Targeting Local Audiences. Unfinished

                                                           Targeting Local Audiences



 Within a game nowadays, it is most important to target national and also local audiences. throughout different cultures and socities, games have to be sensitive for their target audience.  if a game is not suited to a tartegeted local audience, it can upset their target audiences and end in the game being banned from markets, and also

Video game regulation & ratings system

                                          Video game regulation & ratings systems





PEGI (Pan European Game information) is a game rating system. it is in place to help European consumers on buying video games with its specific age group appropriate for the game. Pegi was devoloped by the Interactive Software federation of Europe. PEGI first came into use in Aprile 2003. It is used in more than 30 countries. PEGI is a well trusted name throughout the gaming market. Its rules& regulations determin the games age for use by consumers.

When rating games, PEGI have 8 content discriptions: Violence, bad language, fea, sex, drugs, gambling, discrimination & online. if a game has one of these discriptions within the game, it will be shown on the cover. Befor PEGI games were rated by many national age rating systems with a single European rating system.

Distributors

Task 1. Distributors

1.Grand Theft Auto V - Take Two Interactive

2.Skylanders Giants - XBEC Entertainment

3.Angry Birds - EA Chillingo


Task 2. UK Distributors





Unfinished

Grand Theft Auto V Release Date

                                                             Grand Thedt Auto V Release Date



Grand Theft Auto has been announced by Asda & Blockbuster to be released on the 17th May 2013. It has been displayed on their website to be sold for £42.97. there is most likely to be different types of the game you can purchase i.e. DLCs. it is exactly 171 days to go till this blockbuster will be released.

The screen shot below is the cover for the New Grand theft Auto V game, there is mosy likely to be an update on this as every other Grand Theft Game in the serioues has cover art on the front of it.

                                                               

Star Wars The Old Republic

                                             Star Wars The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG meaning Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It

 is from Bio Ware and Lucas Arts, this MMORPG is published by EA. Star Wars The Old Republic was officially released on the 21st December 2011. To play Star Wars the Old republic it is a free download onto your computer. but then to subscribe to the game play the price range starts at £7.98 all the way up to £49.50. The Old Republic is set a thousand years ago before the stories in the movies. The player chooses to join either Galactic Republic or the Sith Empire. Every player takes the role of a star wars class such as Jedi Knight, sith warrior and bounty hunter.

Although Blizzards World Of Warcraft is the most dominate in the market for MMORPG games, this will still attract a large number of players due to the fact it has Star Wars printed all over the display of it. So people will be attracted to it because they may be huge fans of the Star Wars episodes. The game is rumoured to of taken $150m to $200m to be devoloped by Bio Ware makeing this th emoste xpensive game to ever be devoloped. 

The photo above shows cover for Star Wars The Old Republic. There is some kind of battle taking place within the photo and it clearly shows what kind of characters you can expect to play when playing the game.

The photo above shows a fighting scene from the gameplay from Star Wars the Old Republic. this screen shot was used as an advert to publisise the game. it is clearly a fight between good and evil. this will attract more gamers to try and then subscribe to the game once they have seen there is action such as the one shown above.

Grand Theft Auto 5

                      

              Grand Thedt Auto 5

Grand theft auto 5 will the latest game to the series of poular & highly successful Grand Theft Games. The game is being devoloped by Rockstar North in Scotland and published by Rockstar Games. GTA V will be the fifteenth game in the famous series. Grand Theft Auto 5 will be distrubuted by Take Two Interactive. GTA V is based in the city of Los Santos in the state of San Andreas, This was an extremely popular map from GTA San Andreas.

Rockstar have announced they plan to release this blockbuster in spring 2013. according to Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto V is destined to be the biggest open world game to date. the second trailer was released yesterday and was a huge hit on the Rockstar website. it has been anticipated for weeks now. the trailer shows the main 3 characters throughout the amazing graphics and backdrp of SanAndreas.

MCV Top 20 Games Chart

                                                               MCV Top 20 Games chart


The Games chart for 2012 has a wide variety of games. within the top few games of thsi chart are dominated by sports games like fifa 13, football manager 2013, WWE 2013 and Need for Sped most wanted.  The market is also dominated by well known games. this shows in the chart that they have a higher demand then say new IPs, there is only one new IP in this chart  called Dishonoured. The number one game of this chart is Assassins Creed 3, this is mostly to do because its an established franchise and popular with its market.

Zynga & Farmville 2

               

                   Zynga

Zynga games are free to play and mostly found on social networks. Players can however buy extra game credits from the zynga website, this can be done through a credit card or via a paypal account. Zynga also advertises through their games such as movies and other brands.

In June, 2012 Zynga started running Facebook advertisements and sponsored stories on their website.

                                                        Farmville 2

Farmbille 2  was announced at Zynga's Unleashed press event at its San Francisco headquarters. the new game has a 3D view point which will allow the player to see the game from different and more interesting angles. this first farmville was popular with fans, so the sequel to farmville will be a hit aswell. like the previous farmville players can buy coins through the store to purchase more products such as farm machinery.

Skylanders Giants

                          Skylanders

Skylanders Giants is the second game from the number 1 kids game of 2011 skylanders spyros adventures. Skylanders involves the use of mitire toys that produce a character in the game. this game is unique to any other by the way players can interact with the game by purchasing these toys. it was released on the 19th of October 2012 in europe, Skylanders Giants has 40 new characters in this sequel, some characters are larger then the original skylanders. the game has already been called a success due to its name Skylanders, and being the most rated toy of 2011. it has een said it will beat the previous skylanders game in sales over the festive season.

Skylanders Giants has been marketed widely over the internet, Skylanders has its own YouTube channel, so having this will help to boost awareness of the product and release dates. the channel is very popular as it releases new videos of new gameplay in the sequel Skylanders Giants. it has also been heavily advertised on TV, mainly on childrens channels such as Cartoon Network. Skylanders also advertises thoughout the internet on websites that sell the product such as Argos, Littlewoods and John Lewis. the game has gained alot of publicity throughout the past few months because since the first skylanders was so popular, the sequel was obviously going to drag up more publicity to see if it was better or worse then the first skylanders.

Skylanders has been released in 2 differtent packs. a starter pack which is £45.99, and the booster pack which is £37.21. for each individual character is £9.30. Skylanders Giants will be released on all familiar platforms such as Playstation 3, xbox 360, Nintendo 3ds, Ninendo Wii and the new Nintendo Wii U.

Notes

The tent pole business plan is the idea were a oublisher releases a blockbuster game, with heavy investment and marketing. the revenue raised from the blockbuster game supports for the devolopment of the next game which is more riskier for investors.

The HollyWood Model is the method were the game is contracted out to other companies in order to lower costs through out the design process.

Rockstar Studios

Rockstar Family Tree

Rockstar Leeds used to be called  Mobius Entertainment, it is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. they are more known for there hand held games on the game boy advance.

Rockstar London is mostly known for their part in Man Hunt 2. Rockstar London is located on Kings Road, London, in the same building as Rockstar's European publishing headquarters. in 2008 they were nominated  Develop Industry Excellence Awards 2008 in the category of Best New UK/European Studio.
Rockstar Toronto is a  is an in-house game development team for Rockstar games and Take-Twp Interactive.

Indie Games

                                                             Indie Games


Indie games are games aimed at a nieche market of gamers who tend to play games with a difference then the normal call of duty or fifa. They usually consist of a fantasy story and charactes in the game that will apeal to the gamers. They tend to be made by individuals or small teams of comapnies, Most indie games do not get alot of publicity or tend to advertise much due to the cost involved of advertising such a product to such an nieche market. Indie games started on the PC, that is where the majority of indie games are still found, this may to do with the cost of the package to set up these games.

Some indie games become popular within markets of different consoles however, an example of this would be Minecraft. this games was officially released on the 18th November 2011. it was a modest price considering the usual pricce for anew game was £40.00. it went on to shatter any previous sales records. the game is based around your own world were it is up to you to create your own surroundings i.e your house, the idea came from dungon master and other games near to the mark of minecraft.

World of  warcraft is another indie game that has exploded into the console market from PC. World of Warcraft takes place in a 3D representation of the Warcraft universe that players can interact with through their characters. The game world initially consisted of the two continents in Azeroth: Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.it took just under 5 years to fully finish world of warcraft and was finally released in 2001. ever since then it has grown bigger and bigger, it was one of the best known indie games to date, it still sells well due to the release of new expension packs and their advertising methods, they offer a free trial to persuade gamers to try their product.

1. Hot Coffee Mod is a minigame released in the game Grand Theft Auto San Andreas in 2005. this minigame shows the main character CJ having sexual intercourse with the characters girlfriend, the name Hot Coffee comes from when in the mod the girlfriend asks CJ if he wasnts to come in for some Coffee.

2. The minigame's discovery attracted considerable controversy from lawmakers and politicians, this prompted it to be re rated to be classed as an adult film,

3. Since the Hot Coffee mod in 2005, there has been an new updated verson without the patch, grand theft auto san andreas had to be recalled aswell from shops.

Mobile Gaming

Mobile Gaming

the first portable game i can think of is the game Snake on the nokia phones in 1997, this was a very successful game as it was ahead of other games, A mobile game is a video game played on a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA, tablet computer,portable media player. in short it is a device where a video game can be played portable.

                Mobile games cam around to be used as at the end of the 20th century mobile phones began to modernize. Total global revenue from mobile games was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2005 by Informa Telecoms and Media. Total revenue in 2008 was $5.8 billion. The largest mobile gaming markets were in the Asia-Pacific nations Japan and China, followed by the United States, the most successful mobile game is Angry Birds, this one game is simple to play and understand the layout of controls, you control a caterpult and drag it to beat the opostion, this simple game has the highest selling figures of all mobile games, it has sold $100 million.

 Angry Birds statistics:

• 200,000 years of combined game play
• 300 million minutes of game play per day
• 266 combined game levels played
• 400 billion birds launched
• 44 billion collected stars

i believe angry birds is a popular game as it reaches to all audiences in the market, and is also very simple to play, this blockbuster of a game is made by Rovio, and recently hit 1 Billion downloads, this is a great landmark in mobile gaming history, i believe this is where the market is heading towards with gaming, as smart phones become even more advanced and cheaper to buy, the demand for mobile games will increase dramatically.

Angry Birds has been so successful that is has branched out into other medias, such as children toys, food and drink industry, there is also a theme park in the UK.

WII U

Nintendo WII U

The brand new wii u has been priced at £249.99 when released in the UK, Nintendo have announced a release date of between April and December 2012 for the WiiU, which is the first of their games consoles to support HD graphics

Stats:
We know there's 2GB of RAM (1GB system memory and 1GB for games), we know it has a Power-based CPU from IBM, we know it's multi-core, and we know there's an AMD Radeon GPU in there, but Nintendo's keeping the specifics to itself for now - possibly because on paper at least, the Wii U specifications barely beat the soon-to-be-replaced consoles from its rivals, let alone the incoming Xbox 720 and PS4.



Games:

 New Super Mario Brothers

 ZombiU

Tank! Tank! Tank!

Rayman Legends

my gaming history

i got my first console when i was 8 for christmas, i mostly played grand theft auto san andreas as it came out near the time, i also enjoyed desert storm aswell, two years ago i got my ps3 slim, i still play this console as the graphics arew outstaqnding with my tv, i mostly play battlefield 3 for its realistic graphics, however i also play grand theft auto episodes from liberty city, i really enjoy this game as i like games where you have the option of free mode.