"Go Gaming! is the all-new essential guide to mobile gaming, packed full of the biggest and best games the platform has to offer. We've got every type of game covered--from battle royales, explosive action games, and brain-teasing puzzlers to epic adventures and fast-paced platformers--so dive in and discover a whole new world of gaming!"--p. [4] of cover.
A sophisticated critical take on contemporary game culture that reconsiders the boundaries between gamers and games. This book is not about the future of video games. It is not an attempt to predict the moods of the market, the changing profile of gamers, the benevolence or malevolence of the medium. This book is about those predictions. It is about the ways in which the past, present, and future notions of games are narrated and negotiated by a small group of producers, journalists, and gamers, and about how invested these narrators are in telling the story of tomorrow. This new title from Goldsmiths Press by Paolo Ruffino suggests the story could be told another way. Considering game culture, from the gamification of self-improvement to GamerGate's sexism and violence, Ruffino lays out an alternative, creative mode of thinking about the medium: a sophisticated critical take that blurs the distinctions among studying, playing, making, and living with video games. Offering a series of stories that provide alternative narratives of digital gaming, Ruffino aims to encourage all of us who study and play (with) games to raise ethical questions, both about our own role in shaping the objects of research, and about our involvement in the discourses we produce as gamers and scholars. For researchers and students seeking a fresh approach to game studies, and for anyone with an interest in breaking open the current locked-box discourse, Future Gaming offers a radical lens with which to view the future.
In fewer than fifty years videogames have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment, but which are the best games, the ones you must play? This action packed book presents the best videogames from around the world - from 80's classic Donkey Kong to Doom, Frogger and Final Fantasy. Covering everything from old favourites to those breaking new ground, these are the games that should not be missed. Video game expert Tony Mott presents 1001 of the best video games from around the world and on all formats, from primitive pioneering consoles like Atari's VCS to modern-day home entertainment platforms such as Sony's PlayStation 3. 1001 VIDEO GAMES defines arcade experiences that first turned video gaming into a worldwide phenomenon such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac-Man - games that made the likes of Atari, Sinclair and Commadore household names. It also includes the games that have taken the console era by storm from Nintendo Wii to Sony Playstation and beyond - games of the modern era that have become cultural reference points in their own right including multi-million selling series such as Halo, Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil. For aficionados this is a keepsake - charting the highlights of the past fifty years giving them key information for games they must play. For those just discovering the appeal of gaming this extensive volume will provide everything they need to ensure they don't miss out on the games that revolutionized this overwhelmingly popular medium.
How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 10th Mexican Conference on Pattern Recognition, MCPR 2018, held in Puebla, Mexico, in June 2018. The 28 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: pattern recognition principles; deep learning, neural networks and associative memories; data mining; and computer vision.
He can summon demons. But can he win a war? Fletcher is working as a blacksmith's apprentice when he discovers he has the rare ability to summon demons from another world. Chased from his village for a crime he did not commit, Fletcher must travel with his demon, Ignatius, to an academy for adepts, where the gifted are taught the art of summoning. Along with nobles and commoners, Fletcher endures grueling lessons that will prepare him to serve as a Battlemage in the Empire's war against the savage Orcs. But sinister forces infect new friendships and rivalries grow. With no one but Ignatius by his side, Fletcher must decide where his loyalties lie. The fate of the Empire is in his hands.
Now a documentary on CBS All Access. Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars—a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry. 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. A best book of the year: NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Goodreads
In Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of, Stuart Ashen has created a collection of hilarious and damning reviews of some of the most bizarre, frustrating, pointless and downright terrible video games ever made. And he would know. . . he's played them all. Dripping with wry humour and featuring the best, worst graphics from the games themselves, this book encapsulates the atrocities produced in the days of tight budgets and low quality controls. These are the most appalling games that ever leaked from the industry's tear ducts and have long since been (rightly) relegated to the dusty shelves of history. Welcome to a world of games you never knew existed. You will probably wish you still didn't.
Summary Deep Learning and the Game of Go teaches you how to apply the power of deep learning to complex reasoning tasks by building a Go-playing AI. After exposing you to the foundations of machine and deep learning, you'll use Python to build a bot and then teach it the rules of the game. Foreword by Thore Graepel, DeepMind Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology The ancient strategy game of Go is an incredible case study for AI. In 2016, a deep learning-based system shocked the Go world by defeating a world champion. Shortly after that, the upgraded AlphaGo Zero crushed the original bot by using deep reinforcement learning to master the game. Now, you can learn those same deep learning techniques by building your own Go bot! About the Book Deep Learning and the Game of Go introduces deep learning by teaching you to build a Go-winning bot. As you progress, you'll apply increasingly complex training techniques and strategies using the Python deep learning library Keras. You'll enjoy watching your bot master the game of Go, and along the way, you'll discover how to apply your new deep learning skills to a wide range of other scenarios! What's inside Build and teach a self-improving game AI Enhance classical game AI systems with deep learning Implement neural networks for deep learning About the Reader All you need are basic Python skills and high school-level math. No deep learning experience required. About the Author Max Pumperla and Kevin Ferguson are experienced deep learning specialists skilled in distributed systems and data science. Together, Max and Kevin built the open source bot BetaGo. Table of Contents PART 1 - FOUNDATIONS Toward deep learning: a machine-learning introduction Go as a machine-learning problem Implementing your first Go bot PART 2 - MACHINE LEARNING AND GAME AI Playing games with tree search Getting started with neural networks Designing a neural network for Go data Learning from data: a deep-learning bot Deploying bots in the wild Learning by practice: reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning with policy gradients Reinforcement learning with value methods Reinforcement learning with actor-critic methods PART 3 - GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS AlphaGo: Bringing it all together AlphaGo Zero: Integrating tree search with reinforcement learning
Video games can instil amazing qualities in children – curiosity, resilience, patience and problem-solving to name a few – but with the World Health Organisation naming gaming disorder as a clinically diagnosable condition, parents and carers can worry about what video games are doing to their children. Andy Robertson has dealt with all of the above, not just over years of covering this topic fo newspapers, radio and television but as a father of three. In this guide, he offers parents and carers practical advice and insights – combining his own experiences with the latest research and guidance from psychologists, industry experts, schools and children's charities – alongside a treasure trove of 'gaming recipes' to test out in your family. Worrying about video game screen time, violence, expense and addiction is an understandable response to scary newspaper headlines. But with first-hand understanding of the video games your children love to play, you can anchor them as a healthy part of family life. Supported by the www.taminggaming.com Family Video Game Database, Taming Gaming leads you into doing this so that video games can stop being a point of argument, worry and stress and start providing fulfilling, connecting and ambitious experiences together as a family.