Zynga & Farmville 2

Zynga
The businees model for zynga consists of paying on via credit cards this is were people can buy using paypal extras for the game like credits and also DLC to help themsleves to further through out the game, the other isthrough patnerships with other companies.  This is where Zynga will team up another company to recieve thier fields.

Farmville 2

Farmville 2 is the sequal to the social game Farmville it has been released  on September 2012 it will have 3D features as well as a 360 degree rotating camera.  It has marketed on Facebook it has itsown facebook page with 2843617 people like this page this shows that the marketing is working becasue that number of people have found out about the new game and are ready to play this game.

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy
Synergy is a term were two or more parts of accompany will work together to produce outcomes to do this they create connections between certain areas of entertainment.  Platforms are produced to sell different products which are all released to one certain product e.g. video game or of a movie an example of this is the Pixar film Toy Story this was released as a DVD a CD and also a DVD game, a example of this is the game HALO after this game was released a soundtrack was released called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Video game Soundtrack.

Symbiosis

Symbiosis is a term that means when different companies work together to create more profit and a better product, an example is is Angry Birds the different toy's they produce  they have been created by Rovio, however they  take a bit of the profits.  A license is needed if a company wants to make a franchise. 

Case Study: SkyLanders Giants

SkyLanders

SkyLanders Giants is a video game released in 2012 this is in the SkyLanders series this is a sequel to SkyLanders: Spyros’ Adventure which was released in 2011, if you played the previous game then you will know the difference to the new game which involves new Skylander characters but they are known as “Giants”, this game was released on October 17^th 2012 in Australia, October 19^th in Europe and on the 21^st October it was released in North America, and in November it will be released in South America this already shows us that it is a big franchise spreading it’s product into different countries all across the world this shows us how popular the first game must have been.  The different platforms which the game is going to be released on is Nintendo 3DS, Play station 3, the Wii, Xbox 360 and It is also going to be available for the new Wii U.  The developer for this is game is Toy’s for Bob they are the creators for other games such as Tony Hawks’s downhill jam and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.  The Publishers are Activison who have also partnered with Sega to create Sonic Adventure DX.  When the first Skylanders came out Activison sold over 31 million SkyLander toys.

The SkyLanders franchise is one of a kind in its market were they have toys to be a part of the video game; the player is able to buy the character of their choice to place on the portal of power and then watch their come alive on the screen in front of them.  The difference between the first game and the second one is that instead of having one small character the player can now buy a new character but a giant to help them progress throughout the game.  The main plot of the game is Players will resume their role as a powerful Portal Master, who controls their a team of Skylanders, including Giants, mythical and powerful heroes that play a pivotal role in the quest to save the Sky lands from Kaos, who is back with another plan to rule over Sky lands. Players will navigate perilous lands, battle powerful enemies, collect treasures and solve interesting puzzles.  This is the cost of the Skylander: Giants franchise on Amazon for a starter Pack or booster pack  which includes the game and one giant figure for the Wii it cost’s 36.99, for the Xbox 360 39.99, on Play station 3, 39.99.  For the price of one figure alone they are in the price range of £17.00, this shows us that the whole franchise that it 2011 with Activison selling of 31 million toys that they made a great profit .Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=skylander+giants&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=12609499260&hvpos=1t3&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=110154468313434137&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&ref=pd_sl_93okq7iqtt_e

This game is mainly advertised through television and also the internet it has different TV adverts its main target audience is the younger generation this is a good type of audience for this game because under the age of 16 is the biggest selling target audience group, it is clever how they have set this game out and why they make so much money this is because in the game you need certain characters to carry on with the game and if the player does not have this character they can’t go on or miss a bit out so they have to go out and by the character and this keeps happening throughout the game and this is where they make the majority of their profit, it also widens its audience because it has its own YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SkylandersGame this allows everybody to see it the different characters and game play, if Skylander: Giants is anything like the first Skylanders in my opinion it will be a success.

Rock Star Games

 

Rock Star Toronto which used to be Rock star Canada this is an in house development team for Rock star Games. The Company was renamed Rock star Toronto in 2002 after Rock star Games bought Vancouver-based Barking Dog Studios and renamed it Rock star Vancouver.  Some of the games they created are The Warriors and also a PC version of Grand theft Auto

Rock Star North formally known as DMA Design ltd this is also a British game developer this created Grand theft Auto and lemmings, it became a part of Rock star in 2002 As of early 2002.

         












 

Rock Star Leeds formally known as Mobius Entertainment this is a British game development it was bought in 2004 by Rock Star games. Rock star Leeds has primarily published handheld games for Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, as well as developing Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and the Grand Theft Auto Stories games for the PlayStation Portable.

Independent Games or Indie Games & Super Meat Boy

Indie Games are games that are created by an individual person or a small group of people and this is without a game publisher finical support.  Independent games focus more on innovation but do rely a lot on digital distribution. Digital Distribution is where a game is sold online, and indie games have their own online game section on the Xbox live market place.  Most of the indie games on the market place give you two options it will say buy for a certain amount of Microsoft points or it will say trial run this gives the option to the audience to try the game out before they even buy it, it also gives a image to show the audience a small preview of what the game looks like.  Some of the best Known Indie games are Super Meat Boy, journey and Bastion. However the most Known and the most successful Indie game today created by  Mojang , Minecraft is focused on Creating and building it allows players to create whatever they want by the use of textured cubes in a 3D world.  In 2010 the game had a spike in sales of over 25,000 purchases in 24 hours. On January 12, 2011, Minecraft passed 1,000,000 purchases, By April 2011, Minecraft had made 23 million in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version On July 1, 2011 Minecraft passed the 10 million registered users mark. As of November 7, 2011, Minecraft had over 16 million registered users, and over 4 million purchases. As of May 25, 2012, the game has sold over six million copies on PC and over nine million copies across all platforms.

Independent games do not have what it takes to compete with AAA games and Blockbuster games this is because of the new technology being used by Blockbuster games like in games such as FIFA 13 this game uses new technology to make the players look as real as possible and to make the stadiums look like they do in reality and indie games can not stay up to date with this kind of change.  The reason more people buy and play blockbuster games is because they are more realistic and make the player feel like they are actually in the game but with indie games this is not the case and so people would rather play a more realistic game than a indie game which they will get bored and tired of, however independent games are cheaper to produce than AAA games and also Blockbuster games, due to the fact that they do not create physical copies because they are sold online this also saves money.

Super Meat Boy

Super Meat boy is an Independent Game and it is available to buy or download trial on, Xbox Live, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, this game was created by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and developed by Team Meat. It is the successor to McMillen and Jonathan McEntee's October 2008 Flash game Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy was released on the Xbox 360  in 2010, on Windows PCs in 2010, on Mac OS X a year later in November 2011, and on Linux in December 2011 as a part of the Humble Indie Bundle and in May 2012 as a part of the Humble Indie Bundle V.  By April 2009, it had garnered over 840,000 views at Newgrounds, and 8 million overall

The story of Super Meat boy is about a cube of meat that must go on an adventure to rescue his girlfriend Bandage Girl; for the evil Dr. Fetus.  The game starts off with Super Meat boy and his Girl Friend hugging and all happy the Dr. Fetus comes over and punches Bandage and kidnaps hers.  It is a platform game so as Super meat boy goes thorough different obstacles such as high mountains he must jump shooting blades a tornado of swords and every time he gets to Dr. Fetus he will magically disappear then after completing the final level Super Meat Boy finds Dr. Fetus and to his disappear Dr. Fetus is Burning the whole forest down and gets into his chainsaw machine and it gives you an extra level were you have to run from this machine while dodging flying, swinging blades and once he has hid from the machine it gets caught into the blades and destroys its self, at the end Super Meat finally confronts Dr Fetus but before h can save his girl friend he ejects from the machine and flies away with his girlfriend it ends on Super Meat boy looking into the distance while the forest is burning down and his squirrel friends are lying dead next to him. This ends the chapter.

I haven’t bought the whole game just downloaded the trial Version an in my opinion this is a brilliant game.  It is a exciting game and the trial game ends you on him not getting his girlfriend back which means that it leads the player to believe how is he going to get his girlfriend back this is a cliff hanger and this is a very good techniques used by companies in trial games because it leaves the player wondering what is going to happen and the majority of the time it will end up in the player buying the game to see what happens, this is a platform game and when I was playing it if I could not complete a level I would want to complete it more and it kept me involved with the game and kept me wanting to play it.  And it also require thinking how you are going to get past on obstacle.

This is  Super Meat Boy Official website: http://supermeatboy.com/

On this website it allows you to blog about the game, also to find about news about the new game or updates available for the game it also has a store section where it is possible to buy Official Super Meat Boy merchandise.

  

Reality Is Broken By Jane McGonigal

•        Globally, the online gamer community-including console, PC, and mobile phone gaming-counts more than 4 million gamer's in the Middle East, 10 million in Russia, 105 million in India, 10 Million in Vietnam, 10 million in Mexico, 13 million in central and south America, 15 million in Australia, 17 million in South Korea, 100 million in Europe, and 200 million in China.
  ·         More than 10 million “hard Core” gamer's in the United Kingdom, France and Germany spend at least twenty Hours a week playing.
  ·         With all of this play, we have turned digital games- for our computers, for our mobile phones, and for our home entertainment systems-into what is expected to be $68 billion industry annually by the year 2012.
  ·         Collectively, the planet is now spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming.
  ·         Meanwhile, the scientific journal Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking reported in 2009 that 61 per cent of surveyed CEO's  CFO's, and other senior executives say they take daily game breaks at work.

Modding

The Hot Coffe Mod is an minigame which was going to be put into the 2004  GTA: San Andreas deveoped by Rocksatr North  but wasnt realsed into the game so they just coded it to make inaccessible.  But in 2005 a mod was released to access the mini game.  The game has exual content between to charatcers Carl "CJ" Johnson and his gilfriend when she offers him to come in for "coffe", The mod was enable to get on Playstaion  2 and the Xbox.  By 2005 the mini game had caused so much contresy policticains got the game re rated to an adult game and it was also removed from some shops, another GTA:San Andreas has been released with the mini game completely removed this new release aloowed to regain its orignial rated.  July 20 2005 it was announced that the GTA: SA had its rating changed from mature to adult only, but when rockstar released the clean version with out the minigame it regained its original rating of mature, the day it was re rated majority of the stores in North America and 85% of the games market place removed the PC and consoles versions of the game from sheleves. Ebay removed the game from there website.