Revision - essay terminolgy

Gaming Industry

Publishing - the game genre, narrative and target audience all come under publishing

Development - the process of creating a game and its design.

Marketing - how the game is advertised

Distribution - how the game goes from the publishers to you

Cross media convergence - the coming together of media. Eg: the cinematic experience of modern games

Technological convergence - the coming together of media technologies. Eg: games consoles being able to play movie, apps, Internet as well as games

Crowd Funding - people pledge money to fund a game. Eg: Double Fine adventure was funded by kickstarter a crowd funding company.

Passive audience - the audience just receive the media product

Active audience - the audience have input into the media product

Revision - Assassin's Creed 3

Here is a few, well quite a few points that you can put in your essay for publishing, production, marketing and distribution.

Publishing

• The franchise first attracted a younger audience with the first Assassin's Creed hence the rating was 15+ while Assassins Creed 3 is an 18+. The franchise has grown up along with the audience to maintain its faithful fans.
  
•  It is popular with older men. Mr Croft likes the game. They were the first generation to grow up with the gaming industry and experience all the changes from tetris all the way to this new Assassin's Creed.

• The PSVita version has the main character as a female. The target audience for this version is aimed more at females as they would be able to relate with the character.

• The new character is bigger, stronger and better at fighting which appeals to boys that are "obsessed" with war.

• Assassin's Creed 3 is very much a multi-genre game. Fantasy, adventure, strategy, beat em up, sandbox, sci-fi, puzzle, stealth and racing. This makes the game very immersive and allows the gamer to explore and spend many hours completing the missions, collecting or just enjoying this virtual world which in this new assassin's Creed that is much larger than previous games. 

•  The game is mostly third person which means that the camera is behind the character.

• The multiplayer in the assassins creed has been included since Brotherhood and has been mostly successful. It is a different concept from the usual team deathmatch on most first person shooters and includes players hunting each other. The genre of the multiplayer is very much stealth and is popular for its inventiveness.

Development

• The game engine is Anvil next and it can do weather cycling, create crowds of at most 2000, the world changes over time to do things like growing plants or making damage to buildings permanent. The characters in the game have artificial intelligence. In the crowds each person has their own personality, wind and water simulation is so accurate you use the actual naval techniques to aim at the enemy, when the character walks through snow his footprints are remembered for the duration of the mission. This encourages sales because the player wants to see how the game improves.

Game design

• Characters - The characters have stayed quite similar. The protagonist in each is strong, athletic man who kills men via some fluent fighting style. Also the women in each game are thin and have two impressive features. Anyway the protagonist moves are more fluent and smooth compared to previous games.

• World – How one interacts with the surroundings and in the case of Assassin’s Creed 3 how the free running system works. This is evident when one runs free as Connor. As well as buildings we start free running through trees and up cliffs. This makes the long time player want to continue playing as it shows the evolution of skills from the easy buildings to the intricate branches. It also makes the player feel like they are achieving something as they have been playing through the evolution so they feel they have got better at controlling it.

JOKE WARNING

 

There are also hunting regions but they are very expensive. They're dear

 

• Game Software - this is how the hardware is used. The software is the content of the game in its basics. This involves the graphics and how they improve. In Assassin’s Creed the graphics are ahead of its time but we focused more on the buildings and looks. Now in Assassins’ Creed 3 we focus more on the character and the background. An example of this is the first protagonist Haytham. His face is uncovered unlike the previous games and we see how the better graphics affect his face. Also in the background there’s new motion for example people passing by windows.

Marketing

• On 28th September 2012, Ubisoft announced that they were to spend £4million on marketing. This is the largest spend on the promotion of a product by the developer, in a big push to sell as many as possible to cover large costs.

• This helps sales figures in an obvious way, the more people who see it across the TV, radio, advertising boards.The more people are aware of it, and then they look into it, find a large network of exciting "exclusive reveal" videos on the Internet and get excited for the game, and want it when it comes out.

 

• On You tube, you can find a wide range of videos showing interviews and new features of the game. These helped build up anticipation for the game from fans, without revealing too much. This is a good way of promoting something as it comes at absolutely no cost  but is a great way of building up excitement and draw in more people who preorder because they are watching the videos and want the game as a result.
  
• Other editions with extras are also available and help the franchise develop sales figures as collectors and "hardcore gamers" will buy a number of, or at least the most expensive edition. This helps bring in much more money to the franchise, at little extra cost to them. It also helps the franchise establish itself as it shows the commitment from the developers and designers

JOKE WARNING

There's a new series of games that are all about herbs. It's a new franchive

 

Distribution

• Assassins Creed III has been distributed across many different platforms including Xbox-360, Playstation 3 and the all new PS Vita. AC3 has tried to reach as many customers as possible.

• An example of a store that is on the highstreet and on the internet is Game. On the online store customers can order and even pre-order the game for bonus features. The store allows the exact same capabilities in both pre-ordering and buying the game directly.

• With Assassins Creed III being a sequel in the popular Assassins Creed franchise, most game stores and most supermarkets now sell the game. As well as been sold widely throughout stores, the most common distribution for the game is online. Also companies such as Amazon and Play.com are distributing the game widely because of their trusted customer base. This allows the game to be distributed on a huge scale.

• When the game is ordered online the customer can either pick the game up from the store that they purchased it from or they can choose to have the game delivered directly to their home.

JOKE WARNING

Have you heard of the killer that looks back on his murders and thinks about them. Apparently he follows the assessing creed

Essay success criteria


Plan

• Use four boxes and work out how you will structure your answer before attempting to write it
• Work out what the question is asking you to do.
• Use correct terminology.
• Cross it out afterwards

Essay

• Use appropriate terminology as much as possible
• Be consistent and sustain your analysis. Your essay is only as good as your worst paragraph
• Clear and sophisticated style
• Well argued
• Always link back to the question and directly answer it in every paragraph
• Include facts and figures when appropriate
• Try not to repeat
• Balance your argument
• Don't repeat

JOKE WARNING

Even if the question doesn't involve the solar system you still have to plan it.

Revision - Gaming Industry Facts and Figures

General facts
 
These facts are from http://www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp
 

• the average age of a gamer is 34
• the average number of years adults have been playing games since is 12
• 67% of US households play video games
• percentage of gamers - 25% are under 18, 49% are 18-49 and 26% over 50
• the average gamer spends 8 hours a week playing video games
• 40% of all gamers are female
• 64% of parents believe games are a positive part of their children's lives

Assassin's Creed 3 facts
 

• Assassins Creed 3 is an 18+
• Developed by Ubisoft
• Work began in January 2010
• The PSVita version has the main character as a female.
• Assassin's Creed 3 is very much a multi-genre game. Fantasy, adventure, strategy, beat em up, sandbox, sci-fi, puzzle, stealth and racing
• the game engine is anvil next
• spent £4million on marketing in anticipation of the release of Assassin's Creed 3.
• On You tube, you can find a wide range of videos showing interviews and new features of the game.
• Available across 4 consoles, there are 7 different editions of Assassin's Creed 3.
• The Standard Edition is available on Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita and PC.
• It has online Multiplayer
• Ubisoft announced that the game is the most pre-ordered game in the company's history
• It was the best selling game in the United Kingdom in the week of its release, with 3.5 million units sold

Double Fine Adventure facts
 

• largest crowd funded game
• Kickstarter project initiated on February 8, 2012
• set the goal for the project at $400,000, with $100,000 allocated to the film production and $300,000 for the game
• within nine hours, the Kickstarter project had exceeded the $400,000 goal and by 24 hours, it had surpassed $1 million
• raised $3.45 million from more than 87,000 backers through kickstarter
• various incentives were given to those that pledged $15 or more, including the game itself
• a digital download available on Android, Linux, iOS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows
• started in
• uses Moai as its game engine
• Tim Schafer is the face of the game and has uploaded lots of videos on You Tube
• uses 2D computer graphics
• will have voice acting for the English version, and include text localisation for French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages