Book: Good Video Games and Good Learning

Good Video Games and Good Learning

James Paul Gee, 2007

Get the book on Amazon.com

ISBN: 978-0-8204-9703-7

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This book includes a collection of essays about videogames and their influence in learning and literacy. I really like this book because it gives a really good insight on videogames from a cognitive science point of view. It really is amazing how videogame components can be directly applied in schools and other learning environments.

Book: AI Game Programming Wisdom 2

AI Game Programming Wisdom 2

Various Authors, edited by Steve Rabin [2004]

Get the book on Amazon.com

Visit the AI Wisdom website

ISBN:1-58450-289-4

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This book is the next iteration in the AI Game Programming Wisdom Series and as the first one, this one has a great collection of articles from a wide variety of topics. Specific topics in the book are: Pathfinding, Group Movement, Animation, State Machines, Architecture, Strategy AI, Sports AI, Scripting, Learning, Genetic Algorithms and Speech Recognition.

This series is amazing because each article found in the book provides a clear an concise way of implementing a certain technique in a game with easy-to-understand explanations. This book is also a great addition for any game AI programmer out there.

Book: End to End Game Development

End to End Game Development: Creating Independent Serious Games and Simulations from Start to Finish

Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst [2010]

Buy the book from Amazon.com

ISBN: 978-0-240-81179-6

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This book is a very complete guide to the Serious Game development process. It includes everything from how to define the goals of your project to how to produce and author your game. Also, several interesting topics are included like Game Design, Instructional Design and Gameplay Design.

This book has an easy-to-read format and the authors take great care in how the information is presented to the reader. The great amount of examples, many of the taken from real life situations make it easy to see how all the topics can be applied to your own project.

End to End Game Development is a book that I would recommend to start with, as it provides knowledge from all the game development process, which can then be deepened depending on your presonal interests.

Iuppa, Nick; Borst, Terry (2010). End to End Game Development, Creating Independent Serious Games and Simulations from Start to Finish (1st ed.). Massachusetts, United States: Elseiver.

Book: AI Game Programming Wisdom

AI Game Programming Wisdom

Various Authors, edited by Steve Rabin [2002]

Get the book on Amazon.com

Visit the AI Wisdom website

ISBN: 1-58450-077-8

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This book is an amazing collection of AI related articles that focus on specific aspects of AI development. The great variety of authors and topics make this book a must have for game developers interested in improving their games thorugh AI.

The more than 70 articles contained in the book range from general purpose AI techniques to genere specific AI implementations. It also includes a cd-rom with implemented examples of the code that appears in the book.

Can the information in this book be applied in a serious game context? Probably not every single article, but depending on the type of serious game, many of them could be applied or easily modified to fit the needs of a serious game.

Book: What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy

What Videogames Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy

James Paul Gee [2003]

Get the book on Amazon.com.

ISBN: 1-4039-6538-2

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In this book, Gee explains how games can affect people and more importantly, how can they learn a great amount of stuff just by playing. Gee created a list of 36 learning principles and a thorough explanation of the cognitive processes involved in each of them, with research facts and personal experiences.

In one of the chapters of the book, Gee accurately explains how, if a game is well done, the gamer can have a special connection with his avatar representation. He uses the game Arcanum as an example. Gee says that in this game, he created a special connection with his female elf avatar so deep that that he transmitted his morals and values into his character to the point that he sometimes felt bad if things didn't turn well, feeling that he had 'let down' the character in the videogame.

This happened because there are three identities that work together when someone plays a game like this:

• A virtual identity (one's identity as a virtual character in the game's world).
• A real world identity (the non-virtual person playing the game).
• A projective identity (the projection of one's values and desires into the virtual character).

These identities interact with each other thorught the game and as an example, he says that at any point, any of them can fail:

The virtual character can fail to defeat an enemy because the character was not strong enough to beat it. The real world person can fail to use the game controls effectivly, causing the virtual character to lose a fight that, according to the game's rules, should have won. And the projective identity can fail when the real player causes the virtual player to do something in the game that the real player feels the virtual player shouldn't have done.

Gee explains that this relates to one of the learning principles in his list, the "Identity Principle". This principle says:

"Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has real choices and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones."

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[This post will be updated if I find more interesting stuff]

Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy (1st ed.). New York, United States: Palgrave Macmillian.