HA10 - Task 1 - Analysis of a Game Genre

Video Game Genres

With excessive amounts of time played, I’m choosing to base my task around MMO’s (Massively multiplayer online), a genre which entails social gaming, surrounded by people from over the world who are playing the same game with similar intents to yours, level your personalized character up, hope the dice rolls high for you and achieve the attribution of epic loot.

The games I want to be deconstructing it’s genre further will be;

Guild Wars 2

Developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft by August the 28th, 2012.
Guild wars 2 is an MMORPG set in a fantasy world of Tyria which entails fighting against fantasy based monsters sparing no haste to kill your character.
http://th07.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/211/c/2/the_shatterer_by_aleenaelyn-d6fx55p.jpg

World of Warcraft

Developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment, the first being released soonest at November 23rd 2004.
World of Warcraft, one of the older MMORPG's is set within the warcraft universe known also as Azeroth which is packed with many enemies as well as allies, other races and a wide expanse of area to explore.

http://www.focusfilm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/24806_world_of_warcraft.jpg

Firefall

Developed and published by Red 5 Studios released 29th of June 2014.
Based on the year 2178, an asteroid is pulled in by the moons gravitational pull, swinging it into the earth plummeting humanity into a 9 year dark age until the discovery of a powerful resource in the asteroid known as crystite, which was manufactured and used to create the golden age to humanity.


http://www.mognation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/firefall-the-game04.jpg


Basic media of the games;

Guild Wars 2-

My own personal in-game character

https://thinkbubbles.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/zhaitan.jpg

One of the end bosses of the game, showing what enemies will be entailed within the game.

quick gameplay, showing the GUI and design style etc
 
A video which pans around the world of tyria

World of Warcraft (Mists of Pandaria)-

in-game image, showing the GUI and enemies within the game.


http://huntsmanslodge.huntsmanslodge.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/savage_rare_elite_tiger_mop.jpg

an in-game mob which can also be tamed.



cinematic trailer to boast storyline and hype towards the game.

Firefall-

http://www.mmogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/sci-fi-shooter-mmo-games-firefall-night-screenshot.jpg

a screenshot of the GUI, map, some gameplay essences within it.



A video showing off a concept in the game known as "thumping" in search for resources.



Structure and gameplay-

What you'll usually expect from any MMO is social events, customer characterization, teams , factions, guilds etc.

Events, Bosses

These games spare no expense in this, all 3 games have events which will force you into interaction with other players, whether it be a World Boss in Guild wars 2 and WoW, or an "ARES Mission" in firefall, you'll end up being with other people across the world and have to talk to them in order to conquer this difficult event.
(gw2)

(WoW)

(firefall)


http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VOtJkRX-XQQ/maxresdefault.jpg
http://hammerfistclan.com/forum/photopost/data/640/raid_sha_of_anger.jpg
http://www.manachanter.com/pics/GW2/TheShatterer02.jpg

In all of these screenshots, you can see the character being surrounded by other players, all combining to defeat this large and difficult boss or event, with it being so intensely difficult you, the only way to finish it is to gather either people you know or request the help of strangers.

Rolling the dice for loot

Other codes you'd find in this game include the hopeful dice roll which can potentially guarantee you an item which you'll treasure, there are higher tiers of loot in these games, higher being more desirable but also rarely found.
In both guild wars 2 and WoW, you defeat an enemy and there is a percent chance you'll get a rare item, but this can be increased with "Magic Find" which will increase your percent chance of finding a rarer item as well as more difficult and higher events will drop rarer and more desired loot, whereas Firefall does have a dice roll for better loot, but it cannot be changed or varied with anything.





http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1019683-Megathread-Firefall/page63
http://www.kujaswowgoldguide.com/2011/02/go-treasure-hunting-and-get-rich.html
http://buttonmashing.com/wp-content/uploads/gw048.jpg

With the above screenshots, it's possible to attain the idea that MMO's commonly use Chests to show the high and more increased level loot over low mob dropped loots.

Dungeons/Raids

With all, if not many MMO's you'll encounter Dungeons, difficult instances and areas which you'll commonly enter with a party or raid, in order to get through the dungeon you must finish the quest given to you and follow its objectives.
for example within Guild wars 2, there's many dungeons which have higher difficulty based on your level and will always need a group to assist you within, rendering the difficulty lower and rewarding you with loot, currency and tokens to further strengthen your character.

http://images.mmosite.com/my/upload/30/99/10f6cf7f81a5d1d0716b1956bd43df65/theme/ec274214704050d31790b699fdcee71f690.jpg

This is the same with WoW, finding a party to go in and finish these objectives with, though one of the notable differences is that if you're going in with a party that's randomized, you can use a LFG (looking for game) system which will pair you with other people within the game, you'll also be assigned a character role i.e Tank, Healer

Character Customization

In all MMO's, there is an essence of character customization, with the only variant being how much of your character is changeable, whether you can just edit your armour over a preset character all the way to choosing the Race, story, personality, details, voice and name.

With Guild wars 2  you can choose a lot of details in your character as it gives you the opportunity to choose your story and what has happened to you before you've even begun playing your character, you have a choice of race and gender, then going into finer detail, giving you sliders in order to make your character very specific to your choosing and variances in details like eye colour, facial hair etc.

http://casualdoes.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gw054.jpg

WoW does give you personalised choices in terms of class, race and general traits etc, with general options towards hair colour, face style, facial hair like with guild wars 2.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100401212131/wowwiki/images/e/ed/Character_creation.jpg

Firefall is similar in terms to World of Warcraft as it gives you options to create your own unique character, though not given the widest range of options, there is possibility to change your character to your will.

http://www.blogcdn.com/massively.joystiq.com/media/2013/06/firefall4.jpg

Although there is difference between them with Guild wars 2 having a little more personalization towards a character than both Firefall and World of Warcraft, there are still many similarities to layout, showing an overview of the character constantly, a ongoing choice between what to edit, nothing finalized until you create your character in the end, you have the ability to go back and tinker with your character after you've made little changes.

People often find the character customization an important feat within an MMO, as they can portray themselves into the character, or the person they'd want to be.

Wide explorable environments-
In MMO's It's common to be in a very large expanse of land, it can be in incredibly vast areas that differentiate far more than other areas within an MMO Game, commonly in MMO's you'll find these different areas be referred to as "Maps" as you can go into different instances and online servers of these maps to explore freely, whether or not you want to go and "grind" mobs (the act of killing mobs repeatedly for a purpose) or you want to go follow objectives, i.e, a story, mission, view.

In all three games I have as example, there are incredibly different areas in the world, as in guild wars 2 you can find yourself running through lush green forests in one instance and not 5 minutes later you could be entering a labyrinth of science aimed at testing your wit.
focusing more on Guild Wars 2 you can see that you go through portals to take you from map to map, rather than the whole map being pre-loaded for you to traverse between.

(Personal Screenshots)
These portals will send you through the maps, triggering a loading screen which goes through the process of finding you a suitable server based on amount of people, language, area; as well as loading in the terrain, enemies and scenery in sync with other people.
With Guild Wars 2, there are many, many different aspects of maps, there are areas full of forests, places which are tainted by "brand", areas with treacherous landscape which will have you killed in an instant.
The difference with Guild wars 2 is that there are places in the game that are natural challenges known as jumping puzzles, which test your keyboard co-ordination, sometimes taking hours to complete they're a good way of showing off areas in the map.

With World of Warcraft, traversing between maps can be done by using a Zeppelin which will transport you to maps, it's the easiest way to access maps you haven't previously been to and will take you to most general areas within the game.
though the majority of places in the game are either wildlife or contain civilization, there are many differences in terms of architecture, wildlife and NPC's
 
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061106042631/wowwiki/images/2/22/Zeppelin.jpg

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101209002942/wowwiki/images/3/3f/World-of-warcraft-cataclysm-boat-zeppelin-route-map.jpg

Though World of Warcraft has varying ways of getting you around a single map, having "mounts" which will increase your movement speed and some giving you different areas of accessibility that would be impossible to get to otherwise.

http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2010/04/protoprotoproto.jpg

Firefall is different in aspects of map transportation as well, unlike Guild wars 2 and World of Warcraft, your character has mobility in itself, covered in high tech gear that can make you move faster and fly higher, so there's easy access to high points in the map.
there are also large Dropships which pass by and land in major towns or human filled encampments.


http://s12.photobucket.com/user/demonwarb/media/KittyKatAug-13-2013NewEden1p3_zps3309989b.png.html

Though it's easy to say there are different forms of transport throughout these huge expanses of map, it's difficult to get there just using your characters movement, looking towards larger carriers to get you to and from many places in order to save the time running around.
MMO's will often have some form way to get you around the large expanses of maps, whether it be Dropships, Zeppelins or Waypoints, there's something that'll give you the option to quickly go to a certain map or area on a map.

Having large expanses of map within an MMO is useful to have, it keeps the player exploring, it keeps them to look towards other areas they've not previously seen.

Characteristics-
Commonly produced on their own engines, but guild wars used the Havoc engine to create it too.
They are highly known for producing their product online and shipping it out using serial keys but it's not uncommon for them to be physically produced and then to have a one-time CD key for you to activate, giving you opportunity to create your details in the game.
With MMO's, dominantly more World of Warcraft, there are cons to make people hype games, with Blizzcon showing new expansions for World of Warcraft and the same with Guild wars 2 or Firefall, they attended conventions to hype customers to their game.



Narrative Structure
With MMO's, it isn't common you'll find heavy story based characteristics though it has been known in MMORPG's that there are plenty of stories and back-stories on just about everything in the world, be it character, area or animal.
With both Guild wars 2 and World of Warcraft, there is heavy lore about the races and about well renown people within areas such as Leaders and people of Legend, an example being Caithe, a female from the race of "Sylvari" who is a "firstborn".


http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caithe

You can find in the wiki stories of her coming into the world and what she does throughout the game -spoilers-

Depending on the MMO you'll play the story you come to finish can vary on your decisions, as with World of warcraft it's what race you choose that depicts how you finish the game and how your story will pan out, but with Guild wars, you have a different start in the game and the ending of the game comes to a similar end.

Representation of Characters
The MMO's I've gone through today have different ways of showing nothing against stereotypes and profiling which is shown through the characters you both play and AI that you encounter, as in MMO's your choice in character is all down to you, Guild wars you have a choice of Asurans, a small elf-like race, Sylvari, a race of people born from the trees, Charr, a race merged by war and deceit that stand like large hulking beasts with fur, Norn's who are like that of humans but a lot taller and wider than that of a human around 8 feet tall and finally the Humans, simply like that of us but with more magical prowess.

These games show such difference in race and show that all races including the lesser known ones have significance, well representing every race equally without bias to one or another.

HA9 - Task 2 - Audience Response and Behaviour

Effect Debates
Violence
Violence in video games is and always will be a huge concern to people, whether it be parents being unsure on whether it's okay for their child to be thrown into a world of gratuitous violence  or whether they're going to end up being negatively influenced by it, though people have been influenced by it, it isn't common it's been found people have had negative actions after it.

In recent years the most popular games have been big names such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, these games are mainly associated with murder, violence and crime, however there are many points against these reasons, for example is ‘The Columbine High School Massacre’ in 1999, in which two teenagers killed 13 people before committing suicide, investigations showed that the two teens played the game ‘Doom’ in which was a violent game, the media directly blamed the creators of the game, but didn't consider the fact the teens were social outcasts and victims of bullying.

These were 2 teens who played the game, if everyone who played the game were violent after it, solid evidence could be given.

Scientists Christopher Ferguson and Cheryl Olson studied 377 American children, on average 13 years of age, from various ethnic groups who had clinically elevated attention deficit or depressive symptoms.

Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University says; "We found no evidence that violent video games increase bullying or delinquent behavior among vulnerable youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms.

Explicit Sexual Content
There are many games which can come with relatively sexual scenes which can induce things like nudity, sexual scenes and generally unwanted things for younger people.
With the aging of video games there's more that games can get away with, be it very lightly or excessive amounts of sexual content.

http://mashthosebuttons.com/2013/07/the-little-rating-that-couldnt/
This being an image from Saints row 4, a game that teeters on the amount of nudity it will show, although this scene does show it blurred out, there's far more sexual references and even sexual scenes, this could influence many people that aren't inoculated enough to know it isn't a normal thing to see.



(Be advised this includes scenes of sexual nature)

Abusive/Inappropriate language

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PEGI_bad_language.png

If you see the case of a video game with this pegi logo on it, you're in for lots of swearing wherever it's convenient, this can have a heavy impact on gamers that are younger than the pegi rating left on the game, due the high amounts of swearing in games, it can make some people more common and more used to swearing in a normal environment outside of a game.


"Xbox One users are slowly beginning to realize that Kinect is always listening, paying attention even during single-player modes, and coldly, silently judging anyone who uses more than their fair share of foul language. Specifically, someone noticed that, while playing NBA 2K14, swearing too much earns users a technical foul for bad language."

http://www.avclub.com/article/video-games-can-now-penalize-users-for-swearing-to-106149

it's now also used in xbox one's kinect to get people to swear less in-game as it might be too excessive to others and unwanted, being known to boot people from games for swearing too much.

Addiction
When someone plays a video game for the majority of their free time, people typically begin to think they're spending too much time on it, it's becoming excessive and bad for them, though there have been and still are many cases where people are spending far too long in their daily lives on it, some being in the case of wearing adult diapers, not eating correctly, more commonly people like myself losing sleep over it.

there can be times when people have become so addicted it's started to effect their social lives, how they react to modern lives, it can be extreme as violence, throwing tantrums, being rude to people around them.


(It's advised there's swearing in this.)
A video of a Dad shredding his sons games after playing them excessively, not getting a job, during the process being incredibly rude and screaming at his Dad, leading onto him screaming and pitifully attempting to put games back together in hopes of returning them to their original state.

This is an extreme showing of addiction to video games and what it can do to people who play it for far too long.

Stereotyping and Representation
a good example of stereotyping in video games would be the GTA franchise, such as black people commonly being in gangs, women commonly being found as prostitutes, which can be seen in most of the games.
This would lead people to assume some of these stereotypes are applicable in the real world, acting incorrectly around people who are what the stereotype is based on.

http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/05/the-15-most-stereotypical-characters-in-video-games/irish-red-dead-redemption

This post is very good at pointing out some of the stereotypes being used within different video games, such as a drunken Irish in Red Dead Redemption, half naked women brawlers in games like Street fighter, Mortal Kombat and Darkstalkers.

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/gta-san-andreas/images/22793342/title/prostitutes-photo


Censorship
within gaming there's a certain level of censorship which is implemented in different countries, this could include the banning of the game Manhunt or Blood for being far too visual.
it can also include the choices the producers make in games to implement certain features or references in the game, this can include all the GTA games in the franchise choosing not to implement children in any of its scenes.

HA9 - Task 1 - Response Theories

Audience Profiling

The Hypodermic Needle Model;
This theory was an attempt on explaining how the media would react to mass media, it explains their response to a piece of media being it a positive or negative message which is both a passive method of response and is malleable.


The Inoculation Model
Like in medicine, inoculation is the process of being immune to a virus by leaving small amounts of exposure to it from an early start.
In the Media it is long term exposure to repeated media messages, making the audiences immune to them, becoming desensitized and no longer shocked by the information.

The two step flow model
This theory is the idea of some people choosing a vote, being the vote leader as their opinion doesn't change over time, whereas there are other people who follow the idea of the vote leaders, viewing their opinion to be stronger than their own, basing their decision on the leaders choice

Users and Gratifications Theory
This theory is the idea behind the reasoning of choice, in media this would be choice of information, personal identity, integration and social interaction as well as entertainment
this can also be found in the gaming industry, such as people playing games for information, which would entail different types of games like Brain training, Flight simulator, Civ V.
People would also play games for personal identity, playing games because they feel it suits to them, to what they enjoy, boosting their identity of themselves.
Games can be played for integration and interaction to fit into a social group, being able to talk about it and compare what's happened within it.
entertainment is a big reason behind playing a game, having something to do in spare time or all the time.

Reception Theory
The theory behind people choosing how media should be portrayed, not the producers choosing how something should sound, although it is encoded into the text, it's to the readers how it should be decoded, be it positive, negative or both.

HA8 - Task 1 - Construction Analysis

HA7 - Task 3 - Presentation of Research Results

GTA 5 results

From my Qualitative and Quantitative it's possible to make true statements for example "People play this game for different factors such as online play, freedom of choice and campaign" due to having the word answers from consumers of the Qualitative questions I asked. (Presentation 2, Slide 2)

With the Quantitative answers asked  it's possible to deduct things like "all of GTA V's market includes varying player such as 33% of them hardcore, 33% dedicated and the final 33% being casual gamers" (Presentation 1, Slide 9). Using this makes it so that media producers are able to analyze these results and base this around what their target audience is, whether they want to focus an audience or they're aiming to appeal different groups of people.

With this information it makes it so that the production company is able to analyze what it is players are looking for in a game and capitalize around that to be able to have something appeasing to consumers, this would make the overall media producers popularity increase, making something for the players of the results given.

HA7 - Task 2 - Applying Research Techniques

Customized Questions

Quantitative Questions

Asking these questions made it possible to find out answers that were generic and closed, using this kind of questioning was incredibly useful as it became possible to make statistical results from the data we'd analysed and make judgements based on them.

When I had my questions planned out from them initially being ideas, I put them onto Surveymonkey to make them more professional and finalized, putting them on there also made it simpler to create visual results in forms of graphs etc.

Though these questions are primarily closed questions there's the option to have input on a more personal level with the option of a text box.

With our questions we needed to vary what we were asking, rather than asking for worded answers from a choice we gave the person being questioned the option to choose a numerical value to answer their question.

Using these questions was useful as with the results that were to be generated I could use surveymonkey to create bar charts and graphs to make the analysis of results simpler to read and use to be published online.

Once I'd exhausted my usage of closed questions, I begun asking qualitative questions which would have the person answering the questionnare giving a detailed answer, showing their opinion by ending the question "Why?" this gave our answers more depth, more what we want to know from consumers.

How do these questions show us a target?

With the closed questions it's possible to pin-point what the target audience is by asking things like their age as knowing this can be applied when it comes around to the creation of games and what it is they should be continuing with as they target their specific audience.

When it came to asking open questions, asking a direct question about GTA V itself shows if players first of all know of it or if they agree with the way it's been created with such a large budget, focusing on whether they think it was worth that budget.

Survey Link - https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NBSKL7X

Games Survey drafts etc
With the first draft, with random ideas being thrown in and adapting on it to figure out what kind of questions and phrasing of questions would return the most results.
After figuring the questions that'd work and return the most amount of answers, we used the Site "SurveyMonkey" in order to make a more professional, more interactive survey for people online to answer for me, returning Quantitative research, able to produce results requiring numbers.

HA7 - Task 1 - Researching Techniques

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is compiling data from closed questions to find a specific answer or amount of data which will show results for a specific question to then have the ability to be able to get percentages and numbers to perhaps find a specific target audience such as;

"http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf"

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is focusing down on people in the area of interest you're looking for and asking them certain information on that demographic, with them knowing of the interest and being the audience you're looking to find good answers from, you can ask them more in-depth questions to get results that are more defined and precise as well as them being their own opinions, such as Yahoo! Answers, people asking specific questions in defined forums and sub-categories to find people who can give you a qualitative answer

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/video-game-shocks-mothers-focus-group-11699

This is an article based on a Dead space 2 focus group which was aimed to not entertain parents and show their reactions, which would work subconsciously making some people want to play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CKqbmMvHE8

Audience Profilling

Audience Profiling includes targeting a certain demographic and psycho-graphic to appeal to them in a certain manner depending on your given product.

Demographic profiling can include details such as Age, sex, work experience, education, interests, mood, orientation etc.

"The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the United Kingdom. They were originally developed by the National Readership Surveyto classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research.

They were developed over 50 years ago and achieved widespread usage in 20th Century Britain. Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

Psychographic profiling can include things such as personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles.

By going to the site you can see it's categorized people into demographics, being what they play, their income, average sex and age.

http://infogr.am/Cross-Cultural-Consumer-Characterization?src=web

"A demographic profile can be used to determine when and where advertising should be placed so as to achieve maximum results. In all such cases, it is important that the advertiser get the most results for their money, and so careful research is done to match the demographic profile of the target market to the demographic profile of the advertising medium. For instance, shortly after the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969, NBC's marketing department complained that was premature. They explained that their newly instituted demographic audience profiling techniques indicated that the series' main young urban audience was highly desirable for advertisers. In 1971,CBS acted on their own marketing department's demographic findings about their television network's programming and canceled several series that appealed primarily to older and rural audiences in a move nicknamed the rural purge."

http://corp.ign.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_profile

Why would this be useful in the gaming industry?

In the gaming industry, knowing your target audience and honing in on what they search for in a game can return better reviews as well as happy people recommending it to those close to them, if you want a specific type of gamer to play your game and enjoy it, you'd conduct research and Q&A's in order to get something that'll appease to their taste, making them interested in the game, it's story, merchandise and play-ability

Not conducting proper research can leave you with a product being played by people who wouldn't enjoy it normally, returning less profit, less positive reviews and also less interest in the game due to the bad reviews being given.
But given the correct research and correct movements in the games initial design and gameplay, you'll be able to have a better audience, playing, enjoying or even trying that type of game for the first time, attempting to bridge over new players into the genre and your franchise in itself.

The integration of Quantitative research within the process of making a game can make it possible to get stats and results about research that might push your game in a better direction or appeal stronger to the demographic you're going towards.

The integration of Qualitative research means you can ask people questions that might relate to the game you're creating such as "what makes you want to play (Example)?" and with their knowledge it becomes possible to get an answer which will be able to give better usages within your game to push it into a further better direction