This unit is all about cold, hard facts
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| You'll find loads of key facts on the YouTube channel |
How significant are economic factors in the videogame industry? Refer to the Assassin's Creed franchise in your answer
Above is a potential question that could come up in the exam. In today's lesson, we're going to work out how to answer it.
First of all, what does it actually mean? Well, economic factors are broadly to do with making money. The question asks 'how significant" is making money to the videogame industry? Well, the answer should be pretty clear: economic factors are very significant for the videogame industry!
So how does the videogame industry make money? We've already looked at a few examples.
We have learned that videogames are a specialised industry.
We have looked at how videogames are developed and marketed.
And, in just the last session, we looked at how important trailers are for marketing the Assassin's Creed franchise to both niche and mass audiences.
One thing we have not looked at so much is the company that actually make the Assassin's Creed franchise; Ubisoft themselves.
Ubisoft - a multinational conglomerate videogame developer
Task - Before you do anything else, watch this video on Ubisoft and media diversity, making notes as you watch
It explores once more how Ubisoft minimise risk and maximise profit (Hesmondhalgh), and goes over the concepts of vertical and horizontal integration. This concepts are essential for any industry response in the exam!
Ubisoft
the publisher + developer of assains' creed
produce AAA games in a variety of different genres.
key theory 14- the cultural industries, David hesmondhalgh
-media industries seek to minimise risk and maximise profit
every media products exists to make money- there is essentially no other reason. this is nonsense in a way, but by the by they're extremely expensive to make and have to target an audience in the most risk-free way to make money.
there are exceptions to this.
vertical, horizontal and multi media integration.
vertical integration is the idea of a media organisation owning different parts of the mode of production
horizontal integration is the idea of one organization owning other organisations in the same sector- e.g Disney owns a number of other film studios.
multimedia integration is the idea of using digital technologies to combine previously separate industries.
many organisations (including Ubisoft) are both vertically and horizontally integrated.
they're an incredibly vast company with lots of hold in the industry. they're a multi-national, transnational multimedia company.
they have a number of subsidiaries.
a subsidiary is a company working under another company.
their usp is that they make big games. they're a huge company making AAA games.
ubisoft games are very diverse, assasin's creed is their one of, if not the, biggest games they've made.
assains creed- teenage boys
watchdogs- older audience
just dance- family games
(all similar in the way they target and get vast audiences)
they also publish a number of 'casual games'- can be a slightly derogatory games. target a less hardcore fanbase.
they also own other franchises they were developed by other people (e.g- might and magic which they've made spin offs of)
why does Ubisoft publish such a wide range of videogames?
in short, to minimise risk and maximise profit.
if assassins creed goes down the pan it would be a massive problem for them and their shareholders, but they have other series and a multitude of audiences. ubisoft are not a risky company that venture out.
this is the game that helped put Ubisoft on the map. it was released in 1995, it's a colourful character based platformer.
it was a very straight forward platform game.
the usp was that it had very high production values for a 2d platformer, it subverted conventions that platformer games were always basic and quickly pumped out in low quality.
one of their most successful games was the just dance series, it's family-friendly w the usp being a range of music and that you don't need to be good at video games to play. it does particularly well on Nintendo consoles.
Diversification is a media practice where an organisation will seek to produce a diverse or different range of media products will helps them to target a range of different audiences.
this is obviously very good sense for a media industry, and actually Ubisoft have diversified beyond video games- not a lot of companies have done this.
it was a minor success as well as being an example of vertical integration, Ubisoft own different modes of production in different industries.
this film targeted audiences which could not normally be targeted by video games which diversified their audience. they had a pre-sold audience- fans of the assassin's creed series.
video game films are known not to be that good, but that's not what matters it's about audiences.
Key theory 12- power and the media industries, curran and seaton.
the media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by power and profit. to become profitable it needs to target the biggest audience possible. this media concentration limits variety, creativity and quality.
curran and seaton argue we need creative diversity in the industry, with diverse patterns of ownership and lots of different sectors.
How diverse is ubisoft's output?
while we have some diversification in ubisoft's output, all of it is targeting a mass audience and all of it is essentially out there to make a profit over everything else. their games are not a risk.
to see how generic Ubisoft's output is we need to look no further than the assassin's creed series, 21 games in the last 13 years- with more than one game being released in one year multiple times.
in 2014 we had freedom cry, rogue, identity, unity and chronicles china. we can argue this is saturation and also demonstrates this complete lack of creativity. they release all of these because they sell.
when something is stagnant it gets old and 'smelly,' this is what has happened to Ubisoft in the past few years, they've essentially flogged the same horse over and over which has had effects on their abilities to make a profit against their competitors.
to Ubisoft's credit, they've stripped back their publishing of games and have focused instead on less games per year.
if you are solely making a game to make money, there's not that much you can do with it. it limits creativity and originality
no one can compete unless they're massive AAA companies, people only tend to play massive games limiting competition to those who dominate the market.
Ubisoft are fairly diverse, yet we all also argue they're not. they all target mass audiences and are massive.
Task - research Ubisoft and their games. You can find instructions in the image below. You cannot pick an Assassin's Creed game for this bit!
select three games published by Ubisoft; one from the 90's, 00's and 10's.
for each game find the following information:
1997
title: pod
genre: racing video game
platform: Microsoft windows
target audience: 10-16 yr old boys
critical reception: Next Generation rated it three stars out of five, and stated that "Pod is a fantastic ride, with high-color graphics at high resolution and a steady, high frame rate. It could very well be the prettiest racing game you can buy right now."[7]
commercial success:
2004
title: farcry
genre: first person shooter
platform: Xbox, PlayStation, Microsoft window
target audience:
critical reception: 89% Metacritic 9.2/10 gamespot
commercial success:
2015
title: tom clancy's rainbow six siege
genre: tactical shooter
platform: PlayStation, Xbox, Microsoft windows
target audience: 16-25 year old boys
critical reception: 8.5/10 ign.com 10/10 gamespot 4.6/5 common sense media
commercial success:
Assassin's Creed: building a fact file
The exam specification states that you can refer to the Assassin's Creed franchise as a whole, but it would be good to pick out a particular game to make reference to in the exam.
I have already stated I would like you to make reference to the (as yet unreleased) Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and its marketing material (particularly its trailer). For this task, you will research any other Assassin's Creed game.
Task - pick an Assassin's Creed game that has been released, and research it to answer the following questions
Use Wikipedia and other sources to research the following
- Title: assassins creed Chronicles- india
- Premise (what country and era is it set in?): India, 1841
- Platform (eg Playstation 4 and Xbox One): Microsoft windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation vita, xbox. PS Vita version became available on 5 April 2016, as part of a trilogy pack
- Release date: January 12th 2016
- Development time and cost: In June 2009 Ubisoft reiterated that major titles for PS3/X360 cost $20-$30 million to make and that games for the next-generation may exceed $60 million.
- Which studio developed it? (eg Ubisoft Montreal): climax studios in association with Ubisoft Montreal
- Commercial success (how much money did it make?):
- Re-releases and special editions
- RRP on release
- Critical reception (google name of game and 'Metacritic' to make this easy. Post a couple of review quotes)
- Merchandise
- Anything else?
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