Task 4 - Analysis of a Game Genre

Genre: Horror survival
left 4 dead 2, Shadows of the Damned and Bioshock
I am going to explore the genre of Interactive drama in this article, using three games to detail my points and views while ultimately providing a detailed analysis into the genre.An Interactive drama is a fairly new genre introduced into the gaming industry, it consists of a story being played out in front of the player, but offers up choices or decisions which can have a massive impact on how the story will carry on from the point of that choice/decision.

In the game left 4 dead 2 you are put in control of 1 of 4 characters.

The objective of the game is to get from A to B but unfortunately it isn’t that easy as the group are fighting against a constant wave of infected zombie like creatures, some of which are special infected these are.

•The Witch: a special infected that that when startled becomes enraged can rapidly swipe a character to the ground putting then in last stand and then if not stopped by another player can kill said player.

•The Tank: is a special infected that doesn’t go down without a fight, a giant infected male that can sometimes rip pavement or rubble from the ground and then throw it at the player with intent to kill. 

•The Hunter: is a smaller regular sized infected that lurks in the darker corners of the maps and when the player isn't expecting it leaps on top of the player and starts to rip away at the players skin unless another player can stop it in time.

•The Boomer: is a special infected that can puke up bile with intent to cover the player this then summons a hoard of common infected that then attack a dazed and confused player .

•The Charger: the charger is pretty self explanatory, the charger with its hulking size  and giant arm singles out certain players and well… charges and if a player isn’t fast enough the player will get pummeled to the ground by the beast and then repeatedly bashed in to the ground until the player is put in to last stand.

•The Smoker: the smoker usually lurks on roof tops or in far corners of the map out of the way of the action. The smoker’s unique ability allows it to extend it’s tongue to extraordinary lengths and grab the player and suffocate them

•The Jockey: the jockey is a small creature that runs around on all fours and jumps on the players head to and claws at it and while doing so pulls the player into other infected.

along the way if a character dies and is not able to be revived the game will continue on without then but the game will be made harder for all other players because there are less players to carry out certain team activity's like escorts and timed horde events. and if all of the players die the mission resets and and all progress is lost.

this game really teaches players to play as a team and not to be a lone wolf because you wont get very far. 

Shadows Of The Damned

Shadows of the damned is a psychological horror/comedy That follows the story of Garcia Hotspur, a Mexican demon hunter who goes to the City of the Damned to battle its evils in order to save his true love.

Demon hunter Garcia Hotspur comes home to find his girlfriend, Paula, being abducted by the Lord of Demons, Fleming, who brags that he will take Paula with him to kill her again and again. Garcia is powerless to stop Fleming, but instead follows him back to the underworld along with his demon sidekick, Johnson, who also acts as his gun, torch and motorcycle. In the demon world, Johnson helps guide Garcia through the twisted nature of the demon realm, defeating numerous enemies that try to feed on Garcia's flesh, and keeping him away from the darkness that destroys the human flesh. As they travel, they witness numerous deaths of Paula by Fleming and other demons, all to toy with Garcia's senses.

the reason it is classed as a psychological thriller is because through out the game the player and character never really know if Paula (the players reason main objective in the game) is alive or dead even after retrieving her. for all the player knows is the whole game could have been a figment of Garcia's imagination.

throughout this game the player is alone and this can also affect them psychologically creating edge of your seat suspense.  

Bioshock

 takes place in 1960 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where Jack, sole survivor of a plane crash, discovers the entrance to the recluse underwater city of Rapture, at the end of a civil war which left most of this utopia in disrepair. Finding himself in an alien world, he has no choice but to fight for his survival against the Splicers, degenerated citizens addicted to the genetic material known as ADAM, and all the traps laid down by the city's visionary founder, Andrew Ryan. His only help lies in Atlas, a revolutionary man seeking to escape safely to the surface with his family.

 much like Shadows of the damned bioshock turns out to be a psychological thriller that were the story takes a sudden turn, along the way Jack finds out that him being in rapture wasn't a mistake and he was there for a reason [SPOILER ALERT] jack later finds out that he is the illegitimate son of Andrew Ryan and Jasmine Jolene, Ryan's mistress. An Audio Diary by Jolene, and photos found on Ryan's desk indicate that Jack was purchased by Brigid Tenenbaumon behalf of Frank Fontaine as an embryo. Jack was to be Fontaine's back-up plan if he was ever forced into an unfavorable situation by Ryan, which happened during  Rapture's Civil War.

a horror element that is featured in multiple other games that could be passed as unintentional are the Audio Diary's littered around the game that give an incite to what rapture was like before jack arrived and the creepy part about this wasn't necessarily what was on them but the tone of voice used and the grainy gramophone style audio.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/13/quick-shots-shadows-the-damned-pics-show-weapons-tattoos-bad-news-for-a-giant/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Damned

http://vonbuttons.deviantart.com/art/Special-Infected-209178999

Task 1 – Defining Audiences

Quantitative Research

quantitative research is a way of generating numerical data and transforming it in to usable statistics.
this can be received using questionnaires and online pols.
quantitative research can be used to generate pie and bar charts that can then be used in presentations to support your work.

Qualitative Research

un like quantitative research were the results are numerical, Qualitative Research gives you a range of results.

for example if you were to ask someone how many animals they own you would get a numerical answer and that would be quantitative research. If you were to ask what kind of animals they have you would get a range of answers back and that would fall under qualitative research.





Audience Profiling 

audience profiling is used to find out about an audience before hand so your message gets across to the right people.

this might include things like age, gender, field of work, interests, food habits, religious background, etc.

Demographic

a common method of audience profiling this defines the adult population largely by there field of work .
this brakes them up in to 6 groups and then labels them using the letter code that best describes there income status.

Psychographics

psychographics the simplest way the way of describing your audience by observing their behavior andtemperament traits.

psychographics labels an individual and makes an assessment regarding their specific viewing and payment habits.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/35759/A-Simple-Pie-Chart-Control-Improved-D-Pie-Chart
https://dk-media.s3.amazonaws.com/media/1iecc/images/12448238/bigthumb/Social-Media-Focus-Group.png
http://www.onepoll.com/qualitative-research-and-social-media/
http://theevilnumber27.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/hot-of-the-press-the-demographics-of-social-gaming/
http://www.ideaverse.com.sg/how-social-data-helps-marketing/

Task 3 - Addressing Audiences and Audience Feedback

Genre
 A way to outline the character of the media in question. Despite there being several genre's that use identical media, all of them have variations, being each major and delicate. A genre is employed as a label so as to relinquish a kind of media it's own class that it will be recognized by.
so a game franchise like resident evil ,a game about flesh eating zombies, chainsaw killers and demon dogs that would come under the horror genre.
and a game series like forza a game that allows you to buy, customize and drive cars comes under the racing genre

Content

The things that form up the mass of a product.
if you are playing a war/action game you are expecting the majority of the content of the game to be guns, explosions and bullets unlike something you would find in a farm simulation game.

Construction 
the construction of a video game is how it works. This refers to how the game plays in its final build.
if a game is published and a player can walk through walls and fall through un patched sections of the floor the game is constructed poorly but if a game play how it is meant to and walls are solid and a player can't fall through the floor and exploit a games weakness a game is constructed well.



Narrative conventions
narrative conventions in games are basicaly when a character or narrator speaks in the game.
an in game narrator  acts as an all seeing character that usually isn't involved in the story personally.
some games that have used this device are fable and castlvania.

 Common Codes
 The content in making a media product and the way they relate to every alternative.




The Last Of Us
main plot line/ player drive:
A disillusioned man is tasked with bringing a young girl across America, her survival absolutely essential, as she may hold the key to mankind's future in a world overcome by a deadly virus.

Genre: Horror, third person shooter, survival game

Content: Environment: bleak, derelict, over-grown, desolate.
Story: thrilling, suspenseful, character driven.  


Construction: injury indicator, real time item construction



Narrative Conventions: despair, loneliness, desperation, future, post-apocalypse, zymosis

Common Codes:Third person, Over-the-shoulder,survival, shooter


Just Dance
main plot line/ player drive:
just dance is a party game that encourages players to dance like the character on screen.

Genre: party-game ,Rhythm based

Content: up beat, dancing game


Environment: colorful, neon colours, vibrant, bright

Construction:body interaction

Narrative Conventions:sing along, karaoke style

Common Codes:happy, energetic, vibrant, intence

Task 2 – Audience Response to Products

Hypodermic needle

The Hypodermic Needle model or the Magic Bullet Theory is used to suggest that social media can influence very large groups of people by “injecting/”shooting” people with a piece of information distributed using social media such as newspapers, magazines and the news on the radio or television.

For example

The radio broadcast of war of the worlds was so convincing to the listeners it influenced a nationwide panic making people think that there were actually aliens coming from mars.

But we all know the chances of that happening are a million to one.

 

The Inoculation Model

The inoculation theory is a passive audience theory which suggests that when an audience is exposed to extreme media messages the audience will then become “immune” to them once viewed. The long term exposure can result in the audience being completely desensitized to it.

For example if a character is gruesomely killed in a game the player will eventually get used to the shocking images and then become un-fazed/desensitized to it.

Game’s like resident evil 4 and last of us can support this theory as they include many shocking death scenes that tend not to effect the player the second time around.

The Two Step Flow Model

The Two Step Flow Method explaines that most people form there opinion under the influence of an opinion leader who is influenced by the media.
for example
a new game is released early to certain youtubers and they get paid to review the game and tell there viewer's how good it is the viewers then hold that reviewers opinion above all others and that then influences them to buy that game.

The reception theory

This theory examines how the audience receives the information being provided to them. This can be split into three basic definitions.

• The Preferred reading: This is where the audience receives and accepts the information being offered to them. If we were to take a game as an example, This would be the audience accepting the game exactly for what it is and enjoying it for that.
• The Negotiated reading: In this instance, the audience gives and takes with the information given. They take from it what they need whilst rejecting what they don't. A common thing with 3D video games is issues with the camera control, so a lot of reviewers will bring up the positives of an open world yet state that the experience gets brought down via a terrible camera.
• The Oppositional reading: This is where information is given, yet not received as intended. For example when the PS3 was in it's early days, many games made use of the limited motion control of the sixaxis controller, now while this was released as a means of adding further variety to games, many perceived it as a cheap gimmick which ultimately didn't receive the expected gratification.

http://u6cacmp.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/252201647854955449/
http://www.amazon.com/THE-WAR-WORLDS-non-illustrated-ebook/dp/B004DUMYOI
http://ptgdaemon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/last-of-us.html
http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=loopy93&logNo=120023044670&parentCategoryNo=14&viewDate=&currentPage=1&listtype=0