1. OCR AS MEDIA STUDIES
AS G322: KEY MEDIA CONCEPTS
SECTION B: INSTITUTIONS AND AUDIENCES
THE GAMES INDUSTRY
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2. THE GAMES INDUSTRY
What the spec says:
Section B: Institutions and Audiences
A study of the production, distribution and marketing of a specific game
within one or across various gaming platforms, along with its reception by a
variety of (British) audiences.
This should be accompanied by study of the impact of next generation
capabilities (HD, Blu-Ray, online services etc) on the production, distribution,
marketing and consumption of games.
Candidates should be prepared to understand and discuss the processes of
production, distribution, marketing and exchange as they relate to
contemporary media institutions, as well as the nature of audience
consumption and the relationships between audiences and institutions. In
addition, candidates should be familiar with:
1. The issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;
2. The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production,
distribution and marketing;
3. The technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the
levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;
4. The significance of proliferation in hardware and content for
institutions and audiences;
5. The importance of technological convergence for institutions and
audiences;
6. The issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences
(specifically, British) by international or global institutions;
7. The ways in which the candidates‟ own experiences of media
consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience
behaviour.
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3. Who owns the games industry?
The gaming industry is controlled by a handful of large corporations. This is
known as an oligopoly. These corporations are Microsoft, Sony and,
Nintendo. They have more money and power than all the other companies
in the industry.
Smaller companies for example Rockstar (the company that made GTA IV
and Red Dead Redemption) need to find ways of staying in business. It
engineered the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE). This is a game
engine developed in order to facilitate game development on the XBOX 360,
Playstation 3, Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Wii systems. It should
act as a form of protection for the company as all 'next-gen' consoles will
need this upgrade in order to play all future Rockstar releases.
What is the purpose of the games industry?
The answer obviously is to make money. These companies want consumers
to 1) stay loyal to them and 2) use their platform for other things besides
games and become home entertainment hubs.
1) They maintaining loyalty by:
a) Producing successful franchises „in house‟. E.g. Nintendo‟s Legend of
Zelda
b) Buying up companies that make successful games and ensuring all
future releases of the franchise are made for their platform. E.g.
Bungie was a studio that made Halo until Microsoft bought it.
c) “Sweet heart” deals e.g. Rockstar Games released exclusive episodic
content for the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV. Microsoft paid Take-
Two (the publisher) a total of £40 million for the first two episodes.
d) Incentives for gamers – E.g. the Rockstar Games Social Club is a
web site that displays the gameplay statistics of registered users and
features competitions and awards based on player activity within the
game. Rockstar also rewards visitors to their PlayStation Home
apartment with 'goodies' such as clothing for their avatar and items
and decorations for their own PlayStation Home apartment. Also, X Box
Live offers exclusive downloadable content.
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4. e) Holding back new technology so that people still buy current platforms
and drip-feeding innovations into the market to ensure new must
have features. Consoles have built in obsolescence.
Many households as a result of the above own more than one
platform.
2) Home entertainment hubs besides play games allow users to:
a) Download games and expansion packs
b) Surf web
c) Watch Blu-ray DVDs (PS3 only)
d) Download films and play films
e) Download and play music
f) Buy music in games - the developers of GTA IV originally considered
letting players purchase music in virtual reality by allowing them to visit
an in-game record shop.
g) Internet telephone
h) Instant messaging and chat
i) Store personal data like photographs
j) Shop (buy goods online)
k) Update your Facebook account with stats and achievements
This is known as technological convergence.
Console companies want you to replace your DVD player, PC, home
phone, stereo system with their system. This will either put other
companies who supply these out of business or force them to do
deals with Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo.
It will also allow them to reach you easier and sell you new products
and services. In the future, there will be less advertising on
broadcast TV and more product placement on Xbox live and in
games e.g. billboards in Gran Turismo.
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5. How Games are Produced, Published, Distributed
and Marketed
Production
In recent years the games industry has gone through a revolution. Game
development in the 1980s used to be a 'cottage industry' i.e. a single
programmer or a handful of programmers working alone producing games
that were then bought by publishers such as Electronic Arts.
Now games are produced by hundreds of people working on different aspects
of the game sometimes in different countries. Around 150 game developers
alone worked on Grand Theft Auto IV. Overall, Grand Theft Auto IV took over
1000 people and more than three and a half years to complete, with a total
cost estimated at £80 million, making it the most expensive game ever
developed.
Production companies are more like established film production companies
nowadays e.g. Working Title (a company that has made 100s of films e.g.
Hot Fuzz) with 100s of people involved in production. Both films and
production companies are called studios. Rockstar, the studio that created
GTA IV has also funded films like The Football Factory (2004) and Sunday
Driver (2005).
A typical present-day production team includes:
1. Artists who draw characters and settings before they are rendered on
the computer
2. Designers who visually recreate the characters and levels on a
computer.
3. Programmers who write the machine code to make all the visuals
move.
4. Sound engineers (composers, for sound effects and voice acting)
5. Directors for the actors, cut scenes and camera angles.
6. Testers whose job it is to find bugs.
All these would be divided into project teams with its own manager.
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6. Games can be developed by an independent production company or
the development branch of a publisher or the development branch of
a corporation that makes consoles.
Games now share many of the production techniques of films. Games
use famous actors to voice characters e.g. Kiefer Sutherland in Call of Duty,
Stephen Fry in Fable 2. Famous musicians are commissioned to provide the
sound tracks e.g. Hans Zimmer who composed the music for Gladiator also
composed the music for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The camera in the
game mimics the techniques of films that belong to the same genre. The cut
scenes look just like exerts from films. Rockstar‟s latest game Red Dead
Redemption is inspired by and often mimics classic Westerns such as The
Good, The Bad and The Ugly and The Wildbunch.
Games are not made until a publisher puts up the money to fund the
development process.
E.g. Rockstar developed GTA IV and Take-Two Interactive funded and
published it.
Publishing
When you write a book you need to find a company that will print, package it
and send it out to shops. Similarly games have to be published.
Publishers can be independent e.g. Electronic Arts or separate branch of a
corporation that makes consoles e.g. Nintendo. Independent publishers are
known as Third Party Publishers and Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo as
First Party Publishers. EA and Nintendo are the top two in the industry.
The biggest British publisher is Codemasters.
Apart from funding the development, publishers are responsible for the
manufacturing and marketing of games. Larger video game publishers, like
EA, also distribute the games they publish.
A publisher may pay a production company £10m to make a game. They then
package the game and advertise it. This may cost another £2m. They decide
the price of the game and sell as many units as possible. If they sell 15m
copies the publisher will recoup its costs and make a profit.
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7. GTA IV cost £80m to make and made £24.4m on the first day of its release
and from an estimated 6 million units sold worldwide more than £400 million
in revenue was made in the first week.
Distribution
Distribution is the process by which finished games get sent out to members
of the public. The only way to buy games used to be from high street shops
such as Game and HMV. As more people became connected to the Internet
they bought them from such websites as Amazon.co.uk. Now, as more people
acquire broadband it is quicker and easier to download a game direct to a
console or PC. TV adverts for X Box games now say „ready to download‟
rather than „in shops now‟. As broadband increases in capacity this will
become more popular and may signify the end of the high street stores
selling games.
Marketing
The marketing of game releases is now comparable to that of films. Games
are now embedded in mainstream culture.
Game campaigns now includes:
1. Film style trailers – game trailers often look and sound exactly the
same as film trailers. E.g. trailers for games such as Gears of War 2
and Call of Duty: World of War begin with a slow dramatic establishing
shots then aim to excite the audience by quickly cutting to a montage
of intense action scenes from the game to a dramatic soundtrack. They
sometimes imitate famous scenes from films. E.g. Medal of Honour:
Allied Assault mimicked the beach assault in Saving Private Ryan.
Trailers are carefully targeted. For example, on TV adverts for Wii Fit
would be shown when advertisers know families and women are
watching e.g. Coronation Street (pre-watershed broadcasts). Trailers
for shot‟em up games would be shown in the cinema before action
films such as The Dark Knight and Avatar.
2. Film tie-ins - often games are made to cash in on the popularity of a
film. The games publisher has to pay the film studio to gain rights to
the name of the film. Recent examples include Harry Potter, Lord of
The Rings and Star Wars. This can work the other way also with the
film studio cashing in on the popularity of hit games. The studio has to
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8. pay the game publisher to use the name of a game. This also leads to
more sales for the game. Recent examples include Resident Evil,
Hitman, Max Payne, Final Fantasy, and Avatar.
3. Soundtracks - Rockstar paid as much as £4,000 per composition and
another £5,000 per master recording per track. Soundtracks contribute
to the gaming experience and shape the character of the games.
Sometimes game soundtracks are released as albums or compilations
in their own right. E.g. Grand Theft Auto IV.
4. Magazine and Newspapers - Reviews of games and magazine articles
with actors and designers are covert adverts for games – i.e. they
appear to be independent and part of the magazine when they are
really just increasing the games‟ publicity. GTA IV was on the cover of
nearly all videogame magazines for months both before and after the
release (this is known as prior advertising). Dozens of newspaper
articles were written about it e.g. Sunday 4th May 2008 – The
Observer dedicated a page of its 'Arts and Culture review' section to
debating 'whether or not GTA IV is a work of art'. The May 2008 issue
of Official Xbox Magazine (UK) published the first Grand Theft Auto IV
review, giving the game the maximum score of 10/10. PlayStation
Official Magazine branded the game as "a masterpiece”. The film
magazine Empire gave the game a perfect 5/5 in its game reviews
section, calling it "damn-near perfect".
5. Ambassadors - people who are offered incentives by companies to
promote their games on forums and introduce new users.
6. Online advertisements on websites forums that are accessed by the
target audience e.g. Facebook, YouTube etc
7. Posters in public on buses, billboards etc
8. Viral marketing - this is where people pass adverts or links to each
other via their phones, Facebook, Twitter or email and help companies
do their advertising.
9. Publicity stunts e.g. live BMX competitions to launch a new BMX game.
10. Email newsletters that feature incentives such as discounts to buy new
games.
11. Adverts on the consoles themselves via live Internet connections.
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9. 12. Playable demos in stores. For example shopping centres.
13. Celebrity endorsements e.g. Wayne Rooney FIFA Football, The
Redknapps Wii Sports, ex BB contestants and Mr T World of
Warcraft.
14. Game conventions e.g. E3 generate hype for future releases - Microsoft
vice president Peter Moore announced at E3 2006 that GTA IV would
appear on Xbox 360, by rolling up his sleeve to reveal a GTA IV
temporary tattoo.
15. Sponsor events like football matches and extreme sports events.
16. Free demos – give users a taste of the game
17. Controversy - The prequel to GTA IV, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,
created major controversy when released in America in 2005. A patch
unlocked a hidden sex mini-game that led to calls in the media for the
game to be banned. However in the end it only created more publicity
for the game. Similarly Manhunt was banned in the UK – it was
eventually released, and the media coverage created more publicity for
the game.
18. Bundles – E.g. PlayStation 3 Sports Champion Move Bundle – An
introductory package for PS3 newcomers, which includes a PS3
system, a PlayStation Move motion controller, a PlayStation Eye
camera, Sports Champions Blu-ray game and PlayStation Move game
demo disc.
19. Corporate synergy – As part of its “It Only Does Everything" marketing
campaign for Move Sony has entered a synergistic relationship with
Coca Cola.
Game Audiences and Consumption
TV, films and games now compete against each other for people‟s money.
GTA IV was hyped in the same way a blockbuster film like Dark Knight. TV
and films are passive while gaming is becoming more interactive all the time.
GTA IV is an example of a sandbox game, which allows users to depart
from the game‟s narrative and create their own. In films the audience has to
watch the plot unfold in sandbox games there are lots of possible endings the
user can choose from. This is known as non-linear game play. The latest
generation of games let users create their own content. The narrative and
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10. action goes in the direction the player wants it to. An example of this is Little
Big Planet. Online game play has an advantage over TV and film in that
allows users to communicate with each other, compete and become part of a
community.
Games as Narratives
However, in videogames, understanding how the story elements work often
does help players to win. Narratives are most apparent a game‟s cut scene
which can be thought of as mini movies existing inside a game. They borrow
many techniques from cinema, such as camera moves (the pan, zoom and
tracking shots) and angles (the mixture of close up and wide). Compare for
instance the cut scenes in Red Dead Redemption to the films of Sergio Leone.
Immersion and Agency
Immersion, the feeling of being completely involved in something, is
associated with other media. People often get lost in a good book or film but
only games offer what Janet Murray in her 1997 book Hamlet on the
Holodeck calls 'agency'. She defines it as “the satisfying power to take
meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”. Games
provide many opportunities for players to exercise agency which Murray
argues makes them more immersive.
The stereotypical gamer used to be a lonely, obsessive teenage boy.
Now games are mainstream gaming crosses all social, gender and
age barriers. The Wii is often marketed towards women and
families.
The (Near) Future of Gaming
Move and Kinect
By introducing the Wii, Nintendo have successfully widened the appeal of
consoles by making games more social and kinetic. Previously, Sony and
Microsoft have had nothing to compete with Wii Fit, Wii Sports etc. They are
attempting to rectify this and capture Nintendo‟s market. Within the next
year, Sony are releasing Playstation Move and Microsoft the Xbox Kinect.
Move is a motion sensor system similar to the controller for the Wii but Kinect
goes one step further and involves motion capture technology that promises
controller free gaming. I.e. your body is the new controller.
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11. 3D
A growing number of games are being launched in 3D – Avatar, Batman:
Arkham Asylum, Killzone 3 and Grand Turismo 5. As 3D displays including TVs
become cheaper expect this trend to continue.
The Death of the Console
A new online service launched recently in America promises to serve games to
your living rooms, live, and without the need for a console or a high-powered
personal computer. It is a „cloud‟ service called OnLive which launched in the
USA last June. It instantly delivers games direct to your TV screen, using a
small receiver unit that connects to your existing broadband connection.
All the processing that consoles used to do is performed by a network of
powerful remote servers using compression routines. Players provide the
inputs using a joypad, as normal which are streamed back with almost non-
existent lag.
Users will pay a $14.95 (£9.99) subscription fee each month, plus the cost of
either buying or renting each game. In this regard OnLive has several very
significant advantages: there is no need to invest any further in a game you
are not enjoying; you can sample all the latest releases with minimal costs.
OnLive enjoys the support of many high-profile games publishers – removing
the need to manufacture and physically distribute games is an obvious and
lucrative benefit to them. High profile titles such as Borderlands, Prince of
Persia and Assassin‟s Creed are among the launch games announced so far.
Glossary
Avatar - An avatar is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or
alter ego. It can be in the form of a three-dimensional model used in
computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) or a one-dimensional
username used on Internet forums and other communities.
Game engine - A game engine is a software system designed for the
creation and development of video games. There are many game engines
that are designed to work on video game consoles and desktop operating
systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The core
functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine
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12. (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection
(and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence,
networking, streaming, memory management, threading, and a scene graph.
The process of game development is frequently economized by in
large part reusing the same game engine to create different games.
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