The turn-based tactical role playing series Jagged Alliance has been sequeled, expanded, modded, optioned, multiplayered, and kickstarted, but the series' many fans usually point to Jagged Alliance 2 as the high water mark, and one of the finest turn-based video games of all time. Jagged Alliance 2 brings to the table a wicked sense of humor, simulation-driven character design, a combination of strategic overworld and tactical battles reminiscent of the X-COM series, and a surprisingly deep open-world RPG experience reminiscent of the Ultima or Elder Scrolls games. Focusing on JA2′s development history and basing his book largely on new personal interviews with the game's developers, game designer and web technology developer Darius Kazemi delves deep into the legacy of a game that still has much to teach gamers and game-makers 14 years after its release.

Within the field of game design, game balance can best be described as a black art. It is the process by which game designers make a game simultaneously fair for players while providing them just the right amount of difficulty to be both exciting and challenging without making the game entirely predictable. This involves a combination of mathematics, psychology, and occasionally other fields such as economics and game theory. Game Balance offers readers a dynamic look into game design and player theory. Throughout the book, relevant topics on the use of spreadsheet programs will be included in each chapter. This book therefore doubles as a useful reference on Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet programs and their uses for game designers. FEATURES The first and only book to explore game balance as a topic in depth Topics range from intermediate to advanced, while written in an accessible style that demystifies even the most challenging mathematical concepts to the point where a novice student of game design can understand and apply them Contains powerful spreadsheet techniques which have been tested with all major spreadsheet programs and battle-tested with real-world game design tasks Provides short-form exercises at the end of each chapter to allow for practice of the techniques discussed therein along with three long-term projects divided into parts throughout the book that involve their creation Written by award-winning designers with decades of experience in the field Ian Schreiber has been in the industry since 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on eight published game titles, training/simulation games for three Fortune 500 companies, and has advised countless student projects. He is the co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest in-person game jam event in the world. Ian has taught game design and development courses at a variety of colleges and universities since 2006. Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist, and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons, and Def Jam franchises.

A game's creation as told by its creator, perhaps the best rpimer on game design.

A troubled man travels to a mysterious town from his past after receiving a letter from his wife... who's been dead for years. And while our "hero" explores dark corridors and battles countless disturbing enemies, his journey offers more psychological horror than survival horror. Welcome to Silent Hill, where the monster is you. Silent Hill 2 doubles down on what made the first game so compelling: The feeling of being lost in a foggy, upside-down town as unsettling as it is familiar. Nearly two decades after first experiencing Silent Hill 2, writer and comedian Mike Drucker returns to its dark depths to explore how this bold video game delivers an experience that is tense, nightmarish, and anything but fun. With an in-depth and highly personal study of its tragic cast of characters, and a critical examination of developer Konami’s world design and uneven marketing strategy, Drucker examines how Silent Hill 2 forces its players to grapple with the fact that very real-world terrors of trauma, abuse, shame, and guilt are far more threatening than any pyramid-headed monster could ever be.

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.

Reviews over 400 seminal games from 1975 to 2015. Each entry shares articles on the genre, mod suggestions and hints on how to run the games on modern hardware.

An examination of work—including the organization of work and the market forces that surround it—through the lens of the collaborative practice of game development. Rank-and-file game developers bring videogames from concept to product, and yet their work is almost invisible, hidden behind the famous names of publishers, executives, or console manufacturers. In this book, Casey O’Donnell examines the creative collaborative practice of typical game developers. His investigation of why game developers work the way they do sheds light on our understanding of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that shape (and are shaped by) media industries. O’Donnell shows that the ability to play with the underlying systems—technical, conceptual, and social—is at the core of creative and collaborative practice, which is central to the New Economy. When access to underlying systems is undermined, so too is creative collaborative process. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in game studios in the United States and India, O’Donnell stakes out new territory empirically, conceptually, and methodologically. Mimicking the structure of videogames, the book is divided into worlds, within which are levels; and each world ends with a boss fight, a “rant” about lessons learned and tools mastered. O’Donnell describes the process of videogame development from pre-production through production, considering such aspects as experimental systems, “socially mandatory” overtime, and the perpetual startup machine that exhausts young, initially enthusiastic workers. He links work practice to broader systems of publishing, manufacturing, and distribution; introduces the concept of a privileged “actor-intra-internetwork”; and describes patent and copyright enforcement by industry and the state.

When NBA Jam dunked its way into arcades in 1993, players discovered just how fun basketball can be when freed from rules, refs, and gravity itself. But just a few years after the billion-dollar hit conquered the world, developer Midway, publisher Acclaim, and video arcades themselves fell off the map. How did a simple two-on-two basketball game become MVP of the arcade, and how did this champ lose its title? Journalist Reyan Ali dives deep into the saga, tracking the people and decisions that shaped the series. You'll get to know mischievous Jam architect Mark Turmell, go inside Midway's Chicago office where hungry young talent tapped into cutting-edge tech, and explore the sequels, spin-offs, and tributes that came in the game's wake. Built out of exhaustive research and original interviews with a star-studded cast —including Turmell and his original development team, iconic commentator Tim Kitzrow, businessmen and developers at Midway and Acclaim alike, secret characters George Clinton and DJ Jazzy Jeff, Doom co-creator John Romero, and 1990s NBA demigods Glen Rice and Shaq—Ali's NBA Jam returns you to an era when coin-op was king.

Sarah J. Maas hit the New York Times SERIES list at #1 with A Court of Wings and Ruin!

In 1997, game studio Running With Scissors released its debut title, Postal, an isometric shooter aimed at shocking an imagined pearl-clutching public. The game was crass, gory, and dumb—all of which might have been forgivable if the game had been any fun to play. Postal gained enough notoriety from riding the wave of public outrage to warrant a sequel. And DLC. And a remake. And, perhaps most surprising of all, a Golden-Raspberry-winning feature film adaptation directed by the infamous Uwe Boll. In this thoughtful and hilarious tag-team performance, Brock Wilbur & Nathan Rabin probe the fascinatingly troubled game and film for what each can tell us about shock culture & mass shootings, interviewing the RWS team and even Boll himself for answers. Like it or not, Postal is the franchise that won't die—no matter how many molotov cocktails you throw at it.