Unfinished The issues raised in the targeting of national and local audience, specifically British, by international or global institutions

I believe that it is important to target local audiences because in order to sell games to consumers and build a good relationship with fans, producers and developers need to please the consumers of the game. To sell copies in the local area, games producers and developers will edit games so certain elements of the game fit in with the culture and views of the country it is being marketed in. For example, Swastikas aren't on any games in Germany.

Local audiences change the products that are introduced into the market as producers and developers will shape production of products for certain geographical areas to shape sales. In China, gaming is believed to be corrupting the youth, and the likes of Internet Gaming such as Minecraft and RuneScape is very popular over there, and a lot of money is being spent on virtual products. Ninetendo have combatted this by producing the iQue player in China, in which you buy a memory card and download the games onto it instead of distribution via disks

Games distribution tasks

1. The distributor for GTA V will be take two interactive
2. The distributor for Skylanders Giants will be XPEC entertainment
3. Chillingo are the distributors for Angry Birds



These are all logos for UK games distributors, the publisher will give the game to the distributors and the job of these is to supply game sellers with games.

World Of Warcraft

World of warcraft has one of the biggest MMORPG fan bases in the world, and it also has the second biggest wikipedia page in the world, and this says a lot because anybody can add to wikipedia, so it is obviously added to regularly by players of the game, and the fact it is so big, meaning that it has many followers and players of the game.

The Player is able to choose between 2 Factions “The Horde” and “The Alliance”
The Horde has 5 Different Races. Trolls, Orcs, Taurens, Undeads and Blood Elfs. The last needs The Expansion to be played. The Alliance also has 5 different races for you to choose from. Humans, Dwarfs, Gnomes, Night elfs and Draenei. Again the last one requires the expansion The Burning Crusade.
There are 9 different classes for a player to choose from. Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior. Each Class is very different from another, and gives a big variety in game play. The Max level for a character to gain is 60, and with the expansion they raised it to 70.
The Game has been mentioned in alot of known tv-series. South Park made an entire episode dedicated to World of Warcraft. This gave the episode 3.4 million viewers, which made it Comedy Central’s best midseason premiere since 2000. 2006 episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Return Part 1, featured a scene where Dr. Weir distracts geeky scientist Bill Lee by telling him she too is a fan of World of Warcraft.
2006 episode of Help Me Help You, “Fun Run,” involves Inger meeting her online husband from the game.
2006, Blizzard announced that major national television stations would begin airing the first World of Warcraft TV spot in North America. The commercial is an edit of a scene from the cult comedy film Office Space with footage of the game and a World of Warcraft box overlaid onto the original footage.

There is also a number of products world of warcraft has used symboisis to expand their gaming reputation and gained the brand recognition, an example of this is the 'world of warcraft' gaming mouse that is being sold across the world and advertises itself as a 'must' when playing the game.

GTA V

The GTA franchise, is published by Rockstar, previously DMA, is being worked on by Rockstar North and has produced a number of best selling, controversial games. Rockstar use the RAGE engine and almost entirely depend on guerilla marketing, posting stickers and billboards around major cities prior to release, which gives it a kind of 'underground' feel, and each time, every time a new game gets released, a lot of time and effort goes in to making the graphics and game play better.

So far we dont know much about the new GTA that is set to be released in spring 2013. However, what we do know is that it is going to be based around 'bank heists and switching characters' as Dan Houser felt that he, and rockstar, have never really prepped a good bank heist. Also, the game features 3 main characters which you switch between in the game play which is a first for the GTA franchise.

They are also apparently working on a huge map, as big or bigger than red dead redemption, GTA V and San Andreas put together. The use of cross media convergence with Rockstar will probably be the soundtrack coming out again like in GTA 4, and you can physically download it and place it on your iPod etc..

It is quite perculiar that the game can be pre ordered already, for within the region of £40, as the likes of call of duty retail for around £50-60, however for an extra £5 you can pre order an 'ultimate' edition type, which no details have been released yet, but it is likely that some form of explicit gifts will be provided when paying extra for the ultimate edition.

Top 20 Chart

The top 20 chart from the 31/10/2012 to the 07/11/2012 shows that 19 of the 20 are franchises, Assassins creed tops the list and is available on all main platforms, followed by Fifa 13, again available on all main platforms then followed by Football manager, which is only available on pc. The only one that is a 'new i.p' is a game called Dishounoured which is number 10 and again, available on all platforms, which shows that it is harder to sell a new I.P than it is to sell a franchise, however the fact that the 'new i.p' in the chart shows that there is some space for these in the market.

Most of the games on this chart are available on a wide variety of platforms, with just a minority exclusive to a certain platform, like Pokemon to Nintendo. It is mostly dominated by adult games, despite fifa being a 3+, Assassins creed topping the chart shows that it is mostly older gamers that occupy the top 20, with some of the kids games being in the second half of the chart, however there are two games by Activision which are kids games in the top 20, that are Moshi Monsters and Skylanders, which also have figures that you can physically play with aswell, that help you complete the game.

EA Games are mainly dominating the top of this chart, and also two sports games occupy the top 3, with Football Manager and Fifa 13, again made by EA, however most of the chart seems to be first person shooters or third person game play like assassins creed and medal of honour.

Halo 4 Symbiosis

 

Here is an example of symbiosis between Halo 4 and Mountain Dew

Hot Coffee

The "hot coffee" mod was when a gamer hacked the GTA san andreas game, and changed the coding so a minigame that was originally to be put on the game, but was banned, was revealed. This sparked a lot of controversy around GTA and changed rockstars relationships with its gamers as it was them who hacked it.

Conglomerate Map

Indie Games

Indie games are basically a game that is started by one person or a partnership of people, these often are very cheap to make and are usually games that are very simple and addictive.

I'm going to focus on super meat boy, this game was designed by Edmund McMillin and Tommy Rafenes, that make up "team meat" and the composer of the game was Danny Baranowsky. It comes on a number of platforms including mac, windows and xbox 360 via the arcade.

Super meat boy recieved awards for most challenging game and also for the best downloadable game from established gaming companies, and all comes from an original copy of the successful 2008 dlash game. It was released on xbox in october 2010 and as of january 2012, has sold over 1 million copies.

Indie games are often a big success if they are made properly as there isnt many people to split the profit with, so for super meat boy for example, the creaters would have to share the profit between a small number of them.

The aim of this game is to guide a man made entirely of meat to his girlfriend made of bandages, from the games antagonist, dr fetus.

Skylanders Giants

Skylander pushes an interactive view on gaming by the way you can buy actual figures in real life and place them into the game by using a port, this is set to be the best selling game for christmas as it appeals to kids the idea of collecting toys and the last game also sold well

Zynga and social games

Zynga was founded in April 2007 by Mark Pinicus. There first game was Texas Hold 'Em for Facebook and there logo is a bulldog. As of now there are 333 million users and there website is www.zynga.com. It has an estimated worth of 7 billion.

There are two ways that Zynga make money, one of the ways is using real money in minor credit card payments to pay for things in the game that are needed to make you progress, for example on texas hold em poker you can purchase more chips from your credit card or bank card to help you progress in the game.

Another way they make money is advertising, they sell some of there space to companies that pay well to advertise there business on Zynga games.

Farmville 2 is in 3D, and also doesn't let you bring in things from your farmville, meaning people will pay again to reach a higher level or a better farm, generating revenue for Zynga.

"The Controller Revolution"

As the gaming industry has been alive for the excess of 20 years, we can now take a look back and see the contrast in the first generation of games consoles to todays generations of consoles such as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The main differences between today, and when video games were first brought into the world, are the fact that the technology introduced in todays gaming world is a lot more highly advanced and also, the casual gamers market that has only recently developed. The fact that the new technology such as controllers, which have developed over the years to suit the gamer, may also help with the fidea of the casual gamers. For example, the soon to be released wii U, wont really appeal to the hardcore gamers as it is more of a thing to do when your bored, and again Nintendo being the first to utilize more modern technology with another type of control with the touch screen on the DS series, which again appeals to more casual gamers.

Motion control, which is also used by playstation in the "move" and the xbox in the "kinect" seems to be an idea that instead or as well as using a controller, you can use your body to control the game.. However, this was again first utilized by Nintendo with the first Wii, and despite it being a sell out for the first few weeks due to the new idea, it hasnt really continued to be a best selling gaming console like the Xbox and the Playstation, which shows that they appeal more to the casual side of gaming, where as the playstation 3 and xbox 360 which both do now have motion controls, but didnt at the time, appeal to more hardcore gamers as they are still played by a lot of people, and the fact that they introduced the motion control technology may show that this is the future, and they are trying to appeal to more of the gaming crowd.

Despite there being many many different ways of controlling a games console, some of which talked about above, it is debateable what the enct generation of gaming console controllers will be like, we are due the release of the Wii U soon and that uses all of the above including touch screen, but it is debateable whether this will cause sony and microsoft to follow. However, as technology will evolve, so will controllers and the way we play video games.

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy is when the same franchise, e.g. High school musical all help walt disney because they have the film, the soundtrack and the DVD game, help boost eachothers sales, it will all be inside one company.
Symbiosis is when two companies work together to share the profits for example Rovio's game angry birds will team up with a teddy bear company to make accessories for the game which will help make profits for both companies.

Here is an example of a synergy, the monsters vs aliens series was brought out on game, cd sountrack and dvd.

Rockstar Studios

 - Rockstar Japan - started in 2005 and still exists today, this is responsable for localisation of rockstar games and products in Japan.
 - Rockstar Leeds - started in 2004 and still exists today, this was formally known as Mobius Entertainment, based in Leeds, England. Specializes in handheld games and was also responsable for the microsoft windows version of L.A Noire
- Rockstar Lincoln - started in 1999 and still exists today, previously known as Tarantula Studios, based in Lincoln, England.
 - Rockstar London - started in 2005 and still exists today, took over the production of Manhunt 2 when Rockstar Vienna closed
 - Rockstar New England - started in 2008 and still exists today, based in Massachusetts, developed Xbox 360 and PC Ports of Bully
 - Rockstar North - started in 2002, based in Edinborough and previously known as DMA design, famous for the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt Franchises
 - Rockstar San Diego - Started in 2003 and still exists today, previously known as Angel studios and is responsable for RAGE system featured in Red Dead Redemption

Notes

Tentpole business model - a game that is the best seller in the market, that boosts funds to promote other games, for example, rockstar games uses the GTA series to fund games like LA Noire and bully.
The hollywood model - GTA is an example of a hollywood model, it uses a number of different departments to design the game, for example paying people in the art department to help design certain scenes.
The indie games- Games that aren't produced by a multi national business, and instead cheaply designed by 1 to a few people that pay the likes of apple or xbox to host there games on there marketplace/app store, these tend to be more arcade type games that couldnt be released on disk due to funding

My Gaming History

I play games occasionally and have since i was young, i prefer to play games such as Fifa on the Ps3 but in my household, i have a Wii, Xbox 360, iPad and iPhone were games are also played occasionally but my main gaming console is the Ps3. I have a variety of games on this and i frequently play a number of them, but my favourite is Fifa.

Introduction

This is my media studies blog