The document discusses the production and distribution processes of media products, comparing the conglomerate video game GTA5 to the independent game Minecraft. GTA5 took 5 years and over 1000 people to produce at a cost of £170 million, involving multiple companies led by Rockstar Games. It was distributed through extensive advertising. Minecraft was independently produced by Markus Persson's company Mojang, and was first distributed online for feedback before commercial release on multiple platforms. Both games succeeded by effectively meeting audience needs through their production and distribution approaches.

1. Discuss the ways in which media products are produced and distributed to
audiences, within a media area, which you have studied?
When creating a game, they divide this into 3 different phases which are the production of
the game, how it will be distributed to their target audience and lastly consumption which is
how they will engage with their game to the audience.
The ways in which a person makes a video game is through three different phases, those are
the production, distribution and consumption. The video game that I will be talking about is
a conglomerate as well as an independent game which I will be comparing the difference
between those 2 games. The conglomerate game I will be talking about is GTA from
Rockstar Games which has had a huge success in the market right now, including a number
of series. The independent game where there are only a small numbers of companies that
work on the game and the game which is independent is Minecraft that was created by
Mojang.
GTA is an action-adventure video game created by Rockstar North and published by
Rockstar Games, the making of the game cost up £170 million which was all the cost of
production. There have a number of companies that have worked on this game therefore
makes the game an conglomerate because not only one company worked on it but many
more, which took up to 5 years of making, a full team in excess of 1,000 people. As well as
Minecraft is a Sandbox, survival type of game was it allows players to build constructions
out of textured cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Other activities in the game
include exploration, gathering resources, crafting, and combat.
The way in which GTA5 was produced was through several of companies that include
Rockstar NYC, Rockstar San Diego, Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar Toronto etc. but individuals
that produced the games were Leslie Benzies is a Scottish video game producer and
president of Rockstar North a subsidiary of Rockstar Games. He is the lead developer in the
iconic Grand Theft Auto series, taking responsibility from GTA III and onwards, the other
person who was Imran Sarwar who was also a designer to the game. But the way Minecraft
was produced was completely different as they were an independent company who created
the video game which was Mojang, the main designer was Markus “Notch”, Persson and
later developed and published by Mojang. Mojang is a Swedish independent video game
developer founded in May 2009 under the name Mojang Specifications by Markus Persson.
GTA5 distributed the game were people could see it such as social networks, billboards,
advertisement on TV and they had the money to use money for a way to get the new game
to their audience. GTA has found many ways to how they could reach out to their audience,
they do this by creating the game for many different platforms were people can access such
as Xbox 360; Playstation etc. There’s an existing market with consumer demand for open
world sandbox games. Rockstar is known for dominating within this field which makes
them accessible and recognizable to potential and existing consumers, with that being said
when they were creating the game they already had some of the past technologies used to
develop old GTA titles can be retrofitted for the new asset pipeline for developing GTA5
Internally, Rockstar is still going to have to build new pipelines for artists to deliver their
content to multiple teams, engineers to push new builds etc. For software they're going to
be using in house software/ tools and private enterprise software. GTA5
Whereas Minecraft done this completely different to a conglomerate company because they
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2. Discuss the ways in which media products are produced and distributed to
audiences, within a media area, which you have studied?
were independent who produced and distributed themselves. Instead of creating the game
and put it straight in to the market, instead Notch decided to create this indie game where
he would publish this on a website where he lets a group of people play and get feedback,
the first time they created this game they one made the game on one platform which was PC
where you had to buy the game but as it got so popular they made a small company called
Mojang where they continued to develop and produce the game on a various of platforms
including Xbox, and PlayStation.
As a conclusion with these two factors are very important, and comparing an independent
and a conglomerate game could make a huge success meaning it doesn’t matter about how
big the company is, anyone can create a game and how effective they to this to meet their
audience’s needs. Production and distribution are a part of a phase that divides in 3
different stages when creating a game.
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