Storyboard

We took individual pictures of each frame on our storyboard. We then uploaded this to the computer, and imported all the images onto Movie Maker. Based on the order of how we drew out the storyboards, we put the images in order on Movie Maker. We then put the duration for each frame and played it back. In each frame of our video it will show a preview of a game which is included in our compilation video game. We initially thought that they would last five seconds, however after watching it back we felt that this was too long and then reduced the duration of each frame to three seconds. Overall, this advertisement will last roughly 31 seconds which we feel is a suitable length for a TV advert.

TV Adverts: Form and Style

Television Advertisements - Structures: Form and Style.

Form

Different forms are used in advertising in different ways. Depending on the audience and product or service, the form of an advert will vary.

Animation

The term animation encompasses a wide range of techniques from 2D images all the way to CGI. 

E.g. The Milky Way - Red Car, Blue Car

Mini Fictions

Many ads present mini fictional narratives, including a main character with whom we are asked to identify in a given scenario.

Documentary
Documentary style adverts are used to suggest ‘real people’ whoare using the product. They borrow from the trust we have indocumentaries to ‘tell the truth’.

Talking Heads
Following on from documentary, the celebrity or expert may be presented as a 'talking head', usually addressing animplied interviewer.

Looking at Video Game TV Adverts

I found a useful website that showed what they felt were the '20 of the best video game ads, ever' which would be useful for us because it was able to give us some inspiration in what we should look into doing in our own. Throughout all, we noticed that they were all fairly atmospheric adverts therefore this is something that we decided we need to incorporate into our own TV advert. This also gave us an insight into industry standard adverts and would influence us into being able to produce an advert similar to the ones I watched.

I watched different video game adverts for:-

• Little big planet
• Guitar hero
• World of warcraft
• Killzone 2
• Halo ODST
• Gears of war 2
• Call of duty 4

Website: http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/20-of-the-best-video-game-ads-ever/6476

Our Game Genres

Our Genres 

Arcade

The traditional arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines,electro-mechanical games, redemption games or merchandisers. Despite, arcade being more well-known for being in amusement arcades, bars and restaurants we aim to bring a game with the arcade genre incorporated within it. 

Action

The action game is a video game genre that emphasises physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse sub genres 

such as:

• fighting games
• shooter games - this genre will be portrayed in our game because of the increasing popularity and demand for shooter games.
• platform games 

These sub genres are widely considered the most important action games, though some real-time strategy games are also considered to be action games.

Racing

The racing video game genre is the genre of video games, either in the first-person or third-person perspective, in which the player partakes in a racing competition with any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings.

Sport

A sports game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including team sports, Track and field, extreme sports and combat sports. Some games emphasize actually playing the sport (such as the Madden NFL series), whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management (such as Championship Manager and Out of the Park Baseball). Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out!!, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. 

Simulation

A simulation video game describes a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate aspects of a real or fictional reality.

A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such as training, analysis, or prediction. Usually there are no strictly defined goals in the game, with players instead allowed to freely control a character. Well-known examples are war games, business games, and role play simulation.

Our video game

Our Genre: Compilation

Our game will be a  compilation of games from different genres. Similar to Rare Replay which is a compilation of 30 video games. Also, Capcom Digital Collection will be a game we will also focus on. We aim to include a variety of genres in our game as we have found a growing trend in compilation games.

Genres which will be addressed for our game are :-

• Arcade
• Action
• Shooter
• Racing
• Sport
• Simulation

Games we plan to include :-

• Rocket League
• GTA V
• Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3
• Payday 2
• Saints Row: The Third
• Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
• Portal 2
• Fifa 16
• Borderlands: Pre-Sequel
• The Last of Us

Despite this, we may change or add to this list depending how things go. This is just a rough idea for now.  As you can see we have chosen a variety of games in different genres which is what we aim to provide in our promotional package.

OCR Contact

As a team we thought it would be best to contact our exam board AQA about our chosen brief in order to get a better understanding of the kind of work the exam board wants.

"I do not think the computer/video game has to be able to provide lots of detail about the game itself but it might be hard to do without an overview of the game. For instance the film promotional package couldn’t really have a trailer without a strong idea of the narrative – but it doesn’t need the whole script. The same principle applies to the game. What is actually being tested is the construction of the 2 TV adverts and how they reflect the genre of computer games advertising – my concern might be that if they researched current examples the students might find that the TV adverts often are extracts from the games themselves – which could be hard to produce without the animation software (this option was conceived 8 years ago and I’m afraid technology has moved on)."

Copyright Issues Addressed

As part of our project we have to create a promotional TV advert for our new video game. Selected visual images and sound used in existing gameplay and promotional trailers is what we are going to use. However, we thought it would be best to carry out some research regarding copyright issues related to  this.

Our TV advert would consist of featuring heavy game footage from existing games in our chosen genre. For example, one of the games we are thinking about featuring in our TV advert is Rocket League created by Psyonix. Before we would go ahead and start creating the trailer, we thought it would be best to make sure we wasn't infringing any copyright laws. As a result, we researched about the creator and looked at their policies online.

Furthermore, we also have looked at various video game creators and they have all said gamers are welcome to use visual images from their games in videos created by themselves as long as footage is not taken by their official trailers produced by the video game company itself.

Rockstar Policy

Rockstars Policy on Copyright.

Rockstar clearly says in this post that gamers are allowed to use gameplay from their games to be used in videos as long as it's not for commercial use. E.g. promoting to sell a T-shirt.

Psyonix Policy

Psyonix Policy on Copyright

Psyonix clearly states in their copyright policy that gamers are to share, copy, distribute and transmit any work. However, it must be used for non-commercial use. Also, if you reuse or distribute work of others, you must make clear to others the license terms of their work. E.g. link to their web page or acknowledging that the content being used is somebody else's.

How I will do my research?

I will be producing a promotion package, which in simple terms is a way a business promotes their product/service to increase the number of sales to turn high profits. Our product is a new video game for a computer. I believe it is vitally important to promote it in a way such that it will encourage the target audience to become interested from the start of them knowing about the game right to when they purchase the game.

My research will consist of:-

• Watching TV advertisements for new video games. - this will give me an insight to what big video game companies do to attract their target audience. 

• Looking at video game covers for video games - I will be able to see what kind of techniques are used to make the front covers appealing to the audience. This is important as this is one of my ancillary tasks that I will have to complete, so having the knowledge will enable me to create a top quality front cover for the video game. 

• Video game trends - This will allow me to see what the most popular games are and for which platform. I will mostly focus on PC video games as this is the game we are promoting. 

• History of video game distribution - This will enable me to see how video games are distributed and gaining this extra knowledge will help me in the main task. 

• Number of gamers - This will enable me to see who our target audience could be. This will help with the creation of the front cover, making sure it is targeted to the right audience. e.g. if it is male teenagers a colour scheme could consist of dark colours rather than light because this is what they would be attracted to. 

• Popular platforms & genres - This will enable me to see which platforms are mostly played on and which genre is most popular. From this, we can decide what genres are the best to incorporate into our new game in order to attract our target audience. 

• Analyse video game covers - This will help me with the ancillary tasks which is to produce a game cover for our new video game. From the analysis we will be able to gain an understanding of the sort of features which are used to make a professional and attractive cover.

What is a Promotion Package?

This a Prezi on what a promotion package is and the importance and key benefits related to a video game promotion package.

A Prezi On Video Games History

I made my earlier post about video game history into a Prezi, so it's interactive and easy to understand.

Analysis Of Game Covers

The other ancillary task is to produce a game cover for our games package. I believe the best way to ensure the game cover created for our games package was attractive was to look at recent game covers for games released recently.

Grand Theft Auto V

In this game cover for Grand Theft Auto V for PS4 uses a collage of images representing different features in the game.

Theme
The theme of this game is clearly presented on the game cover from being an acton packed game because it shows lots of things going on. You can see this game has many different features and targets the mass market because of the collage of images.

Age
In the bottom left hand corner, you can clearly see this game is aimed at over 18s. The reason this game has been given a high age restriction is because of the nature of the game.

Gender
The images feature female and male characters showing that both male and female are being targeted by this game.

F1 2012

In this game cover for F1 2012 for PS3, a racing car is featured on the front cover which clearly shows the genre which is a racing game.

Theme
The title and the front cover tells you that it is a non-violent game and it's also a racing game. This means it is appealing to fans of racing games.

Age
There is an age restriction of 3+ which is very low and aimed at a lot of people. This means the age recommendation of this game is to anyone 3+. It's a simple game to play on and has no blood, gore or any nature of violence. 

Gender
The colours that are used on the front cover are blue, red and white but blue is appeal to fans of racing defiantly the most outstanding colour on the case. They have done this because they are targeting the game mainly towards the male gender. It is stereotypical games. that a male is on the front of the F1 cover because males are the only gender that race F1 cars.

A Magazine Advertisement

Advertising is an important process for any company who wants to promote their product. It is vital that the advert showcases your product in way sun that it persuades whoever looks at it to want to buy it. As one of my ancillary tasks is to create a magazine advertisement. I thought it was best to look at examples of magazine advertisements for video games and found this one below.

A magazine advert created in 1997

StarWars Advert in 1997

Key Features about this Advertisement:-

• Straightaway you see the character in the middle dominates the advert and stands out to the reader

• Big titles and caps are used to emphasise certain text on the advertisement. "BECOME A JEDI MASTER WITHOUT EVER LEAVING HOME." is a persuasive technique used to encourage the reader to want the product.

• The logo in the top left hand corner can easily be recognised due to its size and being on white back ground makes it standout on the page with "JEDI ARENA" in red underneath also standing out so the reader clearly knows what advert is promoting.

A magazine advert created in 2007

Assassins Creed II Advert in 2007

Key Features about this Advertisement:-

• The big titling saying "Assassins Creed II" stands out so that the reader knows straight away what the advert is promoting

• The image of the hand with the Tekko is in the bottom the right hand corner and clearly dominates the page

• The dark colours used gives the reader an idea of the eerie theme the game connotes.

• The images at the bottom are logos telling the reader the developers involved who created the game.    

The Main Change In 10 Years

I looked at two different magazine advertisements created 10 years apart which allowed me to compare how magazine adverts have changed over 10 years. The main change you can see on both of these advertisements is that the one in 1997 contains more information about the game compared to the one in 2007. I believe this is due to the increase in the number of users using social media, and so therefore game companies inform gamers using sites like Facebook and Twitter. They will also use YouTube to broadcast information about the game rather than rely on paper advertising.  

History Of Video Game Distribution

Timeline of how video game distribution has changed over time.

1980s
Before internet connections became popular, there were few services for digital distribution of games. Physical media was the dominant method of delivering video games. One of the first examples of digital distribution in video games was GameLine, which operated during the early 1980s. 

1990s
Distribution to console started would appear in the 90s. In 1988, Nintendo introduced the Famicom Modem. 

2000s
By this time, internet connections were fast and numerous enough such that digital distribution of games and other related content became viable.

Consoles
Consoles allowed video game companies to distribute on a number of platforms including their own. They did this via the internet as consoles were becoming 'internet-enabled'. Furthermore, this would allow additional content to be added to the main game, such as maps, weapons, and in-game clothing. To many gamers this was known as DLC (Downloadable Content).

Microsoft Windows
PC gaming also become popular because of the number of internet connections soared at during the 2000s period. In 2004, there was a rise in the number of digital distribution services on PC, such as Amazon digital services, GameStop, Games for Windows. The valve co-operation then released their own platform called Steam where gamers was able to buy and download games they would normally play on their consoles e.g. Call of Duty or the Grand Theft Auto series were amongst the most popular. This service then became more and more popular enabling users to buy games from independent developers and major distributors. Steam has become the most popular and largest digital distributor for video games with over 40 million users using the service.

Mobile Gaming
Digital distribution is the dominant method of delivering content on mobile platforms such as iOS devices and Android phones. The increase in the number of mobile users who use iOS and Android phones has allowed developers to create and distribute games on this platform. 

What is Digital Distribution?

In the video game industry, digital distribution is the process of delivering video game content as digital information, without the exchange or purchase of new physical media. 

To facilitate the sales of video games, various game companies have created their own platforms for digital distribution. Platforms such as Steam, Origin and Xbox Live Marketplace, provide services to purchase and download digital content for either specific games consoles or to PCs. 

The image above represents different ways video game companies distribute their products. I believe the most efficient and effective way to distribute is directly to the retailer then to the gamer. This is because well known retailers will help with the marketing for the new game and so therefore will bring in higher profit. 

How many gamers are there?

There a lot of gamers in the world. More than 1.2 billion people are playing games worldwide. Of these, 700 million are online gamers. This amounts to about 44% to the worlds population.

The above image shows that the male gender is most popular and also shows different genres for different genders. This will help us when we decide on the genre and then from the genre chosen, it will give us an idea of who our target audience could be.

Popular Platforms & Genres

I carried out research into the most popular genre for games. We found that action was at the top which is similar to what we found when we researched the popular games. It also gave a number of games which was released in 2015 and this showed which genre was most popular.

Also, this source contained statistics on the number of games released on different platforms. I found that IOS had the most games released being 252 and android also having 252 games released. Then PC and game consoles such as PS4 and xbox one. From these figure it could suggest that the demand for number of mobile gamers is going up, and this could be why there a lot of games being released.

Source: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/09/18/tgs-2015-the-most-popular-game-platforms-and-genres

Top games for 2014/15

I did some research into what the top games for 2014/15, too see what type of games were most popular. It also enabled me to see why sort of genre people were most into and what type of content was popular.

I found that having an element of multiplayer so players could play with there friends online is extremely popular. Also, action packed games were also amongst the most popular which suggests that the poplar games contain action.

Source: http://www.pcgamesn.com/best-pc-games-2014-q1

I then went onto research the top games for consoles.

I also found that having a multiplayer feature was popular so that players are able to play online with their friends. I also found the genres were similar to PC games which suggests that players may prefer using a controller to play the game rather than using a mouse and keyboard.

Source: http://www.stuff.tv/top-10/games

First Video

I started off watching game trailers on YouTube to see how they are promoted in terms of what they show to the audience. I also found out that from the idea of 'we-media' many game companies promote their new game through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. They also use YouTube to promote.

Note: Include analysis

Research & Planning

I started to carry out research on the games market to see what kind of games was popular. I also looked at advertisements for games in our chosen genre which have been promoted recently. This would help us to see the kind of techniques used in adverts. We also looked to see what kind of visual effects was used to make it appealing to the audience and how they sold their new game. We also learnt that it was important to ensure the advertisement was placed on social media pages so our target audience was able to give their feedback based on the advertisement. From this, we would then be able to continue improving our product in order to meet the needs of our target audience.

Welcome!

Welcome to my media blog. This is where all my research and planning will be posted. On this media project, I will be working with Joseph Downes to complete all the research and planning required to finish our chosen brief which is posted below.

Chosen Brief

The brief that we have chosen to do is below:

A promotion package for a new computer/video game, to include two TV advertisements, together with two of the following three options:

• the cover of the game’s package; 

• two hyperlinked pages from the game’s website; 

• a magazine advertisement for the game.

The two ancillary tasks we have chosen is the cover of the game's package and a magazine advertisement for the game