"Bioreboot features nineteen projects - illustrated with extensive plans, photographs, and renderings - along with essays and an interview, providing the most comprehensive monograph to date of this elusive, intriguing firm, led by Francois Roche and Stephanie Lavaux. Despite working with oppositonal relationships; machinery versus nature; purity versus corruption; paranoia versus rationality - theirs is an architecture whose primary aim is the ecological and social improvement of the place in which it exists. Bioreboot is a thought-provoking leap into the future and a clarion call for the development of a new relationship between contemporary architecture and the socionatural world." --Book Jacket.
Architectural projects which expose the hidden contradictions of our everyday reality in a lively yet challenging way. Franois Roche (born in 1961 in Paris) and his partner Stephanie Lavaux (born in 1966 on the Reunion Island) are radical advocates of an architecture which is to be perceived as a tool for increasing critical awareness, as a discipline which provokes thought and inspires the imagination. Their buildings and projects, which include the new art museum in Bangkok and the Glacier Museum in Switzerland, both of which would have been unthinkable without the latest IT methods of design, strive towards designs which are unique and unmistakeable in both function and appearance. Franois Roche is guest professor at the London Bartlett School and the Technical University of Vienna, and has made a name for himself internationally as a pioneer of a new architecture through his lecture activities and his participation in many exhibitions. This monograph is the first complete overview of his workand will be published to coincide with the exhibition "No Standard Architecture" which opens in November at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where R & Sie...architects are one of the 12 invited architectural firms.
Making a successful video game is hard. Even games that are successful at launch may fail to engage and retain players in the long term due to issues with the user experience (UX) that they are delivering. The game user experience accounts for the whole experience players have with a video game, from first hearing about it to navigating menus and progressing in the game. UX as a discipline offers guidelines to assist developers in creating the experience they want to deliver, shipping higher quality games (whether it is an indie game, AAA game, or "serious game"), and meeting their business goals while staying true to their design and artistic intent. In a nutshell, UX is about understanding the gamer’s brain: understanding human capabilities and limitations to anticipate how a game will be perceived, the emotions it will elicit, how players will interact with it, and how engaging the experience will be. This book is designed to equip readers of all levels, from student to professional, with neuroscience knowledge and user experience guidelines and methodologies. These insights will help readers identify the ingredients for successful and engaging video games, empowering them to develop their own unique game recipe more efficiently, while providing a better experience for their audience. Key Features Provides an overview of how the brain learns and processes information by distilling research findings from cognitive science and psychology research in a very accessible way. Topics covered include: "neuromyths", perception, memory, attention, motivation, emotion, and learning. Includes numerous examples from released games of how scientific knowledge translates into game design, and how to use a UX framework in game development. Describes how UX can guide developers to improve the usability and the level of engagement a game provides to its target audience by using cognitive psychology knowledge, implementing human-computer interaction principles, and applying the scientific method (user research). Provides a practical definition of UX specifically applied to games, with a unique framework. Defines the most relevant pillars for good usability (ease of use) and good "engage-ability" (the ability of the game to be fun and engaging), translated into a practical checklist. Covers design thinking, game user research, game analytics, and UX strategy at both a project and studio level. Offers unique insights from a UX expert and PhD in psychology who has been working in the entertainment industry for over 10 years. This book is a practical tool that any professional game developer or student can use right away and includes the most complete overview of UX in games existing today.
Flashbacks from the Flow Zone tracks author Tom Crago as he grows a video game business in the first decade of the new millennium. From crashing the Lingerie Bowl after-party poolside in Hollywood, to making friends inside a Las Vegas limousine and getting bar-side in the underbelly of Tokyo, Tom does more deals in bars than boardrooms and takes readers with him as he parties with the big personalities of his industry. The view at times is hazy, but this is about the ride. Business – it’s a trip…and this is a whole new kind of travel story. A raging, hilarious, anti-memoir, Flashbacks from the Flow Zone takes a whole new approach to the work trip, where the line between work and pleasure is forever blurred. I had awoken late that Manhattan morning, shattered, confused, and nursing a hangover born of the kind of bored, incessant drinking that has a habit of accompanying twenty-five-hour journeys, especially those involving three-hour transits through the absurdist morass that was the Tom Bradley terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. It was difficult to blame my alarm clock as I had neglected to set it, and in any event there was no time to point fingers. I was by that stage more than an hour late for the only meeting of moderate substance that I’d scheduled during a three-day stay in New York... ‘A no-holds-barred chronicle through some of the most interesting cities during some of the wildest years of the video game business.’ Henk Rogers, Tetris Company ‘A paean to well-earned hangovers, seventeen-hour international flights and the kindness of taxi drivers.’ Andrew P Street, Time Out
The exhibition and publication constitute the first phase of a multiyear research project launched by the CCA to investigate the incorporation of digital technologies in the field of architecture.
Volume #32 of "The IT Revolution in Architecture", this book dedicated to François Roche and his group, raises questions of great importance for the development of architecture. What role can new material technologies have in a process in which the same materials have incorporated growing shares of active behaviors? For example, will they be self-cleaning, un-polluting, self-changing? To what extent will the various components of the buildings be increasingly "interconnected" and able to simulate processes typical of living systems, such as transpiration, dilation, growth, life, and death? Can we begin to speak of living "systems" in architecture? Antonino Di Raimo, PhD works with issues relating to IT and cognition, ecology, and the body. He serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Polis University, Tirana. Founder and editor of the book series before with Birkhäuser and Testo&Immagine and now with Edilstampa, is Antonino Saggio. www.arc1.Uniroma1.it/Saggio/IT/
Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play is a celebration of female accomplishments in the video game industry, ranging from high-level executives to programmers to cosplayers. This insightful and celebratory book highlights women who helped to establish the industry, women who disrupted it, women who fight to diversify it, and young women who will someday lead it. Featuring household names and unsung heroes, each individual profiled is a pioneer in their own right. Key features in this book include: *100 Professionals of Play: Interviews and Special Features with 100 diverse and prominent women highlighting their impact on the gaming industry in the fields of design, programming, animation, marketing, voiceover, and many more. *Pro Tips: Practical and anecdotal advice from industry professionals for young adults working toward a career in the video game industry. *Essays: Short essays covering various topics affecting women in gaming related careers, including "Difficult Women: The Importance of Female Characters Who Go Beyond Being Strong," "NPC: On Being Unseen in the Game Dev Community," and "Motherhood and Gaming: How Motherhood Can Help Rather Than Hinder a Career." *"A Day in the Life of" Features: An inside look at a typical day in the gaming industry across several vocations, including a streamer, a voice actor, and many more.
