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Gamelab
Gamelab was an independent game studio in New York City, New York founded by game designer Eric Zimmerman and Peter Seung-Taek Lee in 2000. It is best known for creating Diner Dash, one of the most downloaded games of all time (over half a billion times across multiple platforms in its first six years), as well as its two spin-off companies, the non-profit Institute of Play and the online game and community site Gamestar Mechanic. History Zimmerman and Lee (with audio by Michael Sweet) created a game called BLiX, which was named a Finalist (and eventually won Best Audio) at the 2000 Independent Games Festival at the Game Developers Conference, Zimmerman and Lee then incorporated gameLab and used an advance on BLiX royalties from their exclusivity deal with Shockwave.com to open an office in downtown Manhattan. gameLab released 34 video games on multiple platforms between 2000 and 2009, published by companies like LEGO, HBO, PlayFirst, VH-1, and iWin, plus eight massively mul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Fortugno
Nicholas Fortugno (born May 13, 1975) is an American game designer and educator. Fortugno is CCO of Playmatics LLC, a New York City-based game development studio focusing on casual games and co-founded with Margaret Wallace. Fortugno is perhaps best known for designing ''Diner Dash'', a top-selling casual game developed by Gamelab, and the award-winning ''Ayiti: The Cost of Life''. In addition to his large body of digital work, Fortugno has been involved in the design of numerous non-digital projects, including board games, collectible card games, large-scale social games, and live-action role-playing games (LARP). Since 2002, Fortugno has taught the Game Design and Interactive Narrative program at Parsons School of Design, and has contributed to the development of the school's game design curriculum. Fortugno also hosts and writes for the game journal and review site ''Critical Smack!''. Early life and education Born in the Bronx, New York, Fortugno was raised primarily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman (born 1969) is an American game designer and the co-founder and CEO of Gamelab, a computer game development company based in Manhattan. GameLab is known for the game ''Diner Dash''. Each year Zimmerman hosts the Game Design Challenge at the Game Developers Conference. He is also the co-author of four books including '' Rules of Play'' with Katie Salen, which was published in November 2004. Eric Zimmerman has written at least 24 essays and whitepapers since 1996, mostly pertaining to game development from an academic standpoint. He's currently a founding faculty at the NYU Game Center. Career Zimmerman develops video games and teaches game design. He has taught at universities including MIT, the University of Texas at Austin, Parsons School of Design, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design and School of Visual Arts. He co-designed the 1996 video game '' Gearheads'' with Frank Lantz at R/GA Interactive. During the game's development, they coine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diner Dash
''Diner Dash'' is a strategy and time management video game initially developed by Gamelab and published by PlayFirst. It is now owned and published by Glu Mobile. It was one of the top-selling downloadable games of all-time, available in multiple platforms such as PC, Mac, consoles, and mobile. An Xbox Live Arcade version of the game was released by Hudson Soft on November 18, 2009, the PlayStation Network version on November 25, 2009, the WiiWare version on February 16, 2010, in Japan, as well as Europe on March 26, 2010, and North America on March 29, 2010, but this version is no longer on the WiiWare service. Diner Dash later became a mobile game when ported to mobile phones by Glu Mobile, given a retail release, and made available via a 100% advertising-supported download. Versions have been created for the platforms PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, and iOS. ''Diner Dash'' is also used to refer to the ''Diner Dash'' franchise, which has spawned numerous sequels. '' Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PlayFirst
PlayFirst, Inc. is a Delaware based publisher of casual games founded in 2004 by industry veterans. PlayFirst produced the ''Diner Dash'' series, which won the 2008 Annual Casual Game Awards. and has seen over 550 million downloads. The popularity of ''Diner Dash'' series prompted spin-off series like '' Wedding Dash'' and ''Cooking Dash''. The company’s game portfolio also includes the retro-style strategy-based ''Chocolatier'' series, and the adventure/ hidden object-mixing ''Dream Chronicles'' series. From 2005 to mid-2011, PlayFirst have released 72 casual games for PC and Mac, counting extra 7 Collector's Editions and Strategy Guides, thus they have 79 games in total in their game categories. History 2004–2010: Early days, breakthrough, and maintaining the success of ''Dash'' series PlayFirst’s biggest commercial success was its first game, ''Diner Dash'', which was released for the first time on PC/Mac platforms in late 2004. ''Diner Dash'' was initially devel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gamestar Mechanic
''Gamestar Mechanic'' is an online game and community designed to teach the guiding principles of game design and systems thinking. The game is published by E-Line Media and supported by a partnership between E-Line Media and the Institute of Play. Project history Initial development of ''Gamestar'' was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation based on a grant proposal authored by James Paul Gee and Eric Zimmerman. Initial design and development of the game was by Gamelab in partnership with Katie Salen, The Institute of Play and the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab (AADLC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The game was released commercially in the Fall of 2010 and is currently supported by a partnership between educational game publisher E-Line Media and the Institute of Play. On September 29, 2020, it was announced that the current website would be shut down on December 31, 2020, due to the planned deprecation of Adobe F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institute Of Play
The Institute of Play (IOP) is a 501(c)(3) corporation founded in 2007. Based out of New York City, the institute offers school design services, educator programs, game and curriculum design, and corporate trainings / workshops. Their initial work promoted game design, games and gaming as a model tool to enhance personal and social development, in particular learning in secondary school students. Within six months of its formation by a group of game designers from gameLab, the Institute of Play received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to develop Quest to Learn, a New York City public school designed around game design principles and based on over thirty years of learning research. The Institute of Play has announced it plans to shut down operations by the third quarter of 2019 and its materials will remain available through licenses through the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine. Work School Design Institute of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katie Salen
Katie Salen Tekinbas is an American game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for Design the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Salen has received grants as principal investigator or co-principal investigator from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and Intel. She is one of the co-authors of '' Rules of Play'', a textbook on game design, and the co-editor of ''The Game Design Reader, a Rules of Play Anthology'', as well as the co-editor of ''The International Journal of Learning and Media''. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Lantz
Frank Lantz (born December 17, 1963) is the Director of the New York University Game Center. For over 12 years, Lantz taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He has also taught at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design. His writings on games, technology, and culture have appeared in a variety of publications. In 2012, The New York Times referred to Lantz as a "reigning genius of the mysteries of games" following his design of iPhone puzzle game Drop7. In 2005 he co-founded area/code, a New York-based developer that created cross-media, location-based, and social network games. In 2011 area/code was acquired by Zynga and became Zynga New York. Lantz has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting area/code, he worked on a wide variety of games as the Director of Game Design at Gamelab, Lead Game Designer at Pop & Co, and Creative Director at R/GA Interactive. In 2012, Lantz contributed an interview to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collectible Card Game
A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategy game, strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in 1993. Generally a Player (game), player may begin playing a CCG with a pre-made Booster pack#Starter deck, starter deck, and then customize their deck with a random assortment of cards acquired through booster packs, or from trading with other players, building up their own library of cards. As a player obtains more cards, they may create new decks from scratch from their library. Players are challenged to construct a deck within limits set by the CCG's rules that will allow them to outlast decks constructed by other players. Games are commonly played between two players, though Multiplayer game, multiplayer formats are also common. Gameplay in CCG is typically turn-based, with each player starting with a shuffled deck and on their turn, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pac-Man
originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Game development began in early 1979, directed by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, because most video games of the time had themes of war or sports. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he also rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi ( ja, 口). The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful to appeal to younger p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Board Game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a competition between two or more players. To show a few examples: in checkers (British English name 'draughts'), a player wins by capturing all opposing pieces, while Eurogames often end with a calculation of final scores. '' Pandemic'' is a cooperative game where players all win or lose as a team, and peg solitaire is a puzzle for one person. There are many varieties of board games. Their representation of real-life situations can range from having no inherent theme, such as checkers, to having a specific theme and narrative, such as ''Cluedo''. Rules can range from the very simple, such as in snakes and ladders; to deeply complex, as in ''Advanced Squad Leader''. Play components now often include custom figures or shaped counters, and di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quest To Learn
Quest to Learn (Q2L) is a public middle and high school in New York City, United States. The school is operated by the New York City Department of Education. It is located in the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. History The school was created out of a collaboration between Institute of Play and the New York City Department of Education, with backing from the MacArthur Foundation and support from New Visions for Public Schools. The school began in the 2009–2010 school year with one sixth grade class, and added a new grade every year until 2015 when it became a fully functioning combined middle and high school encompassing grades 6-12. Game designer and educator Katie Salen Katie Salen Tekinbas is an American game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for ... was one of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
