Video Games

July 27, 2015
This addition to the Build It Yourself series explores the history of video games, tracing their popularity from ancient board games like mancala up through Minecraft today, while providing readers with the basic material to design, write, and code game programs. The 25 included projects range in type and complexity, from making a board game with a video-game-like concept to writing a pseudocode algorithm for a memory and matching game. Ceceri delves into the psychological aspects of playing video games (one headline asks, “Do video games have a dark side?”), and vocabulary words and phrases like “define a function, variable, string, and Boolean logic” are placed in context. Digital natives with a serious interest in gaming should find Ceceri’s handbook an excellent resource. Ages 9–12.

November 15, 2015
Grades 4-8 This accessible manual packs a tremendous amount of information into brief chapters, featuring graphics-rich pages, enticing layouts, user-friendly text, sidebars, charts, graphs, definitions, helpful hints, and suggestions on the application of newly learned knowledge. The first half of the book addresses the history, appeal, types, strategies, and psychology of gaming; games as educational tools or means of raising public consciousness; and negative consequences (e.g., addiction, possible transference to real-world violence, advertising, and subliminal messages). Actual game coding isn't even addressed until the fourth chapter, but once it is, readers are guided though a step-by-step process that should allow every user to successfully start creating original games. Subsequent chapters sequentially phase in more sophisticated applications, such as art, animation, and sound. Each section offers projects and ideas for more ambitious undertakings. Other titlesGaming Technology (2011) and The Epic Evolution of Video Games (2013)talk about the why and the so what of gaming; this guide delivers the how. This appealing offering should prove to be a popular addition to STEM collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)