How Pac Man Eats

Download or read book How Pac-Man Eats written by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean; with examples ranging from Papers, Please to Dys4ia. In How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin considers two questions: What are the fundamental ways that games work? And how can games be about something? Wardrip-Fruin argues that the two issues are related. Bridging formalist and culturally engaged approaches, he shows how the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean.

Download or read book How Pac-Man Eats written by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean; with examples ranging from Papers, Please to Dys4ia. In How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin considers two questions: What are the fundamental ways that games work? And how can games be about something? Wardrip-Fruin argues that the two issues are related. Bridging formalist and culturally engaged approaches, he shows how the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean. Wardrip-Fruin proposes that games work at a fundamental level on which their mechanics depend: operational logics. Games are about things because they use play to address topics; they do this through playable models (of which operational logics are the primary building blocks): larger structures used to represent what happens in a game world that relate meaningfully to a theme. Game creators can expand the expressiveness of games, Wardrip-Fruin explains, by expanding an operational logic. Pac-Man can eat, for example, because a game designer expanded the meaning of collision from hitting things to consuming them. Wardrip-Fruin describes strategies game creators use to expand what can be said through games, with examples drawn from indie games, art games, and research games that address themes ranging from border policy to gender transition. These include Papers, Please, which illustrates expansive uses of pattern matching; Prom Week, for which the game's developers created a model of social volition to enable richer relationships between characters; and Dys4ia, which demonstrates a design approach that supports game metaphors of high complexity.

Download or read book The Pac Man Riddle and Joke Book written by Mike Thaler and published by Pocket Books. This book was released on 1982-11-01 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Elements of Game Design written by Robert Zubek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the basic concepts of game design, focusing on techniques used in commercial game production. This textbook by a well-known game designer introduces the basics of game design, covering tools and techniques used by practitioners in commercial game production. It presents a model for analyzing game design in terms of three interconnected levels--mechanics and systems, gameplay, and player experience--and explains how novice game designers can use these three levels as a framework to guide their design process. The text is notable for emphasizing models and vocabulary used in industry practice and focusing on the design of games as dynamic systems of gameplay.

Download or read book Software Studies written by Matthew Fuller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of short expository, critical and speculative texts offers a field guide to the cultural, political, social and aesthetic impact of software. Experts from a range of disciplines each take a key topic in software and the understanding of software, such as algorithms and logical structures.

Download or read book How to Win at Pac-Man written by Kelli M. Gary and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Expressive Processing written by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-02-10 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the complex city-planning game SimCity to the virtual therapist Eliza: how computational processes open possibilities for understanding and creating digital media. What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough—or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface, the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential. Wardrip-Fruin looks at “expressive processing” by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand, for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.