1. Video Games
The revision Bible

2. Your Exam
Section A
Section B
Textual Analysis
Institutions and
and representation Audiences
TV Drama
Video Games
Mr Raymond
Ms Paul

3. Institutions and Audiences

This exam tests you on your understanding of

the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;

the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and
marketing;

the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production,
distribution, marketing and exchange;

the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;

the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;

the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by
international or global institutions;

the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider
patterns and trends of audience behaviour.

4. MIGRAIN
Media language
Media words and terminology
Institution
The companies that produce, distribute and market
Genre
How do video games work with genre conventions
Representation
How do they represent people, ideas and reality?
Audiences
Who do they attract with and how do they respond to them?
Ideology
What theories and ideas are surrounded by the media text.
Narrative
What are the structures and themes?

5. What is an institution?

A media institution is a company who is
involved in producing, distributing
and marketing the media.

6. What is a video game?





Electronic
Human players (interactivity)
Video device
Platforms
Input devices

7. Platforms
Platforms are the electronic systems that you
play video games on
 Mainframe computers

Personal computers
Video game consoles
Arcade

Handheld devices
Phones
MP4s
Camera

8. Input devices
A piece of hardware you use to control the
data and signals to the processing system:
The game controller.
 This changes depending on which platform
you use.

Gamepad
Joystick
Steering wheel
Touch screen
Motion sensing
Keyboard
Trackball

9. Video Game Production
Companies




Sony
Microsoft
Nintendo
Sega

10. What is an institution?

A media institution is a company who is
involved in producing, distributing
and marketing the media.

11. Institution
What they do
Developers
Games are created by development studios comprised of software
engineers, artists and programmers who write the code, create the
structure and animate the game making them playable for gamers. It’s
these developers that are perceived as the ‘talent’ in the industry.
Publishers
These are companies that are responsible for the marketing and
distribution of the game.
Console
The companies that make the hardware, e.g. games consoles, that games
Manufacture are played on –specifically Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and, now that
rs
mobile phone based platforms are emerging, companies such as Nokia.
Distributor
A distributor works with retailers (shops, online) to make product available
for the consumers to purchase. In the games industry the Publisher
usually handles the distribution.
Consumer
Or ‘the audience’ - anyone that buys, plays, downloads games.

12. Global Marketing
Advantages








Lots of money: profit
Cross media marketing
World wide audiences
PR and Marketing
Money on graphics
Media convergence:
Stars
Brand
Graphics
Disadvantages








Pressure
Timings
Technological issues
Controversy, worldwide
media panic
Individuality
Brainwashing
Lots of money on
promotion and marketing
High expectations

13. National Marketing
Advantages






Long term
Sustained consumers
DLC
No hardware costs (?)
Game as art
Wider audiences
 Casual games
 New breed of gamers


Experimental
No expectations
Disadvantages






Underdogs
Competing with global
Marketing campaigns
Graphics
Recognition
Less profit

14. Synergy
Synergy
is when business deals are created between media
institutions.
It
can occur between two or many more companies.
It
essentially means that multiple companies contribute to the
same product.
It
allows them to reach the same audience and both profit.
It
can be through tie-ins (a partnership) or product
placement (one company pays another to advertise in their
game)
It
can also be through a co-production , where companies

15. Synergy: Prince of Persia
The film is based on the Prince
of Persia games series from
Ubisoft (developers).
 The game is based on the
reboot of series Prince of
Persia: Sands of Time which
came out in 2003
 So rather than create a sequel
to the 2008 game Ubisoft have
released a sequel to their 2003
game - theSands of Time, with
similar gameplay.


16. Production synergy issues:
Compatibility

There is pressure on the developers
to complete a game for
simultaneous release on different
consoles.

Rockstar were under pressure to
make the same game for 3 different
formats: PC, PS3, Xbox 360, each
with their different problems. It was
rumoured that the reason for GTA
4’s delay was that Rockstar were
struggling to perfect the PS3
version.

17. Production synergy issues:
Time

If games are released to coincide
with the release of a film/TV
show, this brings its own
problems: a strict deadline that
can’t be avoided. You can’t have
the Harry Potter game coming out
six months after the film.

18. HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL
INTEGRATION
Often a single parent company will own multiple
companies in the games industry.
This is divided into two types of ownership:
CONSOLE
MANUFACTURER
GAMES
DEVELOPER
CONSOLE
MANUFACTURER
CONSOLE
MANUFACTURER
The parent company
owns multiple
companies at the same
stage of the game
industry. A smaller
company, owned by the
parent is a subsidiary.
VERTICAL
For example Sony owns:
•SCE (Console Manufacturer)
GAMES
PUBLISHER
HORIZONTAL
•16 ‘in-house’ studios worldwide (Games
Developer)
•It also has synergous relationships with over 30
other developers (Games Developer)
•SCEE (European Publisher)
The parent company
owns multiple
companies across
different stages of the
game industry.

19. Synergy and cross media
convergence


Synergy: production companies that
come together to produce the product
Cross media convergence: various
types of media companies that come
together to market the product

20. Rockstar

Licensed music
Kanye West
Ice cube

Tv channels
Ricky Gervais
Katt Williams

Vice city and Andreas

21. Technological convergence

Various forms of media technologies
come together to distribute the product.

22. New market

Home entertainment system
 Blu-ray
 Internet
 DLC
 Music
 Family entertainment
 Social activity




Wii sports
Mario kart
Rock band
Kinect

23. *Important*

The most significant part of
technological convergence is fact
that all these consoles are online
which allows for:
Online play
Online sharing of ideas
Downloading new content and new
games

Also it allows for most of the
media convergence

24. Proliferation



A rapid increase in the number of a
certain type of product.
Lots and lots of the same product,
usually because of a certain product
becoming popular
Change in technology

25. I-Phone






BIG Hit
All companies produce touch screen
Android
Lots of android that look the same
Touch screen
Capitalising on success

26. 



Game developers/publishers can create
content for numerous media
DLC
Phone
Hand held

27. Proliferation positives






Innovation for video game consoles
Different types of game
Games on phone
Handheld devices
Different types of games (bigger
audiences)
Complete with the bigger institutions

28. Negative Proliferation



Spend more on marketing and
advertising
Competition
Pressure to sell: ‘Playing it safe’
Giving the public what they already know
Less innovation

29. Negative Proliferation

Different types of games for different
machines
GTA4, GTA
9 different versions of FIFA 11

Don’t make a Wii version
Excluding a large part of the potential
market

30. Proliferation: Positive for
Consumers



More choice
Competitions keeps price down
Can play games where ever you want
Home, phone, facebook etc…

31. Negatives for consumers

Confusion- what to buy?
Motion controller, wii, kinect, ps3 motion
Consumers loose interest


Have to buy several machines to get all
the different games
Can lead to less variety of choice
Clones of games
GTA or CoD

32. Media Ownership

Who owns what in video games?
 Licence
 Brands
 Technology; software, hardware
 Intellectual property (IP)

End User Licensing Agreement (EULA)
 Governing video games

33. Ownership




Rockstar create the
characters themselves
They have their own game
software called rage
Licence for Euphoria:
animation engine
Bullet: open source physics
engine

34. Ownership



Rockstar had to
licence all the
songs in their
games
Approx
$5000/song
Licence the TV
footage

35. Ownership


Microsoft paid $50 Million for
the exclusive rights for the
GTA 4 DLC
Obtaining media ownership
can be used to sell consoles

36. Media Ownership
Publishers pay for licenses from other intellectual properties (Exclusiv
rights)
 E.g. Fiilms

 Bond
 Xmen
 Spider man

Sport stars
 Rooney, tiger Woods

Events
 Fifa

Car designs
 Gran Turismo

Tv shows
 X-factor

Songs
 Guitar hero

37. Ownership



Apple allow developers to
use the App software
development kit (SDK) for
free
Apps for Iphone
Earn 30% revenue

38. Issues with ownership








Money = less development
Synergy
Who owns the game?
Who gets credit for the game?
DLC: Piracy
Social Networking
Phones
Recognition

39. What is Audience?
Groups of people, large or small, that
consume media texts
Audiences can differ in a number of ways
so
these groups may consist of subgroups
But
how do we categorise audiences into subgroups?

40. Grouping people

Demographics
 Age
 Gender
 Race
 National identity
 Socioeconomic group

Psychographics
 Hobbies/tastes
 Interests
 Spending power
 Education/ability

41. SOCIO-ECONOMIC
GROUPS
Socio-economic grouping is a more advanced way of looking at
social class.
It considers the jobs people do, the level of training they have,
and how society views their profession.
There are six categories:
A- Higher managerial, high level professional e.g. Chief executive,
senior civil servant, surgeon
B – Middle management, professional e.g. bank manager, teacher
C1- White Collar, junior manager, skilled e.g. shop floor
supervisor, bank clerk, sales person
C2 - Skilled manual workers, blue collar e.g. electrician, carpenter
D- Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers e.g. assembly line
worker, retail
E – No private income e.g. students, pensioners without private
pensions and anyone living on basic benefits

42. Media Panics

Video games influence behaviour

Video games effect young children

Video games degrade women

Video games promote violence

Video games are a bad influence on young children

Do we know the difference between fantasy and reality?

Video games are addictive

Video games cause antisocial behaviour

War games train gamers to kill

Video games desensitise gamers to violence

43. Uses and gratification

Researchers Blulmer & Katz developed this idea
and published their theory in 1974, stating that
individuals might choose and use a text for the
following purposes:

44. 
Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that information is
absorbed into the human brain without thought.

Vulnerable from consuming media texts

Easily manipulated by producers.

We accept dominant ideologies as the norm.

45. 
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the
voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election
campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's
Choice.

Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly
from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered
through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active
associates, over whom they have influence

46. Reception Theory:

Thirty years ago, research was conducted on how
individuals received and interpreted a media text,
and whether their individual circumstances (age,
gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality) affected their
reading.

Producers ‘box audience in categories.

Stuart Hall addressed this concluding that audiences
take on their own readings of a text
 people are all different and have ideologies

47. Pro: Empathy

Dr. Kourosh Dini argues that video games can teach us empathy.
“One of the big things about many games is you’re interacting with
other people in such a way that you have to actively think about
what the other people are doing or thinking in order to either play
against them or play them cooperatively. Either way you’ve got to
be engaged in trying to think of how is this person learning and
what’s this person going to be doing next.”

48. Pro: Cognitive health

Arthur Kramer from University of Illinois
recently found that Big Huge Games’ Rise of
Nations strategy game improved specific
cognitive skills (such as short-term memory) in
adults in their 60s and 70s under lab
conditions.

49. Pro: Better than TV

“Video gamers present as brighter, livelier and
more interesting people than the average
“couch potato.””- says Russel Dawson, who is
a teacher and a parent also.

50. Pro: Better mood

Studies have shown, that games help alleviate
common stress that we feel every day.
PopCap-endorsed study by East Carolina
University’s Department of Recreation and
Leisure Studies in 2008 found that casual
games can improve players’ moods.

51. Pro: Hand and eye co-ordination
There was one interesting but small study by
doctors at Beth Israel Medical Center, New
York noticed a link between gaming and
improved performance in laparoscopic
surgery.

52. Pro: Remedy for intense Pain

Dr. Catherine Butz told the publication, “Research shows a very
strong connection between anxiety and pain. Distraction does a
great job in decreasing any kind of anxiety that might be associated
with the anticipated procedures”
There are also media reports about hospitals using video games to
help patients undergoing chemotherapy.

53. Pro: Distraction from overeating

RealGames after questioning 2,700 respondents found that
playing video games was a positive distraction from
snacking or overeating for 59 percent of respondents, while
42 percent of smokers among the group said casual
gaming helped them light up less frequently.

54. Pro: New way of teaching

“The learning processes behind play, I think, are
undervalued,” says psychologist Dr. Kourosh Dini . “When a
person is engaged in play, they seem to learn better. …
There’s this feeling of mastery that can happen that
sometimes kids don’t get to achieve otherwise.”

55. Pro: Imagination Boost

Sims creator Will Wright once wrote, “…The gamers’
mindset—the fact that they are learning in a totally new
way—means they’ll treat the world as a place for
creation, not consumption. This is the true impact video
games will have on our culture.”

56. 1. Explain how the industry you have studied is exploiting new technology
in the areas of production, marketing and exchange
2. Account for recent changes in consumption and production in the
industry you have studied.
3. To what extent are media audiences the agents, beneficiaries or victims
of change?
4. Explain the significance cross media convergence and synergy, in
production, distribution and marketing; the industry you have studied
5. How does your own experience of consumption illustrate wider patterns
and trends of audience behaviour the industry you have studied?
6. What impact does media ownership have on the industry you have
studied?
7. How are audiences effectively targeted in the industry you have chosen?
8. How do institutions in your industry meet the needs and expectations of
the audience?
9. What are the issues raised when targeting audiences in your chosen
industry?
10. Discuss the issues raised by institutions’ need to target specific
audiences within a media industry which you have studied.
11. Discuss the issues raised by media ownership within a media industry
which you have studied.