Computer and Video Game Development and Programming

The complete guide to the Sony Playstation. Collector info, interviews, history of the PSX, prototypes, images, everything you could want.

Taking in ten works of gaming genius from video gaming's brief, rich history, Game Plan explores how these pivotal pieces of digital art evolved the industry. Conversations with creators and producers reveal the inspirations behind their masterworks, as well as giving insights into the development process itself. Games examined include Namco's pill-thrill Pac-Man, Shigeru Miyamoto's epoch-defining Mario 64, and Bell and Braben's mid-1980's space opera, Elite. Also featured is Tomb Raider, the UK's biggest selling game of all time, which turned Laura Croft from 500 triangles into a style icon, defined gaming's break into the mainstream at the end of the 1990s, and even won a BAFTA for its outstanding contribution to the interactive industry.

In the many studies of games and young people's use of them, little has been written about an overall "ecology" of gaming, game design and play - mapping the ways that all the various elements, from coding to social practices to aesthetics, coexist in the game world. This volume looks at games as systems in which young users participate, as gamers, producers, and learners.