Journalist Geoff Keighley was granted unprecedented “fly on the wall” access to Valve over the past three years to create this story. From the hush-hush Portal prequel that was shelved to the last minute scramble to complete the game’s story, The Final Hours of Portal 2 is a gripping and dramatic story. Please note the Kindle version does not include as many photos or the videos that are available in the iPad version.

    Based on extensive research and over 140 exclusive interviews with key movers and shakers from gaming's past, Replay tells the sensational story of how the creative vision of game designers gave rise to one of the world's most popular and dynamic art forms.

    Featuring concept art and commentary by BioWare on the games' characters, locations, vehicles, weapons, and more, "The Art of the Mass Effect Universe" is the most complete companion available to gaming's most compelling series.

    The author shows the correct formats for both screenplays and teleplays, and takes the writer through the writing and marketing process.

    The video game has arrived as entertainment and as an art form. This is the first serious critical evaluation ever published of the best video games and is a testament to the medium’s innovativeness and increasing emphasis on aesthetics. Organized chronologically and for all platforms (PC, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.) and covering all genres from the bold (Grand Theft Auto and Halo) and dark (Resident Evil and Silent Hill) to the spiritual (Final Fantasy) and whimsical (Legend of Zelda), the book traces the video game from the rough early days of Pong to the latest visual fantasia.

    This book is the necessary how-to for first-timers and a terrific guide for seasoned professionals as well, who are putting their racy (and lucrative) fantasies to paper. Now, for the first time, a veteran erotic romance author shows exactly what to do and how. The first book to guide writers to succeed in this mutli-million dollar genre. Explores how to set up a plot and write good, steamy sex scenes. From a best-selling experienced author. Includes resource section for research tools and further reading. Interviews with top editors in the field. Foreword by Kate Duffy, editorial director at Kensington Publishing and founding editor of the genre.

    This book provides a step-by-step framework on how to tackle a system design question. It includes many real-world examples to illustrate the systematic approach with detailed steps that you can follow.What’s inside?- An insider’s take on what interviewers really look for and why.- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.- 15 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.- 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.Table Of ContentsChapter 1: Scale From Zero To Millions Of UsersChapter 2: Back-of-the-envelope EstimationChapter 3: A Framework For System Design InterviewsChapter 4: Design A Rate LimiterChapter 5: Design Consistent HashingChapter 6: Design A Key-value StoreChapter 7: Design A Unique Id Generator In Distributed SystemsChapter 8: Design A Url ShortenerChapter 9: Design A Web CrawlerChapter 10: Design A Notification SystemChapter 11: Design A News Feed SystemChapter 12: Design A Chat SystemChapter 13: Design A Search Autocomplete SystemChapter 14: Design YoutubeChapter 15: Design Google DriveChapter 16: The Learning Continues

    Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills' and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific approaches which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

    Editors strive to create books that are enlightening, seamless, and pleasurable to read, all while giving credit to the author. This makes it all the more difficult to truly understand the range of roles they inhabit while shepherding a project from concept to publication. In What Editors Do, Peter Ginna gathers essays from twenty-seven leading figures in book publishing about their work. Representing both large houses and small, and encompassing trade, textbook, academic, and children’s publishing, the contributors make the case for why editing remains a vital function to writers—and readers—everywhere. Ironically for an industry built on words, there has been a scarcity of written guidance on how to actually approach the work of editing. This book will serve as a compendium of professional advice and will be a resource both for those entering the profession (or already in it) and for those outside publishing who seek an understanding of it. It sheds light on how editors acquire books, what constitutes a strong author-editor relationship, and the editor’s vital role at each stage of the publishing process—a role that extends far beyond marking up the author’s text. This collection treats editing as both art and craft, and also as a career. It explores how editors balance passion against the economic realities of publishing. What Editors Do shows why, in the face of a rapidly changing publishing landscape, editors are more important than ever.

    Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo.The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan.Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It's the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry.

    Talent and inspiration can't be taught, but Frey does provide scores of helpful suggestions and sensible rules and principles.An international bestseller, How to Write a Damn Good Novel will enable all writers to face that intimidating first page, keep them on track when they falter, and help them recognize, analyze, and correct the problems in their own work.

    223 photos.

    This guide includes suggestions on how to prepare a campaign, running each session, dealing with problem players, how to create memorable NPCs and more.Please note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and is not affiliated with any particular gaming system or company.Table of ContentsForeword, by Erica LindquistChapter 1: On StorytellingChapter 2: Before Your GameChapter 3: Building Your StoryChapter 4: Running Your GameChapter 5: Players Player CharactersChapter 6: ProblemsChapter 7: Rules MechanicsChapter 8: Setting NPCsChapter 9: The EndPlease note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and it is not affiliated with any particular gaming company.

    The list of alumni with Oscars runs off the page. The cornerstone of his program is his singular book, Story, which has defined how we talk about the art of story creation. Now, in Dialogue, McKee offers the same in-depth analysis for how characters speak on the screen, on the stage, and on the page in believable and engaging ways. From Macbeth to Breaking Bad, McKee deconstructs key scenes to illustrate the strategies and techniques of dialogue. Dialogue applies a framework of incisive thinking to instruct the prospective writer on how to craft artful, impactful speech. Famous McKee alumni include Peter Jackson, Jane Campion, Geoffrey Rush, Paul Haggis, the writing team for Pixar, and many others.

    Fueled by unprecedented advances in technology, boundless imaginations, and an insatiable addiction to fantastic new worlds of play, the video game has gone supernova, rocketing two generations of fans into an ever-expanding universe where art, culture, reality, and emotion collide. As a testament to the cultural impact of the game industry’s mega morph, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with curator and author Chris Melissinos, conceived the forthcoming exhibition, The Art of Video Games, which will run from March 16 to September 30, 2012.* Welcome Books will release the companion book this March. Melissinos presents video games as not just mere play, but richly textured emotional and social experiences that have crossed the boundary into culture and art.Along with a team of game developers, designers, and journalists, Melissinos chose a pool of 240 games across five different eras to represent the diversity of the game world. Criteria included visual effects, creative use of technologies, and how world events and popular culture manifested in the games. The museum then invited the public to go online to help choose the games. More than 3.7 million votes (from 175 countries) later, the eighty winners featured in The Art of Video Games exhibition and book were selected.From the Space Invaders of the seventies to sophisticated contemporary epics BioShock and Uncharted 2, Melissinos examines each of the winning games, providing a behind-the-scenes look at their development and innovation, and commentary on the relevance of each in the history of video games. Over 100 composite images, created by Patrick O’Rourke, and drawn directly from the games themselves, illustrate the evolution of video games as an artistic medium, both technologically and creatively. Additionally, The Art of Video Games includes fascinating interviews with influential artists and designers–from pioneers such as Nolan Bushnell to contemporary innovators including Warren Spector, Tim Schafer and Robin Hunicke. The foreword was written by Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Mike Mika, noted game preservationist and prolific developer, contributed the introduction the introduction. *After Washington D.C., the exhibition travels to several cities across the United States, including Boca Raton (Museum of Art), Seattle (EMP Museum), Yonkers, NY (Hudson River Museum) and Flint, MI (Flint Institute of Arts). For the latest confirmed dates and venues, please visit the The Art of Video Games exhibition page at http://americanart.si.edu/taovg