Mest 3
Wednesday 27 February 2013
Friday 15 February 2013
Thursday 14 February 2013
Q 4-8
4. is the size of the
audience any different now than before the impact of new and digital media (or
has the pattern of usage changed)?
Gaming is now reaching out to a wider audience due to its
various facilities. Unlike the ps2 the ps3 offers more to the audience than
just gaming from watching blu-ray films to communicating with your friends
online. There is also the availability
to use the video streaming service of Netflix which has recently become
available on the console. Stats showing usage beyond gaming for ps3 reveal 51%
use it to watch movies, 43% use it to listen to music and 15% use it to watch
videos on demand/streaming services. Although all there Is a variety of things
to do on the ps3 it has been outsold by the ps2 in recent previous months there
has been a decline in worldwide video game sales.
5.Who are the primary
target audience now and has this changed? Who was it before and how do you
know?
TEXT
|
CURRENT TARGET AUDIENCE
|
ORIGINAL TARGET
|
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
|
PS2
|
12+
|
15+
|
Originally the target audience would have been higher but with the
ease of the console a lot of the younger audience was capable of playing it.
[ME, PS3 12]
|
PS3
|
16+
|
15+
|
This console is a lot more complicated than the previous model hence the
current target would be higher than the original. However, it wouldn’t be too
much higher as games are still targeted to a relatively young audience plus
the age of the average gamer is 34.
|
6.How have the
audience responded to the changes? Is there more customer choice?
Is there evidence of a more pluralistic model? What evidence do you
have to support this?
New and digital media has provided a lot more consumer
choice. The PS3 now offers a variety of opportunities in which the audience can
choose what to do. There has become more to consoles than just gaming.
Consumers can now listen to music or watch movies and here is also the
availability to use the video streaming service of Netflix which has recently become
available on the console. Stats showing usage beyond gaming for ps3 reveal 21%
use it to watch movies, 23% use it to listen to music and 23% use it to watch
videos on demand/streaming services. Although all there Is a variety of things
to do on the ps3 it has been outsold by the ps2 in recent previous months there
has been a decline in worldwide video game sales.
7.What concerns/
considerations are there (if any) for the media institutions involved in your
case study as a result of the impact of new and digital media? (e.g. deskilling
or multi-skilling of the workforce/ decline in workforce etc)
New and digital media has allowed consumers to buy games
without the need of retailers which could be a factor for the recent bad
performances of game retailers. Last March Game Group went into administration
similar to HMV in 2013. It may not be the biggest reason however, it may be one
of the many factors of why these institutions have gone in to administration.
This is supported by the increase in revenues of the PSN over the last few
years and has question the role of the game retailers. New and digital media
has also caused Sony problems, over 2 years ago PSN was hacked and the details
of 1 million users were exposed which goes to show because of new and digital
media they also not in complete control. The potential costs of the attacks,
according to analysts, are up to $24 billion and the cost of prevention would
have been £10,000.
8.What are the
political and social implications of the new technologies and the methods of
their consumption? E.g. moral panics etc?
Both directly and indirectly video games can enhance the
social relationship of youngsters, the ability of using the online feature to
play with your friends is the direct way video games have done this and the
indirect way would be that the following day or sometime soon after users
discuss events that occurred whilst they was playing video games. Playing video
games is seen to improve visual-spatial ability which is the ability to
mentally manipulate two- and three dimensional objects .Hence it is clear that
there is a causal relationship between video game playing and enhanced visual
attention skills .Video games have taken aboard Blumler and Katz theory of uses
and gratifications by providing escapism for the user, this is supported by Professor
Talmadge Wright of Loyola University who had this to say "It gives people
an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not
do in real life that allows them to play with their own feelings". There
is also the stereotypical argument which is most commonly used by parents that
playing video games makes you perform worse in education and there could be
some truth behind that saying as excessive gaming creates attention deficits,
which in turn can lead to poorer school performance. It is also believed that
video game addicts argue a lot with their teachers, fight a lot with their
friends, and score lower grades than others who play video games less often,
which is supported by a study conducted by the Minneapolis-based National Institute
for Media and the Family. Not just violent video games but any ordinary video
games have been recognised to have a negative impact on users. One of the negatives from any video game would
be, those who spend more time playing video games subsequently have more
attention problems as well as games can confuse reality and fantasy.
Thursday 7 February 2013
What impact has there been on how the media institution now has to produce the texts and the way in which the texts/ products are distributed and exhibited? This should involve a detailed textual analysis of at least 3 texts to demonstrate the point.
Sony has adapted their console over the years, play station 2 and play station 3 are very different in various ways. One of the most obvious ways would be the online feature, PS3 allows you to use the internet and hence take a part in online gaming this facility was not available on the PS2. There was a possible way to play online on the PS2 but it was very difficult. Another difference between the ps2 and ps3 is the amount of storage, the ability to store movies, music, photographs has meant the storage capacity has had to increase. Ps2 took external memory cards made by Sony which would hold just under 8mb of data whereas, the maximum hard drive capacity on a ps3 is up to 500gb. Ps2 controllers were restricted to a certain length however, PS3 offers wireless dualshock sisaxis controllers. Along with the console the games have also changed, games on PS2 offered no online functions whereas, one of the main attractions about Ps3 games is the online game play. There has also been a major improvement in the graphics and realism in games. Along with all these changes the way games are distributed has also changed. Sony has taken full advantage of the internet, games are not only available on disk but also available online, through PSN [playst ation network]. The audience can now purchase games via playstation store which are then downloaded and stored on the hard drive. Games are still available the classic way on discs from retailers.
What impact has there been on the way in which the audience now consume the media products/ texts involved in your case study? How does it differ from what went before?
Social Historical Economical Political
The gaming industry has changed significantly over the
years, benefiting from the improvement in technology. The development of new
consoles such as the Ps3, by Sony, has provided a platform for video game
creators to take gaming to a whole new level. Modern day games such as Little
Big Planet, created by Media
Molecule, has given the power to consumers like never before which is supported
by David Buckingham, Professor of Media
and Communications at Loughborough University who had this to say, ‘In the age of Media 2.0, ordinary people
are no longer mere consumers of media, but also producers. A game like Little Big Planet lets the user become
a producer in various ways, from designing your own sack boy to creating your
own levels, these features are specific to Little Big Planet however, every
modern game lets consumers become producers through YouTube. YouTube is a video
sharing website which is commonly used by gamers to upload user generated
content of them playing a specific game in the form of a video. One would think
giving the chance for consumers to become producers would increase the
popularity and sales of games however the gaming industry
has suffered a decline recently, ‘in 2011 retail sales of video games fell by
8% which was followed by a further 20% in 2012’. Although in recent times there
has been a large decline in sales of video which may have been due to the
struggling economy it is predicted that in the coming years the gaming industry
will grow to a staggering $82 billion by 2017 which could provide a huge boost
to our current economical state.
Tuesday 5 February 2013
Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institutions involved in your case study?
The involvement of new and digital media in the gaming
industry has an impact on the ownership and control of the media institutions. New
consoles from the likes of Sony and Microsoft, such as PS3 and X-box 360, have
allowed these institutions to be more in control of the gaming industry. Taking
full advantage of the internet and new technology games and consoles are a lot
more advanced and offer various different types of opportunity for the
consumer, from playing alone to with your mates to watching Blu-ray films
offline. Sony announced it had sold over
70 million Play station 3 consoles worldwide, this has taken them just 7 years.
On top of that the console comes with PSN [Play Station Network] which sells a
variety of things from games to dynamic themes to avatars. However, Sony is not in complete control, little over 2 years ago PSN was hacked
and the details of 1 million users were exposed which goes to show because of
new and digital media they also not in complete control. There are also many
new handheld consoles being released, one of the most recent ones would be the
PS Vita which meant that consumers no longer need to be at home but can
experience gaming on the go as well seeking to increase their audience range
however, the recent performance of the PS vita is not gone the way Sony would
have wanted it to. Even after the PSP vita was released it has been out
performed by the PSP, a much older version which goes to show that new and
digital media might not always be successful in a industry. Some could say that institutions are losing control,
one of the most recent examples of this would be the Connecticut school massacre
in which it is said that gunman Adam Lanza spent hours playing violent video
games such as Call of Duty. This has led
to criticism of violent video games, as the National Rifle Association blamed
the entertainment industry ‘specifically the producers of violent video games for inciting what has become a
pattern of gun violence in the United States’. These
types of tragic events have occurred over the years, other examples of video
games inspiring real life acts of violence would include a Thai student who
murdered a taxi driver while trying to recreate a scene from the Grand Theft
Auto as well as, Tristan van der Vlis who killed 6 people in the tragedy known
as the Alphen aan den Rijn shopping mall shooting was inspired by a game called Airport
Massacre, in which the player can choose (or not choose) to participate in the
killing of a large group of innocent people inside an airport terminal.
Friday 1 February 2013
Weekly News
HMV workers take over
official Twitter feed to vent fury over sacking
Employees of HMV took over the
company's official Twitter account to express their dissatisfaction of being
sacked. One or more angry employees used
Twitter to vent their anger, they managed to post seven subversive messages
before the company regained control of the account and deleted the posts. The
employees were quick enough to get a brief explanation of their protest on to
the site before it was removed. One of the Tweets included "Under usual
circumstances, we'd never dare do such a thing as this," they said.
"However, when the company you dearly love is being ruined … and those
hard working individuals, who wanted to make hmv great again, have mostly been fired,
there seemed no other choice."They also went on to claim that the official
HMV account had been set up by an unpaid intern two years ago. HMV's administrators
declined to comment on the tweets, but did confirm that 190 redundancies had
been made. They said there had been no redundancies in its retail network, adding
that all its stores remained open and were still trading. Nick Edwards, a joint
administrator, said the administrators remained hopeful that they would be able
to "secure a future for a restructured business".
MY OPINION: Some would argue that
this is ethically wrong and the employees had no right to conduct this sort of
behaviour. It goes to show how institutions are beginning to lose their power relative
to the power of pluralism. It shows the society is becoming more pluralists as
they are beginning to fight back against those in power.
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