Mock Question

Discuss how far young peoples use of media technology differs from that of their parents.

Most NMTs are aimed at a younger target audience, but these target audiences are gradually expanding to invole older audiences aswell, for example the release of the Nintendo Wii has brought a much broader age group into gaming, with its revolutionary technology. Other games such as Brain Training for the Nintendo DS are targeting older audiences with there more serious but still fun based gameplay. But gaming is not the only new media technology that is expanding is target audiences, for example mobile phones that feature more business based technologies such as bluetooth and email. Younger generations are using their mobile phones to play games and take photos, whereas there is an increasing amount of older people using their mobile phones more seriously for work, and there are more business models of phones being made.

However there are some medias that are left wholly untouched by the older generations, such as the social networking phenonemon. Most young people will have their own facebook or bebo page but it is rare for the older generation to use these sites. Another NMT that reamins mostly aimed at the younger generations are MP3 players such as Ipods of the Sony Walkman. I think these differences may be because the younger generations have grown up with technologies and are more used to using them, whereas their parents would'nt have grown up with MP3 players or Xboxs and so do not adapt to using them so often in every day life.

The Perils of New Media Technologies

Why is consumerism a concept central to this unit?

• Because new media technologies are constantly being developed further, being improved and becoming more powerful then the new machines need to be seen as desirable by the consumers otherwise they will not sell more products.

How do we often 'unwittingly give up our privacy'?

• By taking advantages of the new media technologies that are available because many of them are able to track your history of use, such as google can track everything you've searched for, and Amazon can track every product that you've browsed.

How have NMTs criminalised audiences?

• By offering new technologies such as file sharing the audiences have been illegally downloading music and practically stealing from the music industry even though they may not have realised it, and some violent videogames have been cited in murder cases.

What health and environmental issues do NMTs pose?

• Nobody really knows what the NMTs do to our health, because they are generally fairly new technologies so we cannot tell what the long term affects on our health are. People are worried about mobile phone masts being put up near schools, and the decrease in sparrows has been blamed on mobile phone signals affecting their fertility rates.

Video Game Addiction

Video Game addiction is a proposed form of psychological addiction and is composed of compulsive use of computer and video games. A poll conducted in April of 2007 found that 8% of youth gamers in the US could be classified as pathologically or clinically addicted to playing video games. Video Game addiction seems to be more of a problem in Asia, with a recent governmental survey in South Korea revelaing that 2.4% of the population of Sotuh Korea between the ages of 9 - 39 were clinically addicted playing video games.

MMORPGs (massivly multiplayer online role-playing games)

Mmorpgs are the most noticably addictive video games available and are related to the internet addiction order. It is estimated that over 40% of World of Warcraft's 8.5 million players were addicted, which makes it statistically more addictive that Heroin, but there is no real proof to support this estimate. It has been said that the reason that MMORPGs are statistically more addictive than other games is because of their built in rewards system. Gamers play obsessively on these games, often doing harm to themselves or others around them. There have even been a few cases where a player has died from playing the game too long.

• In South Korea Lee Seung Seop died in August 2005 after playing the MMORPG Starcraft for 50 hours until exhaustion, dehydration and heart failure caused him to go into cardiac arrest and he died later in hospital.
• In China, Xu Yan died after playing for over 15 days over the Lunar New Year Holiday.
• In June 2005 it was reported that a child died due to neglect from her world of warcraft addicted parents.

In China in 2005 the Chinese government introduced a new system called the anti-online gaming addiction sytem that caused diminishing of the player's in game character's levels and rewards after 3 hours of play, forcing the player to stop playing if he or she wanted to keep his character as it was. This was only implemented for players that are under 18, and reports indicate that players have found a way round it, so it is wholly unsuccessful.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=31536

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article553840.ece

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/6193462.stm

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31056/98/

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/52916.html

Bully Game Controversy

The game Bully was developed by Rockstar in 2006 and stirred up a lot of controversy. The game had the same free roaming principle as GTA (also made by Rockstar) but the player played as a character in a school, but was also able to leave the school and roam around the nearby city. Most of the conroversy was due to the violent adult nature of Rockstar's previous games and the Hotcoffee minigame scandal, but was also criticised by parents and educators becuase of its name.

In the game you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a boy new to Bullworth Acadamy (the fictional school) who wants to work his way up through the ranks of the school to become king of the school. You are able to get into fights, wedgie other pupils and shove their heads down toilets, to name just a few of the actions you can perform. Some groups counter the accusations and say the protragonist is not bullying, but defending himself and fighting to end bullying in the school. But other groups such as Bullying Online and Peaceaholics have criticized the game for glorifying bullying.

Reception in the USA

Individuals campaigned to have it blcoked from being sold in stores in Florida but they were over-ruled and the game was sold all over the USA with a 13+ rating.

Reception in the UK

Attempts by the online charity Bullying Online and The Labour party to have the game banned have been made but have not suceeded. The game had to be sold under a different name than its US counterpart, and instead of being called Bully was called Canis Canim Edit, which means dog eat dog in latin and was the school's motto. Curry's and PC world refused to stock the game saying it did not fit with their family image.

The Game has been completely banned in Brazil by the Brazzilian Justice Courts.

Websites i Researched on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_(video_game)#Controversy

http://www.rockstargames.com/bully/

Target Audiences of the 3 main consoles

XBOX 360 The target audience of the XBOX 360 are:

• Hardcore male gamers aged 15-30 by offering the most powerful computer ever sold specifically for gaming and by focusing mostly on racing and FPS games.

However Microsoft is also trying to broaden its appeal to non-traditional demographic users such as women who live with male gamers, and they do this by incorporating several other multimedia features in the console. It can play DVDs, CDs, and also play media stored on its hard-drive or play an ipod that is plugged into it.

Playstation 3

The target audience of the PS3 is:

• Hardcore male gamers aged 15-30.

However the PS3 targets a wider demographic than the XBOX 360 because it focuses on a wider range of games (role-playing games, racing games, action/adventure games, shooting games) and also includes extra multimedia features such as Blu-ray DVD, and CDs.

Wii

The target audience of the Wii is much broader than the other consoles becuase it offers such innovative new technology:

• People who had lost interest in games a few years back, i.e people who have grown older and have new responsibilities.
• People who like to play simpler, free games online. This audience has been widely overlooked before but it comprises of female and male gamers of all ages, who aren't really in hardcore games and just want to play simple and fun games.
• A younger audience who want to be more involed with their games.
• Nintendo wanted the Wii to be fun for all the family, so instead of sitting down and playing a board game every sunday night, the family would settle down and play the Wii on sunday night.

Controversy in Video Games

The Video game industry is often subject to a lot of controversy, with games being seen as too violent, obsessive and being perhaps connected to the rise in obese children. One Company that is often producing games that fall victim to this type of controversy is Rockstar North. I have researched some of their games that have been banned or accused.

THE HOT COFFEE SCANDAL

Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas was released in october 2004. It was the fifth game in the GTA series, in which you play a character in a free roaming cities, in which you can do pretty much anything whilst you complete missions to work up through the crime empire until you are at the top of your game.

The Game was originally released for Xbox and PS2 but in the following year it was released for the PC and with the release of san andreas came the discovery of a sex mini-game named Hot coffee (by a modder from the Netherlands named Patrick Wildenborg) that had been disabled and removed from the game but left embedded in the code. This led to people finding ways to enable the mini-game on the console versions using game console hacking tools. This discovery led to the game attracting large amounts of controversy from law makers and politicians and led to the game being re-rated and removed from sale in some areas.

The mini-game consists of the main character (Carl Johnson) being invited in 'for a coffee' by one of his girlfriend with the objective for the player to improve the characters' relationships. There is no nudity whatsoever and there were animation problems which suggest the mini-game was abandoned early and before much development. At first GTAs makers denied the allegations that the minigame was hidden in the game and said it was only due to Hackers making significant technical modifications to the game that it was possible for a player to access the game. But this was later proved wrong when a player discovered it was possible to access the minigame on the console versions aswell.

Lawsuits were filed against Rockstar and protesters portested outside Rockstar's Headquarters with these demands:

• Not to release Bully under any circumstances. (Bully was eventually released and has not been banned, but there are movements by protesters for the latter to happen.)
• Volunteer to sell its violent and sexually explicit games in adult video stores only.
• Let parents return Grand Theft Auto for a full refund until they do a national awareness campaign to educate parents of content and possible effects.
• Create a fund for victims of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and car-jackings, etc. - Canceled due to rants.
• Make a national apology for misleading and lying to children, parents, and legislators about their intentions and causing insurance premiums to sky rocket.
• Give a written response within five business days of receipt of these demands

All this resulted in Rockstar losing $30million and the game being re-rated, and Rockstar having to stop manufacturing the current version of the game and re-produce a version of the game with any trace of the hot coffe sex minigame removed.

Here are some websites i found and research the hot coffee scandal on:

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

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6128837.html

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/15/news_6129301.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jan/30/news.games

Case study feedback #2

George - some interesting background information here but you now need to read some broadsheet articles on your topic and reflect on the case study questions in the handbook. Make sure that your research is thorough enough for the exam. This should be completed by Monday. CF

Gaming Platforms & Technology

Here are some of the platforms that Video games are played on:

XBOX 360 (Microsoft) (7th Gen)

Release dates- US: November 2005 Europe: December 2005 Japan: December 2005

- 3.2 GHz PPC Tri-Core Xenon CPU

- 500 MHx ATI Xenos GPU

- Plays Games, DVDs, CDs and HD DVDs with an Add-on

- 20 or 120GB hard-drive storage, memory cards also available

- Supports 4 wireless controllers or 2 wired controllers & 2 wireless

- Xbox Live (online capabilities)

- Sold 18 Million units world wide as of April 2008

- Backwards compatability with about 500 XBOX games

Notable games- Halo 3 (8.1 million copies sold as of January 2008)

Target audience- More serious Gamers, 15 years of age+ (lots of shooting games and serious play online)

Playstation 3 (Sony) (7th Gen)

Release dates- November 2006

- 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine CPU

- NVIDIA-SCEI GPU

- Plays games, DVDs, CDs and Blue-ray DVDs

- 20, 40, 60, or 80 GB hard drive storage system

- Supports up to 7 dual-action controllers

- Playstation Network (online capabilities)

- Sold 10.49 million units as of February 2008

- Backwards compatability with all Playstation games and most Playstation 2 games

Notable games- Motorstorm (3 million copies sold as of February 2008)

Target Audience- All round gamers, young & old, people with brand loyalty to Sony

Wii (Nintendo) (7th Gen)

Release Dates- November 2006

- IBM PowerPCC CPU

- ATI "Hollywood" GPU

- Plays 12cm Wii optical discs and 8cm Nintendo Gamecube discs

- 512MB internal flash memroy, Secure digital cards of Nintendo Gamecube Memory cards storage systems

- Supports up to 4 revolutionary Wii remotes, Wii Balance Boards and Nintendo Gamecubve Controllers

- Wi-fi, Bluetooth or USB LAN adapter connections to Nintendo Wi-Fi connection (online capabilities)

- 20.13 million units sold as of April 2008

- Backwards compatability with Nintendo Gamecube games

Notable Games- Wii Sports (17.85 million copies sold as of April 2008)

Target Audience- Games generally tend to be be less violent and more fun, so some think it is aimed a lower age group but because of the revolutionary control system it is fun for all the family.

The Video Game Industry

The video game industry involves the development, marketing and sale of video games. It employs thousands of people worldwide and is a multi billion dollar industry, pulling in about $9.5billion (a new record) last year (2007). It is continually expanding and becoming more and more complex, with games companies striving to develop new ways in which games can be played. Because of the video games industrys development we have seen developments in other technologies such as sounds cards, graphics cards and CD Roms, all of which have developed further specifically to encompany the new innovations in gaming.

The video gaming industry is a reasonably recent industry (go back about 40 years and there would be little or no trace of any games at all) that provides jobs such as; Game programming, Game Designing, Level Designing, Game Producing, Game Testing and many more.

The video gaming industry is also victim to a lot of controversy because of the problem that games often involve violent content and can be addictive (sometimes causing loss of quality of players life). There is also the question of where to draw the line between reality and virtual reality.

The Age of Permanent Net Revolution

1. Endism is the perspective that sees new technologies as replacing older ones, for example with Televisions arrival people predicted the end of radio and movies, and with the CD rom people predicted the end of the written book, and more recently people have predicted the end of the music industry with the downloading of music from filesharing programs. So far most of these perspectives have been wrong. 2. Media ecosytem is a term used to describe the complex interactions between different medias, old and new. The organisms that drive the media ecosytems are things such as broadcasting, radio, television, print and the itnernet. 3. Narrowcasting is a way of boradcasting in which specialist content is aimed at a particular audience and is distributed via subscription based digital channels. 4. The internet is the tracks on which the complex and enormous web runs upon, meaning that the web is constantly evolving and changing while the internet stays the same. 5. A push medium is something like broadcasting, where you are forced into consuming because of little choice, whereaes a pull medium is the web that is contantly changing to suit our choices. 6. The blogging phenonmeneomonemonemon suggests that traffic in ideas and cultural products isn't a one way street, i.e blogging means that anyone can give back ideas instead of just being a passive reader of the media.