In the SEGA game gear advert for video games which was published in Viz Comic in the early 90's the advert is completely aimed at younger heterosexual males. There is no reference to video games being advertised towards women as it may symbolise that women aren't interested in video games. The way the video game has been marketed has been made to act like something that is used to keep busy and to pass time for young males.
What is a video game?
- You need a video gaming console in order to play video games
- E.g. Xbox, PS4, Computer
- Easier to watch films due to streaming services its a lot cheaper to watch films than it is to play video games
- Video games target a core/niche audience
- Video games 99% of the time have an interactive element therefore needing an active consumer.
- Video games are generally played more by younger audiences compared to films which are appealable to all ages (child, horror, comedy etc. )
- Hypodermic Needle model - makes a massive assumption that the audience is stupid, an assumption made about video games is that it can make you violent if you play it too much.
- Vastly more complicated narratives, you always seem to get hit with a problems so they constantly have a disequilibrium. The video games also just end all the time due to you running out of lives and you may never be able to get past that stage again.
- Theres often an online component to the video game - Many times they're not permanent and only exist for a certain amount of time.
- Interactivity
- Huge expenditure of resources
- Much higher recommended retail price (RRP)
- Significantly longer length
- A dedicated, 'core' target audience
- Games developed for specific hardware, or released multiplatform.
Video Game - production, distribution and circulation
- Like all industries, the video game industry is a specialised industry.
- First video game was in 1962 and it was space war. Only labs would have access to the video game, you would need a lot of space to have a computer and they were limited.
- Space Invaders, Japanese Game and made by Tito, it was an arcade game and you pay to play it in a public space. It was so popular in Japan that they had a yen shortage because all the coins were being put into space invader machines that Japan had to produce more yen coins. Space Invaders is a shooting game which is extremely popular.
- Centipede - American arcade boom - trackball to control your icon and was colourful compared to black and white space invaders.
- Bedroom coders and Uk micros - phenomenon in UK with bedroom coders, and people made their own video games and companies even used to publish them.
- Early experimentations and generic fluidity - there was a lot of different genres and the games were made by drunk men generically. The games all had specific genres and they were made by a single teenager in the UK.
- The 1980's videogame crash
- Atari knew ET was going to be a hit so they made a videogame in a month and they made loads of copies and only ended up selling a few due to the game being not of the best quality. Atari buried copies in a desert as that was cheaper than trying to sell the games.
- Japanese Imports - Japanese are good at pinching ideas and making them better like music. Japan done the same with video games and used to produce their own better version of video games.
- Regional differences - JPN vs the rest of the world
- Final Fantasy - Fallout
- Final Fantasy you follow a story whereas in Fallout you can make decisions rather than following the same story every time.
- The Japanese console boom - Mario - Nintendo ENS - the most successful video game ever made, and still is. Its 32 years old, the reason it did so well is due to it being marketed towards kids. Soundtrack was easily recognisable and it is very well composed. The graphics were also good quality. It raised the standard of video games.
- Street Fighter ||, Female characters became more popular due to a female character on Street Fighter.
- Arcades and Consoles - Console was released that changed the way gaming was, it was the Sony Playstation 1 (PS1)
- PS1 advert - It works as although its a parody acting against playstation it is still advertising the product and theres references to the consumers becoming chimps. By using a clever reverse psychology it also includes comedy aspect and it is making fun of the idea that video games make you stupid and that they destroy your life. Its deliberately condesending.
- Video game consoles are cheap, but its the games that make the money or the extra accessories like a headset or the controller.
- Indie games tend to be made by small development teams
- Undertale
- Triple A game (AAA game, Major Game) takes thousands of people to make these games
- Fifa, COD, Sims, Halo
- Controversies surrounding production
- The developer of Tomb Raider did say that Lara Croft was the character due to the game constantly following her so you're seeing her from the back and he reckoned it would be more appealing for it to be a woman's bum than a males bum.
- Digital Distribution - You can now get video games online and instead of having disc's you just need to download certain games which makes it difficult when its discontinued as you will not be able to play it again even if you've payed for it compared to if you had a disc.
Component 1 - Section B
Were studying video games for this section in the exam.
- Assassins Creed 3 - Liberation
- Published by Ubisoft in 2012 for the Playstation Vita, with a subsequent HD re-release for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
- Video games are regulated in a different way to films, Pegi give advisory age levels to games.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUhraVG7Ow
- Assassins Creed 3 Liberation Trailer - The videogame try's to make itself different due to having an intense narrative. The game is also being sold like a film due to the cinematic aspect of it. The main character is also a black women which is very uncommon in video games.
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