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.

NMTs

The New Media Technology area i will be studying is Gaming. Here are some of the possible reasearch areas i will look at:

• Console Gaming (XBOX 360, Playstation 3, Wii)
• Online gaming (XBOX Live, Playstation online)
• MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games eg. World of Warcraft)
• Handheld Console Gaming (Nintendo DS, PSP)
• Games (different genres)
• Development of New Games
• Development of New Consoles

Digital Technology and the film industry

1. Production - how has digital technology changed the way films are shot? How has it made the process more creative? -Digital technology means that filmakers are able to view what they have shot on set, whilst still filming, instead of having to watch what they have filmed later during production so using physical film means that you can't insure you get a good shot in production format. Also when filimf with digital cameras it eliminates some of the porblems that can be found when using physical film, such as electronic jittering and gate-weave. There are further steps that must be taken wehn using physical film such as the transfer of all the film to video medium, and when transferring the film to digital media each frame must be positioned perfectly in referance to the other frames. Every extra step that must be taken with physical film adds to the overall production cost and the length of time it takes for the production. The introduction of digital technology eliminates many of these extra steps and offers a cost effective solution that creates the same visual experience for the viewer. Digital technology makes lots of effects work a lot easier, such as keying out wires, and visual set work, meaning the process can be more effective and complicated but be produced just as easily. 2. Distribution - how do we access films now? How do the films get distributed to the cinemas? How is this changing?

-Digital technnology nowadays means that we can access films through DVDs instead of VHS or having to go and see them at the cinema. DVDs allow the viewer to skip scenes, flick back and pause the film which were things that you could not do so efficeintly with VHS. Our cinema experience has also changed with the introduction of 3D movies and surround sound. Also our home cinema environments have improved so we can have the same experience of the cinema in the more comfortable surroundings of our own homes.

3. Exhibition - how do we experience films? Is the cinema experience changing? Is it under threat with home cinema technology?

-I don't think that the cinema is under threat from the new home cinema technologies because the cinemas still show the films before we can buy or rent them on DVD so if a person wants to see a film they will still go to see it at the cinema. Also our home cinemas will never be as big as the actual cinema so it is not as much of a spectacle so you dont get the same atmosphere when in a using the new home cinema technology.

Websites i researched on:

http://www.highdef.com/library/Digital_Film.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_%28place%29

Feedback #1

George, you have some interesting findings here so far, but you are missing the film industry research task. You will need to complete this during the first week back.

Moral Panics and Concerns with Online Technology

Some of the moral concerns with the continually developing digital world are things such as what is classed as real, and what is classed as not. For example, in the MMORPG Second Life there are areas where you can engage in inappropriate activities such as having sex with children. The problem is that Second Life isnt real, so should this be treated as a crime, or just a game? If it is treated as inappropriate there is the further question of how far you have to go for the police to get involved. I believe that these issues will be solved as this technology progresses and gets more complex.

What is the Future for Online Technology?

Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/03/mondaymediasection.internet 1. Who is Chris De Wolfe and what does he say is the future for social networking? What impact will portable hardware have on this area of technology?

• Chris De Wolfe is one of the co-founders and CEOs of the massive continually expanding social networking site that is myspace.com.
• He believes that social networking will become ever more personal and ever more portable, stating that half the future social network traffic will come from non-PC users.
• He also thinks that social netowkring sites are driving the web forward, and helping other industries as the sites become more and more collaborative with industrys such as music and advertisement.
• Wolfe says that "Social activity is happening everywhere and we expect applications and features to be more fluid" meaning that as more and more people join these social networks, the networks themselves will have to cater for each individuals needs by making more applications and features available to the user.
• This will require more collaboration from other internet sites and communitys such as thw widget community and online flash games. For example, Youtube has collaborated with the social network sites Bebo and now the user can choose a video from youtube to feature on their personal profile.
• "Supporting a more collaborative web creates a more global and participatory internet experience for everyone."

2. Who is Chad Hurley and what does he say is his company's goal? Is he a positive or negative technological determinist?

• Chad Hurley is the a CEO and co-founder of the video broadcasting site Youtube which lets users upload their own videos.
• Chad says that within 5 years video broadcasting will be the most accessible form of communication, you will be able to access it on any screen "in your living room or in your pocket" and it will bring together all aspects of diverse media, with videos from music to cooking, to videos of your familys and friends.
• He also states that the tools available for video recording will continue to get smaller, cheaper and easier to use, increasing the range of users who will be able to record and upload videos to Youtube.
• Youtubes goal is to make uploading videos to Youtube as easy as making a simple phonecall, and in the next 5 years the world wil become a smaller place.

3. What does Maurice Levy say is the challenge for advertisers and what is 'liquid media' compared to 'linear media'?

• Online advertising will still depend on what has always been at the heart of impactful advertising, in both analogue and digital forms; creativity.
• Maurice says that the challenge for advertisers is that peple are no longer willing to put up with interuptions during their entertainment experience, and do not want to see commercial breaks, so the advertising companies have to continue to come up with more imaginative and creative ways to advertise their products.
• "This implies a brave new world of engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will also mean co-production between marketers and media owners."

4. What parallels does Norvig draw between Edison inventing electricity and the development of online technology in terms of searching for information?

Norvig is suggesting that electricity is an extremely important thing in modern life, and that almost everything we do depends on some sort of electronic item that we are aided by, and in the same way the internet will one day evolve far enough for us to depend on it in everything we do, and it will be able to aid us to do pretty much anything we need.

5. What are the issues for the developing world? How is this evidence of a 'digital divide'?

Fears are that as we continue to develop and thrive in the new digital world, rural areas in places such as Africa will not be able to get the same digital equipment due to poor infrastructure and not having enough money. As we are likely to continue creating new online communities and digital aids, that these rural areas will be left behind in these developments and become alienated and divided from the rest of the world.

The key issues for Audiences and Institutions

Digitality: A new way of encoding information using binary, meaning that a huge amount of information can be stored and dealt with using a tiny code. Interactility: New ways of streaming compressed information, that means mulitple strand of information can be compressed and sent through the air, ISDN cables, telephone cables and cable sattelite systems. This feed is interact, meaning you can interact with it and respond to it, meanign we can upload and download. Hypertextuality: To do with the organisation in text, no longer linear, so you can jump around the text instead of having to go through it all to get where you want, for example with a dvd you can now skip scenes instead of having to fast forward through it all. Dispersal: How the information can be shared and communicated, to do with the market share and who is using the market, and how the producers target the users of their markets. Virtuality: To do with how real something is, what is representational and what is real, for example second life is mimicing real life but it is not real. Convergence: New media technologies are merging with each other, for example phones now containing music players, browsers, and cameras. This is constantly changing, but where will it go next?