This Library Guide presents a selection of additions to the Library collection for Games, Media and Data Science & AI. This includes some of the latest acquisitions of (e-)books, video games, board games, links to the latest editions of key journals, and the latest developments in Library resources and services.
For additional information and suggestions for improvement please contact our Games, Media and Data Science & AI information specialist Linda Hurkmans
A Practical Guide to Level Design by
Written by a AAA industry expert with over 20 years of experience in the games industry. Provides a strong theoretical foundation upon which the practical applications and examples are built upon, providing strong applicability for a practical production environment. Covers the soft and social skills needed to become a successful level designer, a topic that has not previously been written upon in detail.
Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games by
This book is a theoretical and practical deep dive into the craft of worldbuilding for video games, with an explicit focus on how different job disciplines contribute to worldbuilding. In addition to providing lenses for recognizing the various components in creating fictional and digital worlds, the author positions worldbuilding as a reciprocal and dynamic process, a process which acknowledges that worldbuilding is both created by and instrumental in the design of narrative, gameplay, art, audio, and more. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games encourages mutual respect and collaboration among teams and provides game writers and narrative designers tools for effectively incorporating other job roles into their own worldbuilding practice and vice versa. Features: Provides in-depth exploration of worldbuilding via respective job disciplines Deep dives and case studies into a variety of games, both AAA and indie Includes boxed articles for deeper interrogation and exploration of key ideas Contains templates and checklists for practical tips on worldbuilding
The Art of Horizon Forbidden West by
A dynamic full-color hardcover featuring concept art and creator commentary chronicling the development of the next adventure in the epic Horizon saga. When a mysterious red blight threatens to strangle all life, the heroic young Aloy must tackle new dangers in the mysterious frontier of the Forbidden West in order to save her world. The highly anticipated sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn has finally arrived, and with it, all new vibrant landscapes, jaw-dropping machines, and thrilling secrets to discover. Follow Aloy on her next adventure with this beautiful chronicle created by Dark Horse Books in association with Guerrilla Games! The Art of Horizon Forbidden West uncovers the mysteries of a lost world with all new behind-the-scenes artwork and intimate developer commentary. Relive the unforgettable tale.
Character Development and Storytelling for Games by
This is the third edition of Character Development and Storytelling for Games, a standard work in the field that brings all of the teaching from the first two books up to date and tackles the new challenges of today. Professional game writer and designer Lee Sheldon combines his experience and expertise in this updated edition. New examples, new game types, and new challenges throughout the text highlight the fundamentals of character writing and storytelling. But this book is not just a box of techniques for writers of video games. It is an exploration of the roots of character development and storytelling that readers can trace from Homer to Chaucer to Cervantes to Dickens and even Mozart. Many contemporary writers also contribute insights from books, plays, television, films, and, yes, games. Sheldon and his contributors emphasize the importance of creative instinct and listening to the inner voice that guides successful game writers and designers. Join him on his quest to instruct, inform, and maybe even inspire your next great game.
The Complete Guide to Photorealism for Visual Effects, Visualization and Games by
This book offers a comprehensive and detailed guide to accomplishing and perfecting a photorealistic look in digital content across visual effects, architectural and product visualization, and games. Emmy award-winning VFX supervisor Eran Dinur offers readers a deeper understanding of the complex interplay of light, surfaces, atmospherics, and optical effects, and then discusses techniques to achieve this complexity in the digital realm, covering both 3D and 2D methodologies. In addition, the book features artwork, case studies, and interviews with leading artists in the fields of VFX, visualization, and games. Exploring color, integration, light and surface behaviour, atmospherics, shading, texturing, physically-based rendering, procedural modelling, compositing, matte painting, lens/camera effects, and much more, Dinur offers a compelling, elegant guide to achieving photorealism in digital media and creating imagery that is seamless from real footage. Its broad perspective makes this detailed guide suitable for VFX, visualization and game artists and students, as well as directors, architects, designers, and anyone who strives to achieve convincing, believable visuals in digital media.
The Board Game Designer's Guide to Careers in the Industry by
Are you thinking about working in the board game industry? Here's what you need to know. There are so many jobs and roles that need to be filled in the board game industry. You might just have the right skills and experience to excel. But first you need to know what opportunities exist and what the hardest gaps are to fill! In this book, you'll discover - What jobs are really in demand - How you can get your foot in the door with a publisher - Jobs in the industry you've never even thought of - What other opportunities exist for people with skills just like yours With insights from over 40 industry pros, as well as the author's many years of experience, you'll be able to put your own skills and experience to great use in an amazing, growing industry.
Unboxed by
An in-depth exploration of the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. In Unboxed, Gordon Calleja explores the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. Calleja examines key aspects of board game experience-the nature of play, attention, rules, sociality, imagination, narrative, materiality, and immersion-to offer a theory of board game experience and a model for understanding game involvement that is relevant to the analysis, criticism, and design of board games. Drawing on interviews with thirty-two leading board game designers and critics, Calleja-himself a board game designer-provides the set of conceptual tools that board game design has thus far lacked. After considering different conceptions of play, Calleja discusses the nature and role of attention and goes on to outline the key forms of involvement that make up the board game playing experience. In subsequent chapters, Calleja explores each of these forms of involvement, considering both the experience itself and the design considerations that bring it into being. Calleja brings this analysis together in a chapter that maps how these forms of involvement come together in the moment of gameplay, and how their combination shapes the flow of player affect. By tracing the processes by which players experience these moments of rule-mediated, imagination-fueled sociality, Calleja helps us understand the richness of the gameplay experience packed into the humble board game box.
The Game Narrative Toolbox by
Learn how to create compelling game storylines. Four experienced narrative designers from different genres of game development have banded together to create this all-inclusive guide on what it's like to work as a writer and narrative designer in the video game industry. From concept to final testing, The Game Narrative Toolbox walks readers through what role a narrative designer plays on a development team and what the requirements are at every stage of development. Drawing on real experiences, authors Tobias Heussner, Toiya Kristen Finley, PhD, Ann Lemay, and Jennifer Brandes Hepler provide invaluable advice for writing compelling player-centered stories and effective dialogue trees to help readers make the switch from writing prose or screenplay to interactive. Thoroughly revised, the Second Edition includes updated content reflecting the industry's latest developments. In addition to revised and updated chapters, this new edition features two additional chapters covering more advanced topics that are applicable to the lessons learned from the original chapters. Accompanying every chapter are exercises that allow the reader to develop their own documentation, outlines, and game-dialogue samples for use in applying for industry jobs or developing independent projects.
Deep Learning in Gaming and Animations by
Over the last decade, progress in deep learning has had a profound and transformational effect on many complex problems, including speech recognition, machine translation, natural language understanding, and computer vision. As a result, computers can now achieve human-competitive performance in a wide range of perception and recognition tasks. Many of these systems are now available to the programmer via a range of so-called cognitive services. More recently, deep reinforcement learning has achieved ground-breaking success in several complex challenges. This book makes an enormous contribution to this beautiful, vibrant area of study: an area that is developing rapidly both in breadth and depth. Deep learning can cope with a broader range of tasks (and perform those tasks to increasing levels of excellence). This book lays a good foundation for the core concepts and principles of deep learning in gaming and animation, walking you through the fundamental ideas with expert ease. This book progresses in a step-by-step manner. It reinforces theory with a full-fledged pedagogy designed to enhance students' understanding and offer them a practical insight into its applications. Also, some chapters introduce and cover novel ideas about how artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, and machine learning have changed the world in gaming and animation. It gives us the idea that AI can also be applied in gaming, and there are limited textbooks in this area. This book comprehensively addresses all the aspects of AI and deep learning in gaming. Also, each chapter follows a similar structure so that students, teachers, and industry experts can orientate themselves within the text. There are few books in the field of gaming using AI. Deep Learning in Gaming and Animations teaches you how to apply the power of deep learning to build complex reasoning tasks. After being exposed to the foundations of machine and deep learning, you will use Python to build a bot and then teach it the game's rules. This book also focuses on how different technologies have revolutionized gaming and animation with various illustrations.
Linkedin Learning
Are you interestes in adding video tutorials to your (oline) education? All BUas staff & students have access to Linkedin Learning. Linkedin Learning is an online learning platform, featuring thousands of video tutorials by industry experts. It includes online courses on a wide range of topics, including software, technology and game development:
Statista
Looking for trends & data in the field of gaming? Try the Statista database!
You can access Statista via this link direct link or via www.buas.nl/library > Games >databases.
Statista is one of the world’s largest statistics portals and provides you with a research tool to access data from national and international market research institutes. In the database you will find statistics and reports from over 600 categories from over 18,000 sources.
Statista is a statistics portal that provides access to statistics and studies on over 80,000 topics and areas of interest. Benefits of Statista services include: Industry-specific economic macro data with key indicators of market trends Industry-specific surveys on relevant trends and forecasts Consumer behavior studies. Statista.com provides companies, business customers, research institutions, and the academic community with direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets.
Games and culture : a journal of interactive media by 
Computers & graphics : an international journal of systems & applications in computer graphics by 
