(UNFINISHED) The issues raised in the targeting of national and local audience, specifically British, by international or global institutions.

Nowadays it is important to target a national audience to maximise profit on a product and avoid piracy to impatient markets in other countries, on top of this, if a game is released internationally . However it can also be very time consuming to make a game multi-national, beyond translation difficulties,as games must account for what content is acceptable in diffrent countries.

Many console developers have had to componsate for thie needs of other countries. For example, consoles are banned in China because they are belived to corrupt youth. Therefor,

PEGI

PEGI (established in 2003) is an organisation that rates the appropriate age group for not only games, but other forms of media such as DVD’s. PEGI stands for Pan-European Game Information; PEGI is supported by all three of the mainstream console developers and is used in over 30 countries. Specifically what PEGI does is rate a game, labelling its content suitable for a certain age group and above. When looking at a games content, they in particularly look for aspects such as drugs, gambling, sexual content among other adult themes, as well as anything that younger audiences may perceive as disturbing or frightening . Their age ratings include 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18 with the most games being rated 3+. The PEGI system has helped the industry, not only in that it protects under-aged customers from purchasing certain games, but also that it lets games themselves be more clear in who they are marketed towards. 

Distributors (tasks 1&2)

Task 1
1.GTA:V-Take-Two Interactive

2.Skylanders:Giants-XBEC Entertainment

3.Angry Birds-EA Chillingo

Task 2

Established in February 2003, Advantage Distribution is an organisation dedicated to distributing products of developers in the video games industry. They stock and distribute products, both software and hardware, from some of the largest developers in the industry such as Nintendo, Bandai Namco and Bethesda. Advantage boasts a stock of over 3000 games and hardware products ranging from consoles to gaming peripherals. They deliver both directly to customers, and to game retailers.

MMORPG: Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) based in the fantasy setting of Tyria, the game was released worldwide on the 28th of August 2012. The game was published by NCsoft and developed by ArenaNet, a company made up of former Blizzard employees who can be credited for their work on the Warcraft and Diablo seires. The game has been distributed both on-disc and digitally for both PC and Mac. It has currently sold over 2 million copies and still has over 400,000 palyers. The game sets itself apart from other MMO's in two ways. First of all there is no monthly subscription fee, you pay £49.99 once, and are then free to play for as long as you want. The second factor that sets it apart is its focus on story. Unlike many other MMO's Guildwars 2's story is boasted as deep and involving, with diffrent storylines and branching paths for the story to take, something more common found in single player RPG's. The creators pride themselves on challenging traditional MMO's by creating a world that reponds to the players choices and actions. The game contains both PvE (Player versus Enviroment) and PvP (Player versus Player) modes common found in all other action based MMO's however Guildwars 2 also incorporates a unique 'World vs World' mode in which up to 500 players split into two teams, red and blue, and fight each other. The game has been critically acclaimed by criticts like IGN and Gamespot reciving scores of around 9. Genrally reviews praise the unique presentation, inavitive combat system, lack of subscription fee, and unique focus on player specific story telling. The only common complaints being the clumsy item trading system between players, and the outragious que times for world vs world games, whichs ques can last up to days. As an excample of synergy there is also a long line of merchandice availible from the games website, including artwork, poster and plush toys among other things. The games artwork (by Daniel Dociu and Kekai Kotaki) has also been universaly praised with its unique watercoulor style.

reality is broken stats

1.       Cumulatively, everyone on the planet spends over 3 billion hours a week gaming

2.       There are collectively 4 million gamers in the Middle East, 10 million in Russia, 10 million in Mexico, 200 million in China and 100 million in Europe.

3.       Over 10 million gamers in the UK, France and Germany spending at least 20 hours a week playing.

4.       There are now at least 20 million people in China who spend at least 20 hours a week playing.

5.       5 million gamers in the U.S are spending 45 hours a week playing

Indie games

Independent games, or ‘indie games’, are game developed by a very small group of people (sometimes just a single person) who are independently funded and without a publisher. As a result Indie games are almost exclusively digitally distributed, however this also means indie games are not very marketable to mainstream audiences and often target niche markets. They are released on variety of different digital platforms such as Angry Birds, released as an ios app on androids and smartphone, or Super meat boy (the priced downloadable version), released exclusively on XBLA. Because they have an extremely limited, or basically no budget, indie games often focus on innovative, unique gameplay to make them stand out from big budget triple a titles. Unlike large developers, because of the small concentrated team behind an indie game, the developers have a lot more freedom to do want they want when making a game, however there are disadvantages to indie development too. Because of how small the development team is, combined with the limited budget means that indie game development is often a very stressful process for the developer(s).

                An example of an Indie game is Slender: the eight pages, a free to download indie game based on the original beta, simply titled Slender, released in June 2012. The game was created by Indie development team, Parsec Productions utilising the Utility Engine and is available for digital download on Microsoft Windows and OS X. The games itself is a first person survival horror game based on the internet phenomenon slender man , which along with the game, has rapidly increased in popularity over recent years. Unlike other successful indie games such as Minecraft, Slender: the eight pages is free to download, however developers Parsec Productions have announced a sequel titled Slender: the Arrival that will cost $20 and will allegedly be distributed on steam.

MCV top 20

MCV top 20 charts

When analysing MCV's top 20 most popular games, a few themes are displayed throughout the list. The first and most obvious thing trhat jumps out is the fact that EA's games seem fairly prominent at the top of the list. This may be because EA is a publisher not a developer, therefor they have a wide range of games that they havent actually worked on. Furthermore there is only one new IP on the list, Dishonored at number 10, this suggests that new IP's are alot harder to sell than games that are part of a franchise. It is also noteable that the top 3 games are multiplatform, because these games are playably across all consoles, they expand their market and can sell to more people. Also, we can see that a couple of the games on the list, namely Skylanders, Moshi Monsters and Pokemon, all share similar themes of collectable monsteres, suggesting that there is both marketability and a massive profit to be made in the concept. Finally we can see that the top of the list is filled with many sports gamessuch as FIFA 13, WWE 13 and Football manager 2013, suggesting that sports games are the most successful.