, bridges, and subterranean hallsConstruct fantastic traps, machines, and weapons of mass destruction
Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python
John V. Guttag - 2013
It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of "data science" for using computation to model and interpret data. The book is based on an MIT course (which became the most popular course offered through MIT's OpenCourseWare) and was developed for use not only in a conventional classroom but in in a massive open online course (or MOOC) offered by the pioneering MIT--Harvard collaboration edX.Students are introduced to Python and the basics of programming in the context of such computational concepts and techniques as exhaustive enumeration, bisection search, and efficient approximation algorithms. The book does not require knowledge of mathematics beyond high school algebra, but does assume that readers are comfortable with rigorous thinking and not intimidated by mathematical concepts. Although it covers such traditional topics as computational complexity and simple algorithms, the book focuses on a wide range of topics not found in most introductory texts, including information visualization, simulations to model randomness, computational techniques to understand data, and statistical techniques that inform (and misinform) as well as two related but relatively advanced topics: optimization problems and dynamic programming.Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python can serve as a stepping-stone to more advanced computer science courses, or as a basic grounding in computational problem solving for students in other disciplines.
The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide
Robert Pinsky - 1998
The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing.As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry. In this fascinating book, he explains how poets use the technology of poetry--its sounds--to create works of art that are performed in us when we read them aloud.He devotes brief, informative chapters to accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank and free verse. He cites examples from the work of fifty different poets--from Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to W. C. Williams, Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, C. K. Williams, Louise Gl�ck, and Frank Bidart.This ideal introductory volume belongs in the library of every poet and student of poetry.
Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby
Sandi Metz - 2012
The Web is awash in Ruby code that is now virtually impossible to change or extend. This text helps you solve that problem by using powerful real-world object-oriented design techniques, which it thoroughly explains using simple and practical Ruby examples. Sandi Metz has distilled a lifetime of conversations and presentations about object-oriented design into a set of Ruby-focused practices for crafting manageable, extensible, and pleasing code. She shows you how to build new applications that can survive success and repair existing applications that have become impossible to change. Each technique is illustrated with extended examples, all downloadable from the companion Web site, poodr.info. The first title to focus squarely on object-oriented Ruby application design,
Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby
will guide you to superior outcomes, whatever your previous Ruby experience. Novice Ruby programmers will find specific rules to live by; intermediate Ruby programmers will find valuable principles they can flexibly interpret and apply; and advanced Ruby programmers will find a common language they can use to lead development and guide their colleagues. This guide will help you Understand how object-oriented programming can help you craft Ruby code that is easier to maintain and upgrade Decide what belongs in a single Ruby class Avoid entangling objects that should be kept separate Define flexible interfaces among objects Reduce programming overhead costs with duck typing Successfully apply inheritance Build objects via composition Design cost-effective tests Solve common problems associated with poorly designed Ruby code
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman - 2011
System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century
Wayne Miller - 2016
While publishing has been buffeted by persistent upheaval and transformation ever since, the current combination of technological developments, market pressures, and changing reading habits has led to an unprecedented paradigm shift in the world of books.Bringing together a wide range of perspectives—industry veterans and provocateurs, writers, editors, and digital mavericks—this invaluable collection reflects on the current situation of literary publishing, and provides a road map for the shifting geography of its future: How do editors and publishers adapt to this rapidly changing world? How are vibrant public communities in the Digital Age created and engaged? How can an industry traditionally dominated by white men become more diverse and inclusive? Mindful of the stakes of the ongoing transformation, Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century goes beyond the usual discussion of ’print vs. digital’ to uncover the complex, contradictory, and increasingly vibrant personalities that will define the future of the book.