1. Team Fortress 2 began as a mod for Quake but was later developed by Valve using their own engines. 2. To promote the game, Valve released a series of "Meet the Team" videos introducing each character class. 3. The game was released as part of The Orange Box compilation for Windows PC and later for consoles through both retail and online distribution on Steam.

1. My Case Study Game: Team Fortress 2

2. Production Team Fortress originally began life as a free mod for Quake. Development on Team Fortress 2 switched to the GoldSrc engine in 1998 after the development team Team Fortress Software—consisting of Robin Walker and John Cook—were first contracted and finally outright employed by Valve Corporation. At the point of Team Fortress Software's acquisition production moved up a notch and the game was promoted to a standalone, retail product; to tide fans over, work began on a simple port of the game which was released in 1999 as the free Team Fortress Classic. Notably, Team Fortress Classic was built entirely within the publicly available Half-Life Software Development Kit as an example to the community and industry of its flexibility. The new design was revealed to the public at E3 1999, where it earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game.By this time Team Fortress 2 had gained a new subtitle, Brotherhood of Arms, and the results of Walker and Cook working at Valve were becoming clear. Several new and at the time unprecedented technologies on show: Parametric animation seamlessly blended animations for smoother, more life-like movement], and Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology dynamically reduced the detail of on-screen elements as they became more distant to improve performance (a technique made obsolete by decreasing memory costs; today games use a technique known as level of detail, which uses more memory but less processing power). No release date was given at the exposition.

3. Marketing To promote the game, Valve has released an ongoing video advertisement series entitled "Meet the Team". Constructed using the game engine and slightly more detailed character models, the series consists of short videos on individual characters, displaying their personalities and tactics. The videos are usually interspersed with clips of the character in combat in the game. The first installment, "Meet the Heavy", was released as part of the game's initial advertising in May 2007 and depicted an interview with the gun-obsessed Russian. "Meet the Soldier" was released in August 2007, showing the Soldier giving a misinformed lecture on Sun Tzu to a collection of severed heads. The Engineer was covered during the game's public beta testing in September 2007, giving a calm discussion about his sentry guns by a truck filled with stolen enemy intelligence, while the guns kill enemies attempting to attack him as he played a guitar by a small campfire made from a dead enemy. The Demoman was the first class to be covered after the game's official release in October 2007, conducting an interview where he bemoans the fact that he is a "black Scottish cyclops", noting that as such he is quite rare. Prior to the release of the update of the Medic class in April 2008, "Meet the Scout" was released, in which the Scout struggles with an enemy Heavy for possession of a sandwich and a control point while he brags about how amazing he thinks he is. In June 2008, "Meet the Sniper" was released to promote the major update for the Pyro class. In the video, the Sniper talks about his life as a professional assassin and argues with his father over the phone on his choice of career. With the Heavy update in August 2008, another video was released, this time for a health-regenerating 'sandvich' addition to the Heavy's arsenal,featuring a Heavy's battle with a Soldier and a Scout to get to a sandwich in a fridge from the point of view of the refrigerator. The next video, "Meet the Spy", was leaked onto YouTube in May 2009 during the marketing period for updates to both the Sniper and Spy classes, and revolves around the invasion of the BLU Team base by the RED Spy.

4. Distribution The game was released on October 10, 2007 both as a standalone product via Steam and at retail stores as part of The Orange Box compilation pack, priced at each gaming platform's recommended retail price. The Orange Box also contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal. Valve offered The Orange Box at a ten percent discount for those who pre-purchased it via Steam before the October 10, release, as well as the opportunity to participate in the beta test. The Orange box has been released on the PS3, Xbox 360, and the PC. Steam is now available on the Apple Macintosh. You could buy the Orange Box from Steam from 10th October 2007, the game was released by itself later in 9th April 2008. It was available on Xbox on the 10th October and the 22nd November 2007 for PS3. TF2 isn’t a very global game but, particularly on PS3 or Xbox, but it is fairly popular for Microsoft users. Electronic Arts are the retailers, and Steam are the online retailers.

5. Exhibition There were a series of “Meet the Team” released on YouTube. The first of these was “Meet the Heavy”, which was released on May 2007. The next was “Meet the Soldier”, which was released in August 2007. And more came out to introducing the others, 9 in total. There are videos on YouTube which show you different tactics, e.g. different ways of winning the map, and earning achievements.

6. Consumption As a consumer, I’d say that the main aspect of of TF2 consumption lies in the Achievements, and rewards. Steam has an in-built achievement system which applies to most Valve games, however with Team Fortress 2, the Achievement system has been closely knitted into the gameplay so that upon earning certain achievements (E.g.: Kill 500 enemies), you receive items like new weaponry which you can attach to your player to improve your gameplay.