BBFC Audience Report

The factors which affect gaming audiences.

Parents should remember that all games are educational, but the type of instruction delivered may not be desirable. Do parents need to protect their children from the content of games? click here and find out more

Future: It's like being at the dawn of television," he says. "What happens now is going to affect how everyone is entertained in the future." for the full article click here.

Second life's vices

Second Life Vice: Linden Lab Is in Denial About Its Gambling Problem, see the full article.

Second life

Can the technology cope with the growing demand of Second Life? Click here to see full article.

LINDEN LAB AND THE GAME INITIATIVE LAUNCHTHE SECOND LIFE™ GAME DEVELOPER’S COMPETITION.
Click here to see full article.

Second life

• it was developed in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab
• Second Life, has attracted 4.6 million members
• the popular virtual world in which people can do or build just about anything they can imagine and socialize with others anywhere in the real world.
• Companies are starting to realise the benefits of second life, for example travel companies. The Starwood hotel group has created the first virtual hotel as a way of gathering feedback on the designs for its Aloft chain, due to launch in the US, Europe and the Middle East over the next few years.
• People will start to expirience their holidays before they book them, like an advanced brochure.
• People are also able to visit countries across the world from the comfort of their own homes- 'They aren't official, with borders, but there are simulations of real countries, and regions with their own cultures and populations.' There's a Little Italy, Dublin has Irish pubs and Ihla Brasil, which attracts Portuguese speakers. Then there are the 'furries' of Luskwood, who have animalistic avatars, and a place called Gor, where the resident Goreans live according to a novel by John Norman, The Cycle of Gor, with courtesy, slavery and female subservience as key beliefs.’
• Rather than a computer game, Second Life can be considered as a platform where "residents" collaborate at building a virtual world with the tools provided by the system. Residents build avatars, clothes, houses, vehicles etc., buy and sell land and designer items, and organize events. Second Life is a "persistent" VR world that does not disappear when a user logs off. Though at the time of writing (April 2006) the 3D graphics and simulated physics of Second Life cannot be compared to those of the best VR videogames, Second Life is a very interesting social phenomenon and probably the first example of successful, mass-market persistent VR world. full article

Issues: Console Gaming Industry Faces Mounting Pressures That Could Inhibit Future Growth, Warns Gartner. Click here to see full article.

Testing my case study

1) General terms realated to NMT:
pull technology- offers us more choice, pull the content we want from media producers, for example satellite TV.
push technology- media producers choose our technology for us for example at the cinema new releases are pushed at us.
Hot media- those that are good at extending our senses e.g. cinemas producing high definition extensions.
Cold media- They require moreparticipations becuase of the low quality, for example the phone has low quality sound.
Global village- the world is becoming very close due to technology, for example news from countries around the world can be seen instantly on the internet or by text because adavanced technology has made it possible.
non linear-
linear-
democratisation-
2)Key terminology related to my chosen technology:
Convergence- Two medias joining together.
Personalisation- Adding your own personal preferences to gaming.
Interactivity- The audience becoming more involved with gaming, for example the 'red button'.
Democratisation-
EDi – Electronic Distribution initiative – distribution of games online
Home’ – key interactive service for users
Playstation store – purchase weapons, extra chapters and features for games via console.
Sony’s Game 3.0 philosophy- emphasising social interaction, community, customisation, open source.
Online access- (through your existing broadband connection) and includes multiplayer support.
MMO- (massive multiplayer online game)
High definition- Crystal clear picture for TV and film.
3) Future: 4.6 million memebers of Second Life.
People will live another life using a game.
Issues: 1/3 of girls will be obese by 2020.
Industry Faces Mounting Pressures That Could Inhibit Future Growth.
Audience: Audiences are not just passive anymore.
Do games make people violent?It depends on your personality.
Institutions: Profits are being increased
Technology: gaming applications demand massive amounts of raw computing power and scalability to produce an interactive experience.
With gaming anything is possible.

2) a. 'gain dominance of a market' means that one company will have the majority of power and therefore make more of a profit.

2) b. The online gaming iniatitive by theses companies is an attempt to maintain their profit. To what extent has online technology increased audiences for other media products?
The internet is publishing articles from magazines and Newspapers, this is giving them a larger audience and a larger coverage. Music is available to download, people can listen to music anytime as many times as they want old and new music on sites like youtube. Films and TV shows are available to watch, if people miss a programme there are sites on which they are available to catch up. Blogging provides a voice for everyone to give their opinion discuss want they like and talk to others.

Fancy being the star of your own videogame? This article discusses how Sony has developed ''A game so simple that even adults can play ''.

Neil BoormanTuesday April 17, 2007The Guardian
In the past week, two manufacturers have posted record sales of products that have come to define a generation. Sony claimed the fastest-selling launch in videogame history with the PS3. In this case, the product was one of the most expensive in the respective markets.
As is normal on the release of an expensive must-have item, consumer groups bemoaned the inflated cost of the new PlayStation. In justifying PS3's £425 price tag, Sony's chief executive, Howard Stringer, explained that the product was positioned as "the Mercedes of games consoles". Which would seem to have made everything all right.

5)Future

• The prediction for the furute of the gaming industry is virtual reality, it is seen to merge with games such as second Life. This will create interactivity at a whole new level, people will be able to live another life using a game.

4)Issues

• One problem facing console gaming industries is the distancing from family values. Games now include extreme levels of sex and violence and this is pointing to parralles between violence in playing video games and violent behaviour in audiences. Games such as 'Manhunt' were banned in Britain and in the US for being too violent.
• Romero doesn't seem too concerned about the attacks on his products: "I make games I want to play. If people don't like it, they don't need to play the game."
• Children seem to be spending too much time on computers rather than excercising and socialising. Is gaming the reason for the increase of obesity in Britain? British Medical Association research predict that if this tren continues, one-fifth of boys and one-third of girls will be obese by 2020.
• Woman are represented very badly in games, when they are side characters they are usually in need of rescue by the men. The only real main female characters like Lara Croft in Tomb raider are portrayed as big breasted, seductive woman in hot pants. Gaming concentrates heavily on woman being desirable and concentrates on their sex rather than their actual character.

3)Audience

• Audiences are now using online gaming to escape their lives, now with Second Life you can achieve everything impossible in reality. For example ytou can create your own home, date, have your dream job. Instead of living life and having real expiriences they are at home 'living' in a game.
• Audiences are not just passive anymore, we are encouraged to interact for example playing games through your TV.
• Gaming is becoming a necessity of audiences' lives, at the launch of the new PS3 there were mile long queues of people waiting for the release.
• Recently gaming has become something of a fashion accessory, it is now fashionable to have the latest portable game console or to buy the latest game, this would not have been the case several years ago.
• 'The gender bias associated with video and computer games have existed since the initial phase of video game activity in the early 1980s, with young males being the targeted market (Ward Gailey, 1993). This raises the question of whether video and computer games have different impacts on males than on females.' Click here to see full article.

2)Institutions

• Profits are being increased by industries becoming more appealing to their audience, they have done this through: joining with music, film and TV industries. They are also personalizing their games, people who would not perhaps be interested in gaming are drawn in by the use of famous film and TV narratives and karioke games therefore drawing in a wider audience.

1)Technology

• The main institutions in the gaming industry are: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The main consoles on the market at the moment are the X-Box 360, the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii.
• Gaming is a new media technology that is developing fast, new technologies are developed all the time, with gaming anything is possible.
• Alexander Gambotto-BurkeThursday April 19, 2007The Guardian
  Gaming has a lot in common with everyone's favourite heiress, at least in the public consciousness: it's pretty, but dumb. And now that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have released their latest games consoles, that statement becomes all the more pertinent - next-gen games look great, but they play like something that could have been made a decade ago. While visual fidelity has advanced exponentially over time, the technology that governs how games play, react and adapt - the artificial intelligence, or AI - remains relatively rudimentary.
• Gaming is generally targeted at young males of around 16-34, this however is changing, with new games appealing to a wider audience, there is more female interest.
• Gaming is giving people more of a chance at interaction than any other new media technology.
• 'Unlike the days of Pong, today's gaming applications demand massive amounts of raw computing power and scalability to produce an interactive experience. HP said it would offer that power to the industry's online and mobile gaming sectors, including infrastructure and workstations for gaming companies, content developers, and service providers. '
  

Game console introduction:
A console game is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment. The game consists of manipulable images (and usually sounds) generated by a game console, and displayed on a television or similar audio-video system. The game itself is usually controlled and manipulated using a handheld device connected to the console called a controller. The controller generally contains a number of buttons and directional controls (such as analog joysticks) each of which has been assigned a purpose for interacting with and controlling the images on the screen. The display, speakers, console, and controls of a console can also be incorporated into one small object known as a handheld game console.Game multimedia usually comes in the form of a cartridge or, more recently, higher-capacity disc, which can be inserted into the game console. Recent advances have allowed games and game demos to be downloaded directly to the console via the internet. Simpler consoles, however, may only have a fixed selection of built-in games.

The age of permanent net revolution:

• 1993 the world wide web took off
• Nobody know how big the web is, it could be growing 25,000 pages by the hour.
• john seely Brown see's new technologies as replacing old ones he calls it 'endism'.
• Cultural critc Neil Postman proposed the notion of media ecology this is becuase of its similarities to an ecosystem; interactions are very complex and take many forms.
• The 'organisms' in our media ecosystem include broadcast and narrowcast TV, movies, radio, print and the internet. The dominant 'organism' being broadcast TV. Transmitting content to billions of essentially passive viewers and listners. Most of us grew up in this ecosytem it is however in inexorable decline; its audience is fragmenting.
• Twenty years ago, a show like The Two Ronnies could attract audiences of 20 million, now an audience of 5 million is considered a success. 20,000 viewers in 5 years will be a miracle.
• Narrowcast TV is destroying Broadcast. Narrowcast digital TV- specialist content aimed at subscription-based audiences. Waiting in the wings is something more devistating-internet protocol TV (IPtv)-TV on demand delivered via the internet.
• Broadcast TV will continue to exist for the simple reason that some things are best covered using a few-to-many technology, e.g. only broadcast model could deal with World Cup final.
• People belive the net and web are synonamus, they are not. The web is enormus and is only one of the traffic that runs on the internets tracks. Peer to peer networking traffic now exceeds web traffic by a factor of between two and ten, signs of the net's approaching centrality are everywhere-in astonishing spread of broadband.
• Broadcast TV is a 'push' medium, it is created and then pushed down an analogue or digital channel at audiences consiting essentially of passive recipients.
• Thw eb is the opposite, it's a 'pull' medium. Nothing comes to you unless you chose it and click on it to pull it down on to your computer.
• The switch from push to pull is a radical increase in consumer sovereignty.
• The emergence of a truly sovereign, informed consumer is thus one of the implications of an internet-centric world.
• The underlying assumption of the old broadcast model was that audiences were passive and uncreative. What we're now discovering is that passivity may have been due to the absence of tools and publication opportunities than to intrinsic defects in human nature.
• Technorati, a blog tracking service claim to be monitoring 29 million. Many of them are merely vanity publishing with no discernible literary or intellectual merit.
• Blogging software has given thoughtful, articulate and wel-informed people the platform they needed to express themselves.
• Flickr.com allows people to upload their pictures on the web now others can see beautiful images which before would have wound up in shoeboxes.
• Ofcom revealed the number of people watching TV has fallen in recent yearsthe first decline since it was invented.
• Ofcom also found that broadband connections rose to more than 10 million at the end of last year.
• Companies including Google are likely to offer services like that of Microsoft and its partner BT using their technology to launch 'BT TV'.
• Others like Apple and Sony are likely to develop hardware that will allow homeowners to download music and films, store photos and surf the net. The prize for market dominance would be huge- such a device would be as ubiquitous in 21st-century as the TV set was in the 20th-century equivalents.

Five main areas of study:
1. Tecnology
What does the technology allow the audience and institution to do that they couldn't do before? What is your chosen tecnology?
How is it marketed and who to?
Which companies provide it and how much does it cost?
Hot/cold media Push/pull technology?
Is it new or old media undergoing radical transformation?

2. Institutions
Cosider how media institutions are converging media intersts to increase profits and how they are reaching their audience in new ways.

3. Audience
What are the audiences doing with their new media technologies? How are traditional expiriences of media changing? What are the adiences not doing so they can spend more time interacting with new media technologies? How and by whom are the meida technologies consumed? Look at advantages of consumre? You will cary out audience research.

4. Issues
Does it encourage illegal activity? will shops close or will people lose jobs? is this new way of consuming genreating any 'moral panics'?

5. The Future
If the technology is expanded what could happen? How could media practices be different in future, based on the potential of current technologies?

Key concepts:
Coveragence- term describing the process of multiple technologies being brought together to form a new product.

Personalisation- Characteristic of many NMTs is their ability to offer users a personalised expirience, e.g. sky+ allows users to personalise their viewing sheduale including pausing live TV.

Interactivity- In context of NMTs means content that is reactive to audiences choices. traditional TV is un-interactive, interactive TV encourages audiences to be less passive. Audiences are encouraged to engage with media not just consume.

Linear/non-linear- Move in a straight line from start to finish e.g. watching a film in cinema. Non-linear is a viweing expirience giving the audience alternative features e.g. voiceover this depends on weather he/she presses the red button.

Democratisation- abiity to communicate your opinions and ideas, or share your creative output for example blogging.

Digitisation- the material can be reproduced perfectly by a computer (e.g. sky+ box) and transported more effectivly in any order.