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.