With reference to your chosen case studies, consider how important inactivity is to media institutions?

Exam question practice

Importance of Synergy Within the Marketing of Media Products

What stratagies are used by media companies are used by media companies to target audiences

Farmville

Marketing


Farmville is described as a “Farming Social network game” which was developed by Zynga. The game allows it’s players to grow virtual crops by ploughing land, planting and growing crops then harvesting them. The game also allows players to maintain virtual livestock. The game is available through Facebook and Apple iOS devices and will be coming to Android phones within the near future.

The game allows it’s players it connect through Facebook for social interaction within the game. This allows the players to work together to earn rewards and send gifts to each other. The game has relied on word-of-mouth for it’s marketing this is mainly done so via Facebook where users can invite their friends to start playing the game also.

Production

Whilst it’s claimed that Farmville is almost a copy of a competitor’s game ‘Farm Town’ which is also available through Facebook. Farmville was originally created using Adobe Flash, This meant that you only needed a web browser and the flash plug-in to be able to play the game. Farmville incorporates Facebook information to create a richer experience for it’s players by creating social interaction for the players with their friend’s list. The Game is a low-production but has been a huge success for Zynga. Farmville’s simplicity makes it more appealing for casual gamers to start playing and become addicted to.

Distribution

Farmville originally was distributed through Facebook which has a user-base of over 500 million active users and Facebook have stated that Users install 20 million applications per day. Farmville became available for Apple iOS devices in 2010 from the app store. Both are free to play however Farmville offers virtual goods to be bought in-game for real money.

Consumption

Gamers are playing this game through Facebook and their iPhones this means users play the game for short periods of time on simply designed levels. The game also motivates you to compete with your friends to earn a higher score.

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is a game created by independent game company ‘Valve’. It is a horror genre, first person shooter game. The game is based specifically upon the un-dead, and the gamer’s task to try and survive this terror. Unlike many other games, the aim isn’t to kill as many zombies as possible, therefore saving the world. In this game it is much more basic; the gamer must play to survive the continuous waves of flesh eating zombies. The game has a single player mode but after reading many reviews, and playing a demo of the game it is clear that the more gamers (up to 4) that play, the more exiting and interacting the game becomes.  

Marketing

To market the game, ‘Valve’ chooses an expensive avenue. The company decided to release various TV adverts, website clips of game play and info regarding the game, prints in papers and magazines and outdoor posters and small billboard images. The aim of this expensive advertisement campaign was to expose ‘Left 4 Dead’ too as many people as possible to conjure up huge demand and anticipation for the game. In all, advertisement cost reached a staggering 10 million dollars (approx). These campaigns were rife all throughout the USA and Europe. Valve was aiming to hit a huge part of the gaming sectors, therefore trying to create as much revenue as possible.

Valve hosted multiple competitions to engage with the audience, with prizes such as a free copy of their new game. The most notorious of these competitions was, "Dude, where's my thumb?” Entries that created and submitted the most realistic and gory pictures of events involving zombies were chosen as winners of this.
An intro- film was released on Halloween 2008 showing events that happened prior to the ‘No Mercy’ campaign. This was created to further promote the game by showing potential gamers the experience being thrown into a zombie apocalypse would really be like. Valve discussed the whole process of the creation of this film on their consistently un-dated internet blog, keeping gamers involved and up-to-date right up to the games release

Left 4 Dead was also widely marketed through social networking sites, mainly Face book. Valve decided this was a money and time saving way to directly interact with potential fans, gamers, and people they hoped to persuade to buy their game. This was a great way to engage with their target audience and realise information upon the game such as new characters, potential add on’s and general information upon the ‘extraordinary’ game play. Valve released pictures and snap-scenes of the game before its actual release, in hope that this would create a further appetite for the game.

Production ‘Left 4 Dead’ was originally developed by ‘Turtle Rock Studios’ during 2005. Valve recognised the potential of the game, and therefore brought game rights from Turtle Rock, and continued development themselves. The game was horizon tally integrated as a strategy by Valve to keep as much of the profit to themselves as possible. Valve relied upon their most expensive and up-to-date source engine which included components such as multi-core processors and physics- based animation. This was done to create extreme realism in the game, down to fine features such as eyes, mouth, hair and clothing. This software was also used to create amazingly life-like reactions to being shot or killed during game play. This was a goal of Valves as they believed this would separate them in contest with other zombie based games such as ‘Dead rising’, and future zombie based games such as ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ latest zombie game play release. Distribution After game development began in 2005, it was finally completed during the early stages of 2008. Valve released 2 different types of digital game play; A digital retail disk version which was sold in all popular game-based stores, and an online downloadable version.  Game play is available on consoles/software; Windows, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X. The game proved particularly popular on Mac based products. Microsoft brought game play rights from Valve, and then sold shares in the game to Apple who integrated the game to be compatible on their Apple products. The game currently is still being sold, although not nearly as popular as it initially was. This is mainly due to a new release of the game; Left 4 Dead 2 Valve also created downloadable content sold through Xbox live such as new weapons and stages. This meant that customers continued to spend even after purchasing the game. As well as this, Valve released free content they could include within the game if customers purchased the game before certain dates. This proved successful as customers felt happy with their purchase, believing they had struck lucky with a great deal and saved money in the long run.   Distribution techniques seem to have worked very well, as game sales reached levels well above that which was expected. The Xbox 360 release proved to be the 7th best selling game over Christmas period of December 2008, selling in excess of 629,000 copies in the United States. A few months later, ‘Electronic Arts’ revealed that the game had sold 1.8 million copies since release. Only 1 month later, a new stat was released. ‘Mike Booth’ released that the game had in fact exceeded 2.5 million sales (original target) to which Valve rejoiced. Later on that year, Valve released final information upon the game, stating that sales figures showed the game sold well over 3 million copies had been sold.   Consumption There are many different ways consumers can play the game. One which has seemed the most popular is online game play (mainly Xbox 360). Gamers can play alongside friends and rivals on the game to create a more social experience. There is a single player campaign within the game, giving gamers an aim to complete before enjoying add on’s and social gaming. Finally, there is an off line multi-player split screen function. This allows friends to get together and game on one screen, working as part of a team to survive the game plays apocalypse. These different functions of the game allow versatility, and means gamers with different game preferences have choices as to which sort of game play they are involved in. To keep customers happy, frequent new game play was released such as weapons, maps and characters. This created a ‘timeless’ effect within the game, as there was always something new to complete.

Section A 1b Representation and audience

hello and welcome to our blog post
Representation


We have tried to represent freedom and ways of life in our music video. We displayed the contrast in different types of lifestyles through the use of jump cuts, which showed how different the types of people are. The mise-en-scene, such as costume also indicated the types of people, with lots of everyday, business-type people wearing suits and basic clothing, and out main character Porridge wearing jeans.

The use of colour in our music video also represents rebellion.

Our music video goes against Laura Mulvey's theory as we do not use objectification of women and we do not conform to the usual hip hop conventions of lots of girls on screen being shown purely for male's entertainment.



Audience


Our target audience is teenage males. It is also aimed at people interested in skateboarding, bmxing etc.

Our certificate would be 12 as there is no violence, strong language or sexual content. The only aspect of
our music video that would need some parental guidance or restriction is the lyrics.

We are attempting to generate a preferred response as are music video is purely for entertainment.

Our target group would expect to see a typical skating atmosphere, we have have embraced this stereotypical view of skating by the mise-en-scene and surrounding backgrounds. The audience we aimed the video at will be happy with our video because we followed the stereotype.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

                             Marketing:

Assassins Creed Brotherhood stands out from all other action games in the market. Unlike games such as Call of Duty the game revolves around the complex historical storyline which is vital to game play and to drawing the audience it. This idea of the storyline being vital to the game play is reflected in the trailers for the game. Many of the trailers, deliberatly placed on the internet for its young target audience to view as many times as they wished, shows historical figures such as Leonardo da Vinci who work as important characters within the game. including characters like this not only educates the player but acts as a connection to the real world so player truely feels as if the story line could be true. Assassins Creed Brotherhood also differs from other games and attracts the consumer through the incredably detailed historical scenery and characters, of which can roam where ever they choose throughout the maps.

Ubisoft keep the game from becoming forgotten through the clever release of downloadable content for the game, such as: "Animus Project Update 1.0" this consists of new maps and game plays for the gamer which are specially designed for the online areas of the game. Through these online maps players can then play with friends all over the world within the game. "The Da Vinci Disappearance" is another side story for the game available for players on xbox 360 and playstation 3. The side story revolves around the disappearance of Leonardo Da Vinci.

The creatures of Assassins Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft) also take full advantage of Facebook and Twitter through creating accounts for the protagonist "Ezio". Through these accounts reviews of the game and downloadable content is advertised to fans of the game.

                                                       Production:

The game was designed primarily by Unbisoft Montreal. The company used Autodesk 3D art creation software to build the game. Gameplay maps such as the city of Rome were constructed and populated through the help of Autodesk 3Ds Max and Autodesk MotionBuilder software. for more realistic in-game animation Autodesk HumanIK middleware was also used, this was used for both characters and horses. Danny Oros, techincal art director for Assassins Creed claimed that they knew that "HumanIK ... could address our inverse kinematics challenges quickly without sacrificing results or performance.” He also said that the environments within the game were all created from scratch and alot of the character animation was all new. motion caption studios were used in alot of the fighting scenes and developed within MotionBuilder to help create the most realistic movements possible.

Distribution:

Before the release date of Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Ubi Soft announced that if the game was preordered from various online stores, you would get an additional multiplayer character which is only accessible by pre-ordering. This meant that more people would be inclined to pre-order the game to get this character rather than waiting a while after the release date.

The release date of Brotherhood changed, depending on where abouts you lived in the world. America was the first place the game was released, on the 16th of November 2010, then with Australaisa, the release date was on the 18th November 2010. Europe was last with the 19th of November 2010. The changes in date would indicate where the game was mainly played and what kind of sales Ubi Soft was hoping for. The above were for the release of the game of PS3 and Xbox 360, the release of the game on PC was 4 months later, it March. This was because consoles are alot more popular and easier for gaming and the PC gaming community for Assasins Creed is not as big as the Xbox or the Playstation's. 

Like the previous Assassins Creed's, Brotherhood was released in November, this was so that it would still be a relatively new game in time for Christmas, so that the people who waited until then were not completely behind on the game. But it still encouraged people to get it before Christmas aswell as some people could not wait for it.

Consumption:

Assassins Creed Brotherhood is a third person action-adventure which can be played on most console formats. The game has a choice of either a single player, campaign including a storyline linking from the previous Assassins Creed games or a new feature to the Assassins Creed games, an online multiplayer game. Where the person playing the game can play with other players online on a range of smaller game types (Free-For-All, Co-op etc) The game can be played either solo or online now, and downloadable content for the console is available to the gamer.

Daisy Cookson - Angry Birds

Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finland-based Rovio Mobile. Inspired primarily by a sketch of stylized wingless birds, the game was first released for Apple's iOS in December 2009. Since that time, over 12 million copies of the game have been purchased from Apple's App Store, which has prompted the company to design versions for other touchscreen-based smartphones, such as those using the Android operating system, among others.With 140 million downloads across all platforms,the game has been called "one of the most mainstream games out right now","one of the great runaway hits of 2010", and "the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far."

Angry Birds matches the iPhone market very well.

Marketing

• Short gameplay sessions match the phones usage patterns
• High art production values
• Setting/Characters that are appealing to both sexes
• Very simple mechanics that offer mastery potential in time

This make it a game well suited to the platform and it can appeal to the full range of iPhone users. This is important as a lot of sales on the phone from from word-of-mouth recommendations.
Additionally they have followed a very smart plan of regular updates and additions which get people talking about the game again and keeping it in the top of the charts. On iPhone it is absolutely crucial to get your game in the top 25. This is because of the way visibility works within iTunes and on the phone. Particularly with casual users you don't want them to have to search for your game.

This game has relied on viral and internet marketing to become successful. Rovio have created Facebook, Twitter pages for fans of the game to follow. On Twitter game players and developers can discuss the game and any problems/issues. Facebook has extra content available if you 'Like' the page, there are some videos, photo stills, links for download etc. We also found there was lots of merchandise such as t-shirts, cakes and toys which are make by fans of the game.

Production
As the concept of Angry Birds was developed, the staff realized the birds needed an enemy.At the time, the "swine flu" epidemic was in the news, so the staff made the birds' enemies pigs. The initial cost to develop Angry Birds was estimated to exceed €100,000.
In early 2010, Rovio began developing a variant of Angry Birds for Facebook. The project became one of the company's largest, with development taking over a year.

Distribution

One of Angry Birds main success methods is it's accessability and it's low cost; just 59p. The app is available on the apple app store and the android market. It is very common that people will own and apple phone or an android phone and therefore there's a wide market.

Consumption The layout of the game is well suited to the phone, because it is touchscreen, it is easy to use and easy to understand and pick up when first playing the game. The game works by completing levels to open up new locked levels, this is what gives the game its addictive qualities; once you have unlocked one level, you feel you want to do another and so on. Also, the player recieves a rating for each level completed and so even when all the levels are completed, the player may still need to complete the game again, getting the highest rating for each level.