The "Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia" celebrates Capcom's 30 years in the industry and gives fans concise information about every major Capcom character, their key artwork, statistics, background information, and interesting notes on the history of each character and game franchise. Including almost 200 characters from the Capcom family, this "Character Encyclopedia" sheds new light on these characters in a way nothing else does!

    Today, it is one of the most beloved video game franchises around the globe. Video game sales as a whole have continued to grow, now raking in twice as much money per year as the entire film industry, and countless psychologists have turned their attention to the effects gaming has on us: our confidence, our identity, and our personal growth. The Psychology of Zelda applies the latest psychological findings, plus insights from classic psychology theory, to Link, Zelda, Hyrule, and the players who choose to wield the Master Sword. In The Psychology of Zelda, psychologists who love the games ask:  How do Link’s battles in Ocarina of Time against Dark Link, his monstrous doppelganger, mirror the difficulty of confronting our personal demons and the tendency to be our own worst enemies? What lessons about pursuing life’s greater meaning can we take away from Link’s quests through Hyrule and beyond the stereotypical video game scenario of rescuing a Princess (Zelda)? What do we experience as players when we hear that familiar royal lullaby on the ocarina, Saria’s spirited melody in the Lost Woods, or the iconic main theme on the title screen? How do the obstacles throughout Majora’s Mask represent the Five Stages of Grief? What can Link’s journey to overcome the loss of the fairy Navi teach us about understanding our own grief and depression? Why are we psychologically drawn to the game each and every time a new version becomes available even when they all have a similar storyline?  Think you’ve completed the quest? The Psychology of Zelda gives you new,  thrilling dungeons to explore and even more puzzles to solve.

    He knows that if parents place good video games into a learning system in their homes they can reap major benefits for their children and themselves. They can accelerate their children's language and cognitive growth." —James Paul Gee, Tashia Mogridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-MadisonMarc Prensky presents the case—profoundly counter-cultural but true nevertheless—that video and computer game playing, within limits, is actually very beneficial to today's "Digital Native" kids, who are using them to prepare themselves for life in the 21st century. The reason kids are so attracted to these games, Prensky says, is that they are learning about important "future" things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. Prensky's arguments are backed up by university PhD's studying not just violence, but games in their totality, as well as studies of gamers who have become successful corporate workers, entrepreneurs, leaders, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals.Because most adults (including the critics) can't play the modern complex games themselves (and discount the opinions of the kids who do play them) they rely on secondhand sources of information, most of whom are sadly misinformed about both the putative harm and the true benefits of game-playing. This book is the antidote to those misinformed, bombastic sources, in the press and elsewhere. Full of common sense and practical information, it provides parents with a large number of techniques approaches they can use—both over time and right away—to improve both their understanding of games and their relationships with their kids. What You Will Learn The aim of this book is to give you a peek into the hidden world into which your kids disappear when they are playing games, and to help you as an adult—especially if you are a concerned parent or teacher—understand and appreciate just how much your kids are learning that is POSITIVE from their video and computer games.In the few short hours it takes to read this book, you will learn: What it feels like to be in the world of computer and video games; How to appreciate the breadth and depth of modern computer and video games and the ways they make your kids learn; How to understand the various USEFUL skills your game-playing your kids are acquiring; How to understand your own kids better and build better relationships using games as a base; And, most importantly, How to augment and improve what your kids are learning by HAVING CONVERSATIONS THAT THEY WANT TO HAVE about their games.

    This compendium of early Japanese life provides a panorama of Japan during its formation.

    Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you’ll see those brightly colored geometric shapes everywhere. You’ll see them in your dreams.Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once Tetris emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega―game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications, and outright theft.In this graphic novel, New York Times–bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture, and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world’s most popular video game.

    The author examines both the economic and cultural aspects of television, and investigates it in terms of both theory and text-based criticism. Fiske introduces the main arguments from current British, American, Australian and French scholarship in a style accessible to the student, providing an integrated study of approaches to the medium.

    This 320-page book is an exhaustive guide to The Legend of Zelda from the original The Legend of Zelda to Twilight Princess HD.A comprehensive collection of enemies and items, potions to poes, an expansion of the lore touched upon in Hyrule Historia, concept art, screencaps, maps, main characters and how they relate, languages, and much, much more, including an exclusive interview with Series Producer, Eiji Aonuma! This, the last of The Goddess Collection trilogy, which includes Hyrule Historia and Art & Artifacts, is a treasure trove of explanations and information about every aspect of The Legend of Zelda universe!*An exhaustive compendium of everything from the first 30 years of The Legend of Zelda.*An expansion of information from The Legend of Zelda timeline.*Rare development sketches of your favorite characters.*An extensive database of items and enemies.

    Here, video games are not hobbies or pure recreation; they are vehicles for art, sex, and race and class politics.The sixteen contributors are entrenched—they are the video game creators themselves, media critics, and Internet celebrities. They share one thing: they are all players at heart, handpicked to form a superstar roster by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, the authors of the bestselling Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything.The State of Play is essential reading for anyone interested in what may well be the defining form of cultural expression of our time.

    Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere; the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field; where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one's score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

    But how did an obscure Soviet programmer, working on frail, antiquated computers, create a product which has now earned nearly 1 billion in sales? How did a makeshift game turn into a worldwide sensation, which has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, inspired a big-budget sci-fi movie, and been played in outer space? A quiet but brilliant young man, Alexey Pajitnov had long nurtured a love for the obscure puzzle game pentominoes, and became obsessed with turning it into a computer game. Little did he know that the project that he labored on alone, hour after hour, would soon become the most addictive game ever made. In this fast-paced business story, reporter Dan Ackerman reveals how Tetris became one of the world's first viral hits, passed from player to player, eventually breaking through the Iron Curtain into the West. British, American, and Japanese moguls waged a bitter fight over the rights, sending their fixers racing around the globe to secure backroom deals, while a secretive Soviet organization named ELORG chased down the game's growing global profits.The Tetris Effect is an homage to both creator and creation, and a must-read for anyone who's ever played the game-which is to say everyone.

    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.

    Written by leading ethnographers of virtual worlds, and focusing on the key method of participant observation, the book provides invaluable advice, tips, guidelines, and principles to aid researchers through every stage of a project, from choosing an online fieldsite to writing and publishing the results.Provides practical and detailed techniques for ethnographic research customized to reflect the specific issues of online virtual worlds, both game and nongameDraws on research in a range of virtual worlds, including Everquest, Second Life, There.com, and World of WarcraftProvides suggestions for dealing with institutional review boards, human subjects protocols, and ethical issuesGuides the reader through the full trajectory of ethnographic research, from research design to data collection, data analysis, and writing up and publishing research resultsAddresses myths and misunderstandings about ethnographic research, and argues for the scientific value of ethnography

    This genre includes classics such as Ultima and The Bard's Tale as well as more modern games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. Written in an engaging style for both the computer game enthusiast and the more casual computer game player, this book explores the history of the genre by telling the stories of the developers, games, and gamers who created it.

    . . It’s Complicated will update your mind.”—Alissa Quart, New York Times Book Review  “A fascinating, well-researched and (mostly) reassuring look at how today's tech-savvy teenagers are using social media.”—People  “The briefest possible summary? The kids are all right, but society isn’t.”—Andrew Leonard, Salon   What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd’s conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.

    Two opposing cultures. One multi-billion-dollar video-game empire. Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book 1 invites readers to discover the origin of Blizzard North, a studio built by gamers, for gamers, and Blizzard Entertainment, a convergence of designers driven to rule their industry. Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all—Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever.