Announcing two new books about the Gamification of work:

If you are interested in learning (or teaching) how to implement Artificial Intelligence for 3D games using Unity and C#, then this new book should help.

This is the first book in a series called “Unity from Proficiency to Mastery” that will focus on specific features and skills necessary to develop games with Unity (e.g., AI, UI, Animation, etc.). 

This book series follows the previous series called Unity from Zero to Proficiency, where readers learn core skills to become comfortable with Unity’s Interface and programming, and to also create a 3D First-Person Shooter with indoor and outdoor scenes from scratch, using both JavaScript and C#.

Unity from   Proficiency to Mastery (Artificial Intelligence) includes 6 chapters that show how to import, animate, and control 3D characters in Unity, and it also explains how to apply common AI techniques, to make NPCs more challenging, using Unity and C#.
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Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age has just released “How To Play Eddo Stern”, a critical monograph on the avantgarde artist and game designer Eddo Stern written by Domenico Quaranta and co-produced with Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel.

The digital version can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/2qXdmA0

The print version will be soon available through Link Center for the Arts + Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel.

Below is the full synopsis:

Artist and game designer Eddo Stern explores the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation, surrounding the subject matters of violence, memory and identification. A game manual, a catalogue, a making of and an archive, “How to Play Eddo Stern” revolves around a selected body of works developed with di(erent media that can be understood as “games”. Featuring an essay by Matteo Bittanti entitled “Radar, Envisioneer, Artist. Two or Three Things I Know about Eddo Stern”, the book is a deep dive into the massive amount of small bits and pieces that make up the folders of Stern’s game projects: 3D models, texture maps and atlases, backdrops, animation frame sequences, code snippets, circuit diagrams, as well as emails, design documents, meeting notes, and installation diagrams. Co-produced with Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel.

America’s Digital Army is an ethnographic study of the link between interactive entertainment and military power, drawing on Robertson Allen’s fieldwork observing video game developers, military strategists, U.S. Army marketing agencies, and an array of defense contracting companies that worked to produce the official U.S. Army video game, America’s Army. Allen uncovers the methods by which gaming technologies such as America’s Army, with military funding and themes, engage in a militarization of American society that constructs everyone, even nonplayers of games, as virtual soldiers available for deployment.

America’s Digital Army examines the army’s desire for “talented” soldiers capable of high-tech work; beliefs about America’s enemies as reflected in the game’s virtual combatants; tensions over best practices in military recruiting; and the sometimes overlapping cultures of gamers, game developers, and soldiers.

Allen reveals how binary categorizations such as soldier versus civilian, war versus game, work versus play, and virtual versus real become blurred—if not broken down entirely—through games and interactive media that reflect the U.S. military’s ludic imagination of future wars, enemies, and soldiers.

“A Beginner’s Guide to Web and Mobile  Games“ explains how to create a simple infinite runner and to export it to the web and Android devices, and how to publish it on Google Play.

This is the fourth book in a series called “A Beginner’s Guide” that will focus on specific features and skills necessary to develop games with Unity (e.g., 2D, Artificial Intelligence or AR/VR). No wonder learning to know details such as Sololearn vs Mimo would be advantageous when it comes to coding.

This book series follows the previous series called Unity from Zero to Proficiency, where readers learn core skills to become comfortable with Unity’s Interface and programming, and to also create a 3D First-Person Shooter with indoor and outdoor scenes from scratch, using both JavaScript and C#.

This first book in the new series  (i.e., A Beginner’s Guide to 2D Platform Games) focuses on creating a simple 2D platform game with Unity, using C#.

This second book in the new series  (i.e., A Beginner’s Guide to 2D Shooter Games) focuses on creating a simple 2D shooter game with Unity, using C#.

This third book in the new series  (i.e., A Beginner’s Guide to 2D Puzzle Games) focuses on creating simple 2D Puzzle games with Unity, using C#.

This fourth book in the new series  (i.e., A Beginner’s Guide to Web and Mobile Games) focuses on creating a simple infinite runner with Unity (using C#) and on exporting and publishing this game to the web and Android devices.

ETC Press is excited to announce the release of “Analog Game Studies: Volume II,” by Evan Torner, Emma Leigh Waldron, Aaron Trammell, et al.

For those interested in the relationship of games, gaming and religion, I’m happy to do a little self-promotion and announce two (German) books that have recently been released:

1) Steffen, Oliver (2017): Religion in Games. Eine Methode für die religionswissenschaftliche Digitalspielforschung. Reimer: Berlin 2017

(this book provides a methodological framework for the study of religious contents in games, combining religious studies and game studies methods)

Information, flyer, extract and order at:
http://www.reimer-mann-verlag.de/controller.php?cmd=detail&titelnummer=101576&verlag=4

2) Steffen, Oliver (2017): Gamen mit Gott. Wo sich Computerspiele und Religion begegnen. Zürich: Pano 2017

(> this book is an easy read popular scientific book on religion in games, religious games, religious gamers and religious answers to games)

Information, flyer, extract and order at:
http://www.tvz-verlag.ch/index.php?id=99&tx_commerce_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=160720&tx_commerce_pi1%5BcatUid%5D=

A landmark anthology opens video game studies to queer culture. The in-depth, diverse, and accessible essays in Queer Game Studies use queerness to challenge the ideas that have dominated gaming discussions. This volume reveals the capacious albeit underappreciated communities that are making, playing, and studying queer games, demonstrating the centrality of LGBTQ issues to the gamer world and establishing an alternative lens for examining this increasingly important culture.

Available:  https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/queer-game-studies
and https://www.amazon.com/Queer-Game-Studies-Bonnie-Ruberg/dp/1517900379/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491600606&sr=8-1&keywords=queer+game+studies

Queer Game Studies is the first volume to explore LGBTQ issues in video games from a diverse range of perspectives. It speaks to game studies, queer studies, and feminist media studies more broadly. Contributors to the volume include:

Leigh Alexander
Gregory Bagnall
Hanna Brady
Mattie Brice
Derek Burrill
Edmond Chang
Naomi Clark
Katherine Cross
Aubrey Gabrel
Christopher Goetz
Jack Halberstam
Todd Harper
Larissa Hjorth
Chelsea Howe
Jesper Juul
merritt kopas
Colleen Macklin
Amanda Phillips
Gabriela Richard
Toni Rocca
Bonnie Ruberg
Adrienne Shaw
Sara Schoemann
Kathryn Bond Stockton
Zoya Street
Peter Wonica
Robert Yang
Jordan Youngblood