Videogames 1 - Introduction to the videogame industry

-
What actually is a video game?:
Though it has evolved over the years, 'The current term "video game" now generally encompasses any game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuits that incorporates an element of interactivity and outputs the results of the player's actions to a display.'

The History of Video Games:
The first video game is something strangely argued by many, the simple search result displays to me Pong, released in 1958, but other sources have claimed it to be 'Spacewar!' in 1962, or 1950's 'Bertie The Brain' which was a tic-tac-toe like simulator.

Many other video games released around the late 1950s mostly as research cases at various universities and larger companies, the people playing these games were majorly academics, and those within these groups rather than consumers, with supposedly the first widely considered commerical video game coming in 1971's 'Computer Space'.

Pong only saw it's 'home release' within 1974, considered by the majority the first, simply because it was the first most widely accessible from home.

Space Invaders' release within Japan, began a craze over the game, and started the idea of competitve nature within arcades and trying to settle a place upon the leaderboards. It also created the first considered moral panic of sorts surrounding video games and their effect on the player. The American arcade craze took to popularity only a few years later with the release of 'Centipede' having been published by Atari just as Pong had been.

Due to the lack of impressive graphics and so forth during the time, the graphic design upon the advertisements for the games was incredibly important for pulling in audiences as opposed to today where demos and videos displaying the gameplay could simply be released.
Researching a few games:
Artwork of a teenage girl, with brown hair. She has a backpack, with a sniper rifle strapped to her side, and is standing behind a man in his 40's, who has brown hair and beard, and a revolver in his left hand. They are standing in a flooded grassy environment, turning to face the camera. The text "THE LAST OF US" is positioned to the left.

  • The Last of Us
  • A single player third person Action-Adventure, survival horror game.
  • First released within 2013.
  • Developed by Naughty Dog
  • Published by Sony Pictures Entertainment
  • Intially released on the PS3 and later remastered for the PS4.
  • 1.3 Million copies sold within the first week of release
  • 95/100 on Metacritic
  • Age rated M for mature, for those 18+
  • The average time it takes to beat the game is around 15 hours 36 minutes.
  • The Last of Us first saw development in 2009, with it being the first time it's developer (Naughty Dog) had split off into two teams. One working on TLOU led by director Bruce Straley and creative director Neil Druckmann  and the other working upon another game, 'Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception' which saw release in 2011. 
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus Coverart.png

  • Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
  • A single player platform stealth video game
  • First released September 23rd, 2002.
  • Developed by Sucker Punch Productions
  • Published by Sony Pictures Entertainment
  • Intially released on the PS2 and got HD releases upon the PS3.
  • 400,000 copies sold within the first year of release and 800,000 by 2006.
  • 86/100 on Metacritic
  • Age rated E for everyone.
  • The average time it takes to beat the game is around 6 hours and 41 minutes.
  • The first videogame I ever consumed as a child and grew my love for the industry, baring in mind this was me discovering a dusty PS2 that my sister had left upon a shelf in our house at the time. I've still got a massive love for this franchise.
    Image result for cuphead
  • Cuphead
  • A singleplayer or co-op run and gun
  • First released in 2017.
  • Developed by StudioMDHD
  • Self-published by StudioMDHD
  • Released on multiple platforms, and even... Tesla.
  • 5 Million copies over a period of two years.
  • 88/100 on Metacritic
  • Age rated E10+ for everyone aged ten and older.
  • The average time it takes to beat the game is around 9 hours 51 minutes.
  • StudioMDHD's first ever game as a Canadian independant studio, with production beginning with Chad and Jared Moldenhauer from their respective homes in 2010 alongside help from others, to be based around the cartoon aesthetic of the 1930s.

References: 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Formation - context

-
Image
The use of bricolage Intertextuality - Where a media product or text makes reference to another media product or text.   Bricolage - Where a media product is constructed with iconography and conventions from many other texts , creating entirely new meanings. Often used when discussing postmodern media products. An example of a media product  that uses bricolage is a 'mashup'. For an excellent example of bricolage, check out Quentin Tarantino’s  Kill Bill  (2003) What specific elements of iconography did the producers of  Formation  use from  That B.E.A.T ? Throughout the song we hear a secondary voice to Beyonce's of a male rapper, assumingly considering his dialect and so forth a representative of the niche 'bounce' genre of music native to New Orleans. We see the prominent  featuring of a dance, again clearly referrential towards the bounce community, with the anchorage pretty evidently announcing pride to the people of Ne...
Read more

Woman Front cover (August 1964) /Adbusters question

-
Image
 Woman Front cover (August 1964) Front cover - Encourages audience to purchase the magazine. Woman's Realm, Woman's Own,  Woman --> All ran by the publisher, IPC. --> Monopoly on that market.  Competitor to Vogue magazine, both sold to female target audiences but are binary opposites --> Middle class women.  What makes the cover for 'Woman' overtly conventional? The masthead ->  sans-serif font, -> large and eye-catching. Cheap cover price -> Appeals to working class target audience. Main image -> Large, takes up two thirds of the page. Brand identity -> Very particular, you know what you're getting. -> Working class, middle-aged, conventional women ->  Reinforces patriarchal hegemony.  Selling a lifestyle to the target audience Aspirational image -> You could be her, 'Are you an a-level beauty?' -> anchorage to the photo directly addresses viewer. Alfred Hitchcock -> intertextual reference to famous celebrity -...
Read more

Humans Breakfast Scene Analysis

-
Image
  MES: Binary opposition  of the stereotypical white suburban middle-class British family, to Asian actress. In a wide shot of the entire breakfast table, this is binary opposition between Anita, and the Hawkins family is reinforced through MES of Gemma Chan's sturdy posture and straightened hair, constructing the character as polite, perfect, with the placement of her hands at her lap encoding her as concentrated. Whilst in juxtaposition to the slouched Hawkins family, and their messy bed heads.   American-British coproduction, which explains the placement of the show as in and around the city of London, as this is an expectation of a British tv-show.  Ensemble cast leads to a wider range of representations -> wider range of audiences -> Higher profit for Humans. Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Theory --> Anita as an East-Asian, in comparison to the white Hawkins. --> Anita is constructed as a slave as opposed to a worker or a maid, based upon her costume...
Read more