Video games

Sega game gear

 Sega game gear advert is targeting heterosexual teenage boys. It doesn't attempt to target a female audience at all implying that video games are only played by men.
The advert suggests that video games are something that you use to pass time.




What is a video game?

  • Games that require you to own a particular consul.
  • Video games tend to target a core/ niche audience. 
  • Video games usually have an interactive component.
  • Usually played by younger audiences.
  • The hypodermic needle model- if you play too many video games, you'll become stupid or violent.
  • Vastly more complicated narratives.
  • Often there is an online component to them.

Video game production, distribution and circulation
  • Like all industries, the video game industry is a specialised industry.
  • In order to write about the video game industry and its peculiarities, you will need to know something of the history of video games.

Context
  • First video game was called space war- developed in 1962. Computers were new at the time, very few people had them, so the game wasn't well known.
  • Some of the first video games were role playing games.
  • Space invaders 1979- start of Japanese arcade games.  
  • Centipede 1981- start of American arcade.
  • At first, people were only able to play video games in arcades.
  • Micro computers in the UK- bedroom coding (usually made by teenage boys at home).
  • E.T video bankrupted Atari, they had to burry millions of copies as it was cheaper than selling them.
  • Japanese imports- Dragon quest (similar to pokemon) a Japanese roleplaying game. 
  • Adventure games- a genre of video games where you have to solve puzzles and working out solutions to problems. 
  • Mario was created in 1986 by nintendo (Japanese company)- most successful video game ever created. It was popular as it was marketed towards kids. 
  • Street fighter 1991 (a popular arcade game)- Female character was introduced in the second street fighter game and became very popular.
  • Consuls were released in 1994, first one being sony play station one.
  • Video game consuls are usually cheap- companies tend to make money from the video games rather than the consuls. 
  • Theres a huge difference between video games and genres.
  • AAA game- a game that takes thousands of people to make.
  • Developer of tomb raider- Female player is always being shown from behind- sexualised.
  • They are regulated in a different way to films (pegi rather than bbfc).

Sony play station one TV advert
  • Uses stereotype that playing too many video games will make you stupid to advertise it to a niche target audience.
In what ways do video games represent a specialised industry? How do they differ from other media?
  • Interactivity
  • Huge expenditure of resources.
  • Much higher RRP (recommended retail price). 
  • Significantly longer length than a movie or mv.
  • A dedicated "core" target audience.
  • Games developed for specific hardware, or released multiplatforrm. 

Assassin's Creed III- liberation. 
  • Published by Ubisoft in 2012 for the playstation vita, with a HD re-release for playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
How does the trailer target a specialised and generalised audience?   


  • This video game has a narrative- makes trailer look cinematic like a movie.
  • Dramatic music conventional of a movie.



Component 1, section B- (unseen text) advertising, newspapers or music videos. 









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