Reality is Broken

Reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal

• The planet is spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming. 
• Collectively, there are 4 million gamers in the Middle East, 105 million in India, 100 million in Europe and 200 million in China. 
• More than 10 million "Hard Core" gamers in the UK, France and Germany spend at least 20 hours a week playing.
• Looking at statistics, every average American person who reaches the age of 21 will have spent 10,000 hours gaming. 
• The planet is spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming. 
• 5 million 'extreme gamers' in the US play games on an average of 45 hours a week.
• Digital games, across most media platforms, is expected to be a $68 billion industry by the end of the year.
• 97% of young people play video games.
• 40% of gamers are women.
• 69% of heads of households play video games.
• 5.93 million years have been spent playing World of Warcraft. 5.93 million years ago, our first ancestors stood up, this shows how much time is spent playing video games.

Zynga!

Zynga is a company that develops games that work both stand-alone on mobile phone platforms such as Apple iOS and Android and as application widgets on its website and social networking websites such as Facebook and Google+. Zynga's mission is 'Connecting the world through games.'
Zynga is mostly known for the creation of games such as FarmVille, CityVille, CastleVille, ChefVille, Mafia Wars and Words With Friends.
A lot of people wonder how Zynga makes its money, especially seeing as the games that they create, their business model is free-to-play. Zynga is supported in two ways, via credit card payments and partner businesses.
Farmville 2 is a sequel to Farmville and was released in September of 2012. It's available as an adbone flash application via the social networking website Facebook and Microsoft's MSN games. The game is a freemium game which means there's no cost to play however players have the option to purchase premium content.

Skylanders

Skylanders Giants is a 2012 video game in the skylanders series, it's a direct sequel to the 2011 game skylanders, Spyro's adventure. As the title suggests, it features larger skylanders known as giants along with other gameplay mechanics.
The game was released in October 2012 globally and was released on the following platforms, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360.
The game was published by Activision, Neoplay, Square - Enix and was developed by Toys for Bob, n - space.

Vivendi

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - "Hot Coffee" Mod.

Hot Coffee is a normally inaccessible minigame in the 2004 video game GTA: San Andreas. Although the 'Hot Coffee' minigame was completely disabled and its existence was only highlighted after the mod's release for the PC version in 2005, people had found ways to enable the minigame via console video game hacking tools. The Hot Coffee minigame allows the player to engage in sexual intercourse with any of his six girlfriends.
By July 2005, the mod had attracted a lot of publicity from the likes of politicians and lawmakers, this then led the selling of the game to be stopped and for the game to be re-rated as an adult game.
Rockstar has now vowed that legal action would take place against sources that reveal how to access the minigame.

Mtn Dew & Halo!

This image is a prime example of Symbiosis, Halo and Mountain Dew have come together to promote eachother so they can both make a profit by using eachother. They have thought this out well because a lot of the time, when new games come out, the hardcore gamers will spend a lot of time playing the game to get as far as they can. This means that they will be drinking energy drinks to keep them energized. Mountain Dew fits a lot better than other energy drinks such as Red Bull because there are vibrant neon colours which seem very futuristic and sci-fi, this relates to Halo because the game is very futuristic.

Top 20 Games

The game which takes the top of the chart is the brand new Assassin's Creed III, this game was published by ubisoft and is available on the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U. Assassin's Creed III was released on the 31st October for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it will be available to purchase on the PC and Wii U from November 20th - 30th. Ubisoft has stuck to keeping the game on the most popular consoles and has still had great success with it. The game has debuted as No.1 in the UK All Formats Charts and is the publisher's biggest launch to date, it's almost doubled the week one sales of Assassin's Creed II. Despite the place of the game on the chart, it's the second biggest UK game launch of the year so far, after September's FIFA 13. The Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed accounted for 59 per cent of sales, with the other 41 taken by the PS3.
On the rest of the chart, the publishers EA have 3 games in the top 6 and they are all franchises, the Medal of Honor franchise is trying to resurrect the game and has succeeded by selling 2m copies since its release last month, this is the 16th Medal of Honor game to date. Need for Speed: Most Wanted has been released on the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Vita and has came 5th in the Top 20 Platforms Chart. FIFA 13 came 2nd on the whole chart and one of the main reasons why the FIFA franchise being so popular is the fact that they are available on all consoles instead of being restricted to a certain few consoles, the reason why the FIFA games are available on the PS2 is because in Brazil and India, people still play the PS2 and they are very big fans of FIFA, so by EA making FIFA available on the PS2, they are able to get more money for the sales as there are more consoles to sell the game on.
Ubisoft also has 3 games on the whole chart, these games are Assassin's Creed III, Just Dance 4 and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. All these games are franchises because there have been previous releases of the game and there are now newer versions out.
Activison also has 2 games on the chart, these games are Skylanders Giants and Moshi Monsters: Moshlings Theme Park. Activision has targetted the childrens market well because these games have came 8th and 12th on the Platform Chart.
Nintendo is the most popular first party franchise, this means that when Nintendo release a game, they only make it available to play on Nintendo consoles such as the Wii, Wii U and the DS. The games that Nintendo have released recently are Pokémon Black and White 2 and Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. These games are also aimed at the childrens market and they have came in places 11th and 15th.
Microsoft is the lesser known first party publisher and has reelased Forza Horizon which is only available on the Xbox 360, this game has came 7th overall so the sales for the game must have been very high and Microsoft will have got a very large income for the game because it has only been released on the Microsoft console. When you log onto your Xbox 360, Microsoft has a giant marketplace where it promotes their own games more than any other games, you will notice that when you log onto Xbox, there will be advertisements for Halo and Forza Horizon more than anything else.
Finally, there is a brand new IP called Dishonored which has been published by Bethesda Softworkers and is available on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The game is being developed by Arkane Studio whose former titles include Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. The developer's intention is to "shatter the mold that first-person action games have built for themselves in the mainstream".

Digital Distribution

In this essay I will be talking about the advantages and disadvantages of digital distribution and whether it should become the main source of purchasing games, I will also be talking about the arguments for and against digital distribution and why people would and would not want digital distribution to take over.

Digital Distribution is the delivery of media content such as audio, video, software, and in this case, video games. The term online distribution is typically applied to freestanding products; downloadable add-ons for other products are better known as downloadable content or DLC.

The biggest and most obvious benefit to downloading games online is immediate enjoyment. It’s possible to buy the game at any hour of the day or night, there’s no need to stand outside shops in the early morning. In fact, you don’t even have to move to purchase it. With this ability to download the game to any computer, it’s easy to play it anywhere and enjoy auto-patches without having to hunt through desks and filing cabinets looking for disks or validation keys. The most attractive thing about digital distribution is the fact that there is no clutter, no boxes, plastic wrapping or manuals.

Whilst digital distribution makes a very convincing argument, there are still significant benefits to owning an actual physical copy of a game. For one thing, faster installation, depending on the internet connection that you have, it’s possible that you could be waiting several hours just for one game to download completely, whereas with an actual disk the process is much, much faster.  If you have the physical copy of a game, it’s easy to lend them to friends and you can play them even when you don’t have access to the internet. The strongest argument for buying physical copies concerns the collectors; those who love looking at their game collections, counting it, cataloguing it and crooning softly to it like Gollum with the One Ring are highly unlikely to be talked into buying games digitally.

The cost for digital distribution is often less for the publishers than physical copies because they’re not paying for packaging, shipping or point of purchase costs. Even better, if something happens to the game such as it stops working, you can uninstall it and re-download it again and you don’t have to spend money buying it all over again.

While it is true that boxed games usually cost more, there’s the possibility of saving money by buying them used which is something that digital distribution doesn't offer. It’s also possible for you to sell or trade your games once you’re doing with them to stretch your gaming cash.

Another major advantage is the fact that digital distribution is a blessing for indie game developers as it gives them the tools to spread the word of their game, to have easy access to a large market, and ultimately the potential to have a hit on popular distribution services like Apple’s Appstore, the Android Market, XBLA, Steam and the PSN Store. Online markets are so huge today that it gives indie developers the opportunity to get their concepts and ideas out in to the world, so that it may be ridiculed, or so that it becomes a worldwide phenomenon.

The last advantage that I’m going to be talking about is the discounts that the markets offer, if you download games from Steam, there are plenty of sales and offers on all the time which makes games even cheaper to buy.  For example, they do certain days where you can earn achievements and claim prizes in “The Steam Summer Camp Sale”. This is a good way to advertise because promotional sales give players further motive to download games.

In conclusion, I believe that digital distribution is amazing and minor disadvantages shouldn’t sway people away from what is inevitably the future of gaming. Although, believing that digital distribution is going to be the future of gaming, retail copies of games are going to be around for a very long time, so if you still want to get the soundtrack, art book, character figure from the Collector’s edition of your favourite game, you still can, and will be able to for a very long time. 

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy is basically when two or more parties in a certain company/organisation work together to create greater outcomes by inventing connections between directly related areas of entertainment. For example, media institutions exploit various platforms to sell products relatnig to the other product which may be a video game for example. This happened when Assassins Creed was released and then bedsheets, posters, mugs, t-shirts etc were all released based on the Assassins Creed game.
Symbiosis is when various different companies come together to promote a series of products. This happens to receive profits through different ways from a product. An example of this is when toys are created which are based off of a certain game, when the toys are sold, they are not only getting profit for the company that created them, they are also advertising the game by selling them. The money that the company made, a fraction of that goes to the game developers because a licence is needed to create the toys based on the game.

Rockstar Studios

Rockstar North

Rockstar North was founded in 2002 and is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was previously known as DMA Design. They're known for the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt franchises, as well as the original Lemmings games. It's owned by Take-Two Interactive. It's the primary developer of the Grand Theft Auto series, which has three of the best-selling games on sixth-generation consoles, in addition to the best-selling Grand Theft Auto IV in the current generation of consoles.

Rockstar Japan

Rockstar Japan was founded by Rockstar in 2005 and it produces the Japanese translations of Rockstar Games software. Rockstar Japan was the Japanese localisation headquarters of Rockstar Games. They worked in conjunction with Capcom. Rockstar Japan localise for the Asian market.

Rockstar Leeds

Rockstar Leeds was founded in 2004 and it was previously known as Mobius Entertainment and was based in Lower Wortley, Leeds, England. These were the creators of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories for the PlayStation Portable, Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and the music game Beaterator. Rockstar Leeds' most recent work is the Microsoft Windows version of L.A. Noire.

Rockstar London

Rockstar London was discovered in November 2005, it took over the development of Manhunt 2 after Rockstar Vienna closed. It also recently developed the portable adaption of Mightnight Club: Los Angeles, Midnight Club LA Remix.

Rockstar Toronto

Rockstar Toronto was previously known as Rockstar Canada, it was discovered in 1999 and is best known for their work The Warriors, an adaptation of the cult classic film and the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City.

Rockstar Vancouver

Rockstar Vancouver was previously known as Barking Dog Studios, it was discovered in 2002 and created the PlayStation 2 title Bully and third game in the Max Payne series, Max Payne 3. Vancouver will soon be merging with Rockstar Toronto.

Wii U

I've done research on the up and coming 'Wii U' which is getting released in the UK on November 30th, although it's being released in the US on the 18th of November.
Prices in the US for the Wii U are set at $249.99 for the 8GB model and $349.99 for the 32GB version. However, Nintendo won't comment on the UK price because, it says, retailers are required by law to set their own prices - something that hasn't been a problem for any other tech firm on the face of the Earth. Nevertheless, Nintendo says if you want to know how much the Wii U UK price will be, you'll have to visit your favourite retailers' websites. And early indications are that the 8GB Nintendo Wii U will cost £249.99 while the 32GB model will cost £299. The Wii U is apparently quite modest in comparison to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, it has been noted that Nintendo is being very cagey on the subject and prefers to promote the new experiences the Wii U can offer rather than talk about CPUs and graphics chips.
The GamePad Controller
Where other consoles have buttons and sticks, the Nintendo Wii U has a tablet: the GamePad is a 6.2-inch, 16:9 ratio LCD touchscreen with traditional buttons and twin analogue sticks.
Powered by a rechargeable battery and weighing around 500g, the GamePad has an accelerometer, gyroscope and geomagnetic sensor for motion control, a front-facing camera and microphone for video chat, stereo speakers, rumble feedback and a stylus. The controller allows the player to play the current game even if the television is switched off.

Nintendo has stated that the Wii U will support 1080p graphics  and have twenty times the size of memory than the original Wii had. The ideas for the Wii U first bloomed in 2008 as Nintendo had discovered many restrictions and problems with the Wii. Nintendo had originally created the Wii for core gamers but soon discovered that the Wii was a console for casual gamers so they are soon to introduce the Wii U hoping that it will cause the return of core gamers to play Nintendo consoles once again. Nintendo has previously failed to attract the audience of gamers who are fonder of the Xbox or rival PlayStation and to attract these gamers they have now assured greater support of third-party games on the Wii U.

Grand Theft Auto IV Analysis

Grand Theft Auto IV is an action adventure game by Rockstar. The developer is Rockstar North and the publisher is Rockstar Games.
The price to make GTA IV was approximately $100 million, and Microsoft paid $50 million to make the game DLC. The price to pay for GTA IV is around £15-20. It's playable on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The release date of GTA IV was 29th April 2008 and apparently made $400 million in its first week of sales. The game can be distributed digitally and physically, it can be bought from Amazon, HMV, GAME, PLAY etc.

World of Warcraft analysis

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG by Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft is only available on Windows or Macintosh, despite it being only available on computers, it holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG with subscribers. 

Both the developer and the publisher of World of Warcraft is Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of the American company Activision Blizzard.

According to Vivendi, World of Warcraft cost around $63 million to make. Blizzard has approximately 11 million people playing World of Warcraft. Blizzard makes about $165,000,000 a month, $5,500,000 a day, $229,166 an hour, $3,819 a minute, and $63.65 a second.

World of Warcraft can be bought from large retailers such as ASDA, HMV and GAME. It can also be bought online on us.battle.net or eu.battle.net, it's also DLC because it can be downloaded digitally on battle.net websites so you don't have to wait for the post, you only have to wait for the install and then you can play. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion which you have to buy to be able to play and this costs around $20 dollars, to buy further expansions, they are also $20 and the most recent expansion is $50. It costs $15 a month to play WoW, this is how they get their main source of income.

From Bad to Glad (My Gaming Experience Life Story)

When I first started playing games, I must have only been around the age of six or seven. I first started playing Vice City whenever my Uncle would come round and babysit me; I ended up spending about 6 hours on it each time I played it. It was then I discovered my love for stealing cars and stealing people’s money. I vaguely remember my parents buying me a Game Boy Advance and a Lara Croft game to keep me entertained on a flight, but I’m pretty sure I was playing it for about 7 hours a day for a good 6 months, although I don’t recall completing it. Then I ended up getting Pokemon and I worshiped it. Nevertheless, the following Christmas I received a PlayStation 2 along with Vice City and a lot of Sonic generation games, I was made up! I also got a few other games such as the Sims, the Simpsons and other games which I can’t remember. When San Andreas was released, I played that too and it ended up being the first game I’d completed. As I got older I got more and more consoles but definitely lost interest in them, they had become too boring for my liking and I wanted something different. As soon as I became a teenager and started exploring the internet I found several MMORPG’s which, I thought, were the best thing in the entire world. I first started playing a game called Allods, which was a free to play game, but, like most free to play games, you had to pay something to have amazing gear or amazing mounts or whatnot. Because I had never played an online game before I thought the graphics of Allods were phenomenal, I’d never seen anything like it. But, with Allods, I was more obsessed with being a pretty little fairy rather than a good player. After a year or so, my experience with Allods came to an end and I started to play World of Warcraft which is still my favourite game at this moment. In World of Warcraft I’m a huge fan of PvP, it’s basically all I do on the game, so I don’t really explore the game for all of its wonders, but I’m sure I will one day. As for graphics, I’d vote 7/10, they’re very good sometimes, but other times they can be like Minecraft, pretty annoying. I also play games on my iPhone every single day, these games are things such as Tetris and Bejeweled, I really enjoy basic games like those. Thus my gaming experience so far is pretty ranged, I’d say.