The Art of Video Games

The Art of Video Games

Author: Chris Melissinos

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 159962110X

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"Published in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum."


Game Art

Game Art

Author: Matt Sainsbury

Publisher: No Starch Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1593276656

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Game Art is a collection of breathtaking concept art and behind-the-scenes interviews from videogame developers, including major players like Square Enix, Bioware, and Ubisoft as well as independent but influential studios like Tale of Tales and Compulsion Games. Immerse yourself in fantastic artwork and explore the creative thinking behind over 40 console, mobile, and PC games. A lone independent developer on a tiny budget can create an experience as powerful and compelling as a triple-A blockbuster built by a team of 1,000. But like all works of art, every game begins with a spark of inspiration and a passion to create. Let Game Art take you on a visual journey through these beautiful worlds, as told by the minds that brought them to life.


The Art of Videogames

The Art of Videogames

Author: Grant Tavinor

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-11-19

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781444310184

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The Art of Videogames explores how philosophy of the artstheories developed to address traditional art works can also beapplied to videogames. Presents a unique philosophical approach to the art ofvideogaming, situating videogames in the framework of analyticphilosophy of the arts Explores how philosophical theories developed to addresstraditional art works can also be applied to videogames Written for a broad audience of both philosophers and videogameenthusiasts by a philosopher who is also an avid gamer Discusses the relationship between games and earlier artisticand entertainment media, how videogames allow for interactivefiction, the role of game narrative, and the moral status ofviolent events depicted in videogame worlds Argues that videogames do indeed qualify as a new and excitingform of representational art


Videogames and Art

Videogames and Art

Author: Andy Clarke

Publisher: Intellect Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Videogame art is developing as an area of burgeoning interest, departing from embryonic roots into a flourishing division of scholarly study. The collection provides both an overview of the field, positioning it within a social and commercial context with reference to other forms of digital and pictorial art, and to the mainstream videogames industry.


The Greatest Art Form

The Greatest Art Form

Author: Brett E. Mullaney

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-06-25

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9781490541532

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During the last half century, and for only the second time in over two thousand years, technology has given way to a new groundbreaking and limitless form of artistic expression: the video game. While our society is barely beginning to digest this new medium and redefine our understanding of artistic expression, video games are continuing to evolve and define the medium as the art world's most expressive, dynamic, and evolved art form. All art forms provoke us to reflect, to ponder, to feel, to engage in ideas, to challenge or invoke our strongly held beliefs and biases. They ask us to share and experience the lives, thoughts, and sentiments of others. With video games, for the first time in the history of artistic expression, we are now asked to choose, to explore, to make determinations, to take decisive action, and to follow our choices to their conclusions. We are now world explorers and decision makers, individuals acting on, with, and against the art itself. In The Greatest Art Form: Video Games and the Evolution of Artistic Expression, ideas are explored through the ways in which the video game form's most groundbreaking attribute, interaction, has allowed the video game to become the most malleable, dynamic, expressive, organic, and authentic art form in human history.As part exposition, part summary, and part critical analysis, The Greatest Art Form provides a detailed analysis and conversation about the countless ways video games have come to communicate with audiences through new and profound methods, in order to provide a new lens by which to digest and understand this new medium so full of wonder and potential. It contains content that includes critical analysis and dissection of some of the video game medium's most treasured game titles and series, including:* Silent Hill 2* Red Dead Redemption* BioShock* BioShock Infinite* Dishonored* Ico* Shadow of the Colossus* Flower* Journey* The Elder Scrolls Series* Fallout 3Explore the ways in which video games, more than any other art form, hold the most limitless potential to ask us to reflect, not only on the art itself, but ourselves.


Making Videogames

Making Videogames

Author: Duncan Harris

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 050002314X

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An in-depth visual guide presenting the detailed creative journeys behind the development of the world’s leading videogames. Making Videogames is an extraordinary snapshot of modern interactive entertainment, with insight from pioneers about the most important games in the industry. Illustrated with some of the most arresting in-game images ever seen in print, this book explores the unique alchemy of a technical and artistic endeavor striking a captivating balance between insider insight and accessibility. Across twelve chapters, each focusing on a specific game from AAA blockbusters such as Control and Half-Life: Alyx to cult breakthrough games including No Man’s Sky and Return of the Obra Dinn, this volume documents the incredible craft of videogame worldbuilding. These chapters present masterful visual storytelling via the world’s most popular, but seldom fully understood, entertainment medium. Demonstrating the magic and method behind each studio’s work, the book includes enlightening text by Alex Wiltshire complementing specially created imagery “photographed” in-engine by screen capture artist Duncan Harris. A book for die-hard videogame fanatics, aspiring designer-creatives, video game developers, and the visually curious alike, Making Videogames will showcase the boundless creativity of this thrilling industry.


The Art of Failure

The Art of Failure

Author: Jesper Juul

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0262019051

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An exploration of why we play video games despite the fact that we are almost certain to feel unhappy when we fail at them.


Storytelling in Video Games

Storytelling in Video Games

Author: Amy M. Green

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2017-12-21

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1476668760

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Beginning with the structural features of design and play, this book explores video games as both compelling examples of story-telling and important cultural artifacts. The author analyzes fundamentals like immersion, world building and player agency and their role in crafting narratives in the Mass Effect series, BioShock, The Last of Us, Fallout 4 and many more. The text-focused "visual novel" genre is discussed as a form of interactive fiction.


Extra Lives

Extra Lives

Author: Tom Bissell

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-06-14

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307474313

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In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.


Games

Games

Author: C. Thi Nguyen

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0190052082

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Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be in games and what to care about; they designate the player's in-game abilities and motivations. In other words, designers create alternate agencies, and players submerge themselves in those agencies. Games let us explore alternate forms of agency. The fact that we play games demonstrates something remarkable about the nature of our own agency: we are capable of incredible fluidity with our own motivations and rationality. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication. They are the technology that allows us to write down and transmit forms of agency. Thus, the body of games forms a "library of agency" which we can use to help develop our freedom and autonomy. Nguyen also presents a new theory of the aesthetics of games. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. They are unlike traditional artworks in that they are designed to sculpt activities - and to promote their players' aesthetic appreciation of their own activity.