Most importantly, you need to do the following on your blogpost for each story...
Copy the headline, date and link.
Briefly summarise the story in a sentence or two: is this is an example of hard news or soft news? Does it reflect the politics or ideological stance of that newspaper/website?
Explain in a sentence how or why this story appeals to the audience of that newspaper (use media terminology and theory if you can). Is it quality journalism or an example of clickbait?
Create a new blogpost called 'The Sims FreePlay case study part 1 - Language & Audience' and complete the following in-depth tasks.
Language / Gameplay analysis
Watch The Sims: FreePlay trailer and answer the following questions:
1) What elements of gameplay are shown?
decorating your house, taking care of pets, make your sims date, grow a family, build a city you can interact with
2) What audience is the trailer targeting?
it seems to be a wider audience but they do include female outfits and designs to begin with. This could allude to the Sims being more female targeted.
3) What audience pleasures are suggested by the trailer?
diversion, personal identity
Now watch this walk-through of the beginning of The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions:
1) How is the game constructed?
players have to pay real money for in-game currency if they want to play the game without interruptions.
2) What audience is this game targeting?
Woman mobile gamers. The women characters have more customization options.
3) What audience pleasures does the game provide?
4) How does the game encourage in-app purchases?
By spending money, the game becomes more convenient to play in larger chunks of time.
1) What did The Sims designer Will Wright describe the game as?
a dollhouse
2) Why was development company Maxis initially not interested in The Sims?
a dollhouse is for girls, and girls don't play games
3) What is ‘modding’?
modifying the game to add new content
4) How does ‘modding’ link to Henry Jenkins’ idea of ‘textual poaching’?
fandoms will take from the source and create their own
5) Look specifically at p136. Note down key quotes from Jenkins, Pearce and Wright on this page.
‘held together through
the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of
knowledge’- Jenkins
As Pearce has noted, ‘The original Sims
series has the most vibrant emergent fan culture of a
single-player game in history’
Wright saying: ‘We were probably
responsible for the first million or so units sold but
it was the community which really brought it to the
next level’
6) What examples of intertextuality are discussed in relation to The Sims? (Look for “replicating works from popular culture”)
sailor moon skins, the x men skins and danger room
7) What is ‘transmedia storytelling’ and how does The Sims allow players to create it?
"storytelling, a process wherein the primary text encoded in an official commercial product could be dispersed over multiple media, both digital and analogue in form"
8) How have Sims online communities developed over the last 20 years?
as the playership has dwindled, the community has turned to archiving the wide database of fanmade content.
9) Why have conflicts sometimes developed within The Sims online communities?
In the
past there have been conflicts between creators and
non-creators; between creators who wish to charge
money for their mods and those who wish to share
them for free; even between players and Maxis/EA
itself. Fans of The Sims are not homogeneous.
Some
fans have complained of fellow community members
receiving more recognition and power because they
can create things that others can’t
10) What does the writer suggest The Sims will be remembered for?
"what it will be remembered for, I think, is for the cult following that it engendered well beyond the usual lifespan of a popular computer game; and also for the culture of digital production it helped to pioneer, one that remains such a staple of fan and game modding communities today."
much less has been written about modding the Sims to create challenges and game play that is simultaneously in the game world, in the real world, and in writing things like graphic novels
2) Why does James Paul Gee see The Sims as an important game?
The Sims is a real game and a very important one because it is a game that is meant to take people beyond gaming. She helped me see that how women play and design is not "mainstream" (see comments above) but cutting edge, the edge of the future. If it were leprechauns that were the cutting edge of the future I would have written about them.
3) What does the designer of The Sims, Will Wright, want players to do with the game?
empower people to think like designers
4) Do you agree with the view that The Sims is not a game – but something else entirely?
The Sims is not just a game because it has a huge community working on it as well
5) How do you see the future of gaming? Do you agree with James Paul Gee that all games in the future will have the flexibility and interactivity of The Sims?
No, I think games will go in a similar direction as films. Using Hesmondhalghs's "risky business" concept, it can be argued that because money is being pumped into the industry, the risk of outputting an innovative game and having it flop is greater.
Create a new blogpost called 'Metroid Prime 2: Echoes case study' and complete the following in-depth tasks. Language
Analyse the game cover for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (above).
1) How does the cover communicate the genre of the game?
Mecha costume connotes Japanese sci-fi
Ghost of alien in the background
blue/orange colour scheme
2) What does the cover suggest regarding gameplay and audience pleasures? binary opposition, multiplayer
3) Does the cover sexualise the character of Samus Aran? Why/why not?
I don't think the cover sexualieses her at all. Her armour has huge shoulder pieces, traditionally a masculine feature, and she's in an action pose. Trailer analysis
Watch the trailer for the game:
1) What do you notice about genre?
Metroid was originally based on Alien so the sci-fi elements are very prominent. 2) How is the character introduced? Is Samus Aran obviously female?
I think the way the chest plate protrudes gives her a different silhouette to everyone, very obviously hinting to her being a woman. 3) How can we apply Steve Neale’s genre theory that discusses “repetition and difference”?
Genres go through a cycle, so Metroid Prime is introducing multiplayer to the Metroid franchise, distinguishing itself from the previous iterations
Gameplay analysis
Watch the following gameplay clips again:
1) What does the gameplay for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes involve?
Lot's of reading, killing, exploring, rolling 2) Write an analysis of the media language choices in the construction of the game: e.g. genre, narrative, mise-en-scene, camera shots etc.
genre: alien eggs, dark aura,
narrative: Finding Dark Samus and ending the fissure
Mise en Scene:
camera shots: Most of it is POV, putting the player in Samus Aran's place.
3) Analyse the clips for audience pleasures, applying audience theory and considering media effects. Distraction, personal relationships, personal identity
1) Who might the target audience be for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, based on your research? Discuss demographics and psychographics.
Because it's darker than average Nintendo games aimed at a younger or family demographic, Metroid prime 2: Echoes is aimed at the target audience most associated with other gaming consoles such as the Play Station and XBox. 15-30 males. 2) How has Nintendo’s audience changed since the original Metroid game in 1986?
They now try to reach a very wide demographic
3) What audience pleasures are offered by Metroid Prime 2: Echoes or the wider Metroid franchise?
exploration, acquiring new items, backtracking,
very similar to another Nintendo franchise Zelda 4) What effects might Metroid have on audiences? Apply media effects theories (e.g. Bandura’s social learning theory, Gerbner’s cultivation theory).
Over time, consuming Metroid Prime will normalize women being in roles of power such as samus aran is. (cultivation theory)
By Bandura's social learning theory, Metroid fans should go around shooting people with arm guns.
1) Who is considered to be the stereotypical gamer?
adolescent boys 2) What has changed this?
The introduction of mobile gaming 3) What role do women play in the videogames market? Quote statistics from the article here.
42 percent of women said they had either an Xbox or PlayStation in comparison to 37 percent of men.
4) Why are older gamers becoming a particularly important market for videogames producers? How can you link this to the Metroid franchise?
The average age of the gamer of today is around the age of 35
They grew up with video gaming so there is a strong sense of nostalgia and personal relationship with the Series. 5) What does the article suggest regarding audience pleasures and expectations for different generations of gamer?
1) Why has Metroid never quite fitted with the Nintendo brand?
It's for 15-35 year olds. A demographic they struggle with. 2) What franchises have overtaken Metroid in the sci-fi hyper-realism genre in recent years?
Halo, Mass Effect, and now No Man's Sky 3) Why does the writer link old boy bands from the music industry to the Metroid franchise? Do you agree with this reading of the brand?
They're beating a dead horse to cash in on nostalgia. 4) What is an ‘AAA’ or ‘triple-A game’ in the videogames industry?
AAA (pronounced and sometimes written Triple-A) is an informal classification used for video games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, typically having higher development and marketing budgets. 5) Do you think there will be further Metroid games featuring Samus Aran? Should there be? I think there should be more Samus Aran, perhaps getting a similar makeover like Lara Croft where it's move obviously aimed women as well. Representation Read this BBC3 feature on Samus Aran and answer the questions below: 1) What was notable about the original Metroid game in 1986?
They didn't reveal that Samus Aran was a woman until the end 2) What were the inspirations behind the gameplay and construction of Metroid?
Mario and Zelda, as well as the film Alien 3) Why are the endings to the original Metroid considered controversial?
The quicker you completed the level, the more undressed Samus Aran would appear for the player. 4) What reaction do you think the reveal of Samus Aran in a bikini would have got when the game was first released in 1986? Have attitudes towards women changed?
It would have been ok to have a woman in a state of undress as a reward.
Now, we can all pretty much agree that it's a little dodgy.
5) How have later versions of the Metroid franchise sexualised the character of Samus Aran?
Like the time she wore a skin tight bodysuit and heels in Super Smash Bros 6) How can we apply Liesbet van Zoonen’s work to Samus Aran and Metroid?
7) What did Brianna Wu suggest regarding the character of Samus Aran?
Samus is transgender 8) Do you see Samus Aran as a feminist icon or simply another exploited female character?
I view Samus Aran as a feminist character because on the most part she's given a bulky functional appearance for most of her game play. She also isn't given a male counterpart or love interest, not pivoting her self worth on the men in her life. Read this Houston Press feature on Samus Aran and entitled male gamers. Answer the following questions: 1) What does Anita Sarkeesian suggest regarding Samus Aran?
Samus’s increasingly naked body is used as a reward for male skill. It doesn’t diminish Samus as a character, but it does sort of diminish the games themselves for using this sexist convention. 2) Why does Brianna Wu (and others) suggest Samus Aran may be transgender?
Hirofumi Matsuoka, who worked on her original design, said Samus was a “newhalf”, a somewhat vulgar term that is close to the English term “shemale.”
Samus was originally portrayed to be 6’3” and more muscled in her appearance. 3) Why is Samus Aran useful for male gamers trying to argue videogames are not sexist?
If you question the number of female protagonists you’ll get a list that will virtually always start with Samus as a counter-argument 4) Why are Lara Croft, Zelda and Peach not ideal examples to argue for female equality in videogames?
Lara Croft will always be haunted by her cartoonish, sexual appearance and Zelda and Peach are damsels too often, and the anti-feminist crowd is hesitant to use Chell since Portal 2 is a feminist masterpiece.
5) What does the ‘SJW’ in ‘SJW-gender politics’ refer to?
Social Justice Warriors, people who argue over the internet about left wing politics 6) How can we apply Gerbner’s Cultivation theory to representations of women in videogames as discussed in the article? How might this lead to ‘entitled male gamers’?
Because over the years the representation of women has been so poor, men have become accustomed to the hyper-sexualisation. As they lack the female experience, they can't possibly fathom why these representations hurt women so they view it as ugly feminists trying to take their frustration out on men. 7) Does the videogame industry have a problem with gender? Provide evidence for your argument.
The video game industry is making improvements to representation of women but even when companies attempt to make female characters they can miss the mark on making them human. Characters such as Bayonetta more in unrealistic ways in skimpy outfits that centre her characterisation around her body.
Wednesday 23 December 2020
Tomb Raider Anniversary: blog tasks
Language and Audience
Analyse the game cover for Tomb Raider Anniversary (above).
1) How does the cover communicate the genre of the game?
The light coming from behind her indicates a small light source like that of a temple
2) How does the pose and costume of the character appeal to primarily male audiences?
both assets are visable 3) How might the cover be read as empowering for female gamers?
It's an active woman character not characterised as weak.
Gameplay analysis Watch the following gameplay clips again:
1) What does the gameplay for Tomb Raider Anniversary involve?
Lots of physical activity for Lara Croft as well as puzzles 2) Write an analysis of the media language choices in the construction of the game: e.g. genre, narrative, mise-en-scene, camera shots etc.
The genre is action and adventure and employs iconography from Indiana Jones for nostalgia's sake.
The narrative follows an independent woman character raiding a tomb and killing vicious animals.
The camera angles often give excessively sexualised views of Lara "for the presumed straight male player" 3) Analyse the clips for audience pleasures, applying audience theory and considering media effects. Male Gaze- Mulvey
Distraction, personal relationship- Blumler and Katz
There are women as the leads in big blockbusters and #metoo has solved all sexual assault 3) How was the original 1996 Lara Croft received by audiences and critics?
Women saw her as their first role model in gaming 4) What did the 2013 re-launch do differently – and how successful was it?
They re-did her appearance and motion captured an actual woman so that the movements were more true to life.
They also gave her emotions and a backstory. 5) How is ‘woke Lara’ defined in the conclusion of the feature?
"She was a sex icon and a feminist icon, and there is no issue being both of those at once." 2) How did the limitations of game construction in the 1990s help to establish the way female characters were animated?
Because women were harder to distinguish from men, they'd have to greatly exaggerate their form. 3) Why were Lara Croft’s physical attributes emphasised in the original games?
for advertising purposes 4) How does Anita Sarkeesian describe Lara Croft?
Lara Croft was simply a stereotype for the category of games typically associated with male players. Even the camera angle in the game focuses on her rear end, she said, putting it at the centre of attention. 5) Why has Lara Croft’s appearance and characterisation changed over time?
To appeal to her changing audience, nearly half of which were women.
Industries 1) Why is Lara Croft such an iconic figure in the gaming industry?
She is widely regarded as a sex symbol and has appeared on magazine covers for the male and female gaze. This links to hyper-reality as she's blurring the lines between what was fiction and what is real.
2) What products and spin-offs have featured Lara Croft or the Tomb Raider brand?
There are many spin off titles for hand held consoles and mobile devices
3) Why might Lara Croft be considered a postmodern icon?
She relates to Baudrillard's theory of Hyper-reality. Because she's completely constructed, we are blurring the lines between reality and fiction by having real models appear as her as objects to be looked at. 4) Why is Tomb Raider Anniversary a 'case study in conglomerate ownership'?
Core design --> Eidos Interactive --> Square Enix
This exemplifies vertical integration by conglomerates.
1) What was the article that announced Teen Vogue as a more serious, political website – with 1.3m hits and counting?
"Donald Trump is gas-lighting America."
2) When was the original Teen Vogue magazine launched and what was its original content?
2003, fashion and celebrity gossip
3) How did editor Elaine Welteroth change Teen Vogue’s approach in 2015?
She used black models on the covers of 3 physical copies.
4) How many stories are published on Teen Vogue a day? What topics do they cover?
the team publishes between 50 and 70 a day
5) What influence did digital director Phillip Picardi have over the editorial direction?
He changed it to digital instead of print.
6) What is Teen Vogue’s audience demographic and what does ‘woke’ refer to?
a byword for social awareness.
7) What issues are most important to Teen Vogue readers?
Feminism and social injustice.
8) What does Tavi Gevinson suggest regarding the internet and ‘accountability culture’ with regards to modern audiences? Can you link this to our work on Clay Shirky?
"the relationship with readers is closer and more transparent, and says brands have had to respond to that. “It is in their best interest to subvert expectations of teen girl magazines,” Gevinson says."
This links to Shirky as the internet has allowed for the lines between consumer and creator to be blurred.
9) What social and political issues have been covered successfully by Teen Vogue?
10) What do Teen Vogue readers think of the magazine and website?
one reader, 16-year-old Paige Wagner, reads Teen Vogue for truthful news coverage.
Teen Vogue: Factsheet Part 1
Read Media Factsheet #200 Teen Vogue - Part 1. You can find the Factsheet in our Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive in school or download it here using your Greenford Google login. Answer the following questions:
1) The Factsheet suggests Teen Vogue has successfully made the transition to an online, social and participatory product. Why? What platforms is it now available on?
"As a result of this ideological shift, the traffic to teenvogue.com increased by 500% in 2 years."
Their content evolved with their audience, allowing for them to keep their place in mainstream media.
2) Look at the screenshots and details on pages 3-4 of the Factsheet. What does Teen Vogue offer its audience?
Fashion advice, feminist celebrations of female achievement and political commentary.
3) Who is the typical Teen Vogue reader?
18-24, socially conscious.
4) Read the content analysis of the Teen Vogue website on page 5 of the Factsheet. Pick out three key examples of how meanings are created in Teen Vogue and what is communicated to the audience.
use of news website convention adds validity to
the shift in focus of TeenVogue’s reporting.
the use of
a main image in the central third and the aspirational lifestyles
being presented through the images.
The
order in which the different sections appear signifies the branding
priorities: the amalgamation of ‘beauty’ and ‘fashion’ into ‘style’
reflects an attempt to position the audience within the new brand
5) Finally, look at pages 6-7 focusing on representations. What range of representations can be found in Teen Vogue and what does this suggest regarding Teen Vogue's values and ideologies?
Readers are interested in beauty and latest trends whilst also considering under represented groups such as the black, Asian and plus size communities. Additionally, there are articles pertaining to activism and political debates.
Teen Vogue textual analysis and example articles
Work through the following tasks to complete your textual analysis of the Teen Vogue website and read notable Teen Vogue articles to refer to in exam answers.
Homepage analysis
Go to the Teen Vogue homepage and answer the following:
1) What website key conventions can you find on the Teen Vogue homepage?
title, menu bar, articles
2) How does the page design encourage audience engagement?
Enough tiles with alluring names as to create the the feeling of variety in their media coverage but not too much in a screen's length as to overwhelm.
3) Where does advertising appear on the homepage?
There is an article about Black Friday deals, naming specific products on sale that their readership should buy.
4) What are the items in the top menu bar and what does this tell you about the content of Teen Vogue?
Style, Politics, culture, identity and summit.
As style is first, it can be assumed teen vogue see it as their number 1 priority. They value fashion over politics despite their campaigns.
5) How far does the homepage scroll down? How many stories appear on the homepage in total?
27 stories appear on the home page in total, 5 grouped together up top, two appear as trending and the rest have bars across the screen until you finish scrolling.
Lifestyle section
Now analyse the Lifestyle section of Teen Vogue (in the Identity section) and answer the following:
1) What are the items in the top menu bar for the Lifestyle section?
2) How is the Lifestyle section designed to encourage audience engagement? Think about page design, images, text and more.
There's an article called "what each zodiac likes in bed" which will naturally prompt any reader to open and check to see if they got it right, as well as direct address in articles like "hoe to care for your fat body"
3) What do you notice about the way headlines are written in Teen Vogue?
lots of use of "you" and "your", directly involving the reader.
4) What does the focus on education, university and ‘campus life’ tell you about the Teen Vogue audience demographics and psychographics?
They are above the age of a teenager, in the 18-24 range. They are also assuming their audience is educated.
5) Choose one story featured in the Lifestyle section and explain how reflects the Teen Vogue brand.
The "how to care for your fat body" feature relates to the brand's feminist ideologies. It chooses to bring light to issues pertaining to being overweight and doesn't demean them.
