Video games case study

AS MEDIA STUDIES MS1 REPRESENTATIONS AND RECEPTIONS

AS MEDIA STUDIES
Morecambe Community High School
MS1: Media Representations and Responses
Case Study 2: Video Games

This case study is designed as part of series which will focus on a
range of different media forms. You will be expected to refer to
these case studies in the summer examination, so keep it safe.
Additional material for this unit can be found on the VLE as well as
the shared area on the network.

This case study will focus on the following:

• The conventions of video games
• Language used and mode of address
• The construction of representations and ideologies in
the texts
• The messages underlying those representations
• How we can apply audience models to video games

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AS Media Studies – Representations & Responses
Media Audiences: Video Games case study

How many different genres of video games can you think of? Provide
examples for each.

What are the conventions of video games? Try to suggest common
elements that can be applied to ANY game, regardless of genre.

• By 2011, the worldwide gaming market will be worth $48.9 billion
• UK consumers are expected to spend £4.64bn on them in 2008
• music and video sales accounting for £4.46bn
• the video games market has more than doubled in value in the last five
years

Why do people play video games? Why do you suppose it is such a
popular past time?

Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar Games, 2008
Some statistics…
o On its first day of release in Britain, 609,000 copies
were sold, bringing in revenue of £24.4 million. In that
single day it recouped around half of its production
budget (estimated at £50 million)
o By the end of the first week of trading, the game was
projected to have sold six million copies worldwide.

Since 1997, GTA games have offered players the opportunity to indulge
themselves in a fantastical gameworld where they can virtually ‘live the
dream’ by playing the gangster tough guy previously only observed in
gangster films and TV dramas such as The Sopranos and The Departed.

The developers of the game Rockstar North sent a 50-strong team to New
York to research locations and people, and to take photographs to work up
the mise-en-scene of the games.

In early summer 2008, GTA 4 was seemingly unavoidable. It was on billboard
posters everywhere; it was on the cover of most videogame magazines and

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advertised on the back of non-gaming magazines alike. Since its release at
the end of April it has grabbed acres of newspaper space in both gaming and
non-gaming press. On Sunday May 4th, The Observer newspaper dedicated
its ‘Arts and Culture Review’ section to debating whether or not GTA 4 is a
work of art.

The scale of the marketing exercise for GTA 4 is unprecedented. It was closer
to what you might experience for big marketing campaigns which surround
‘event’ movies. This reflects the current state of the videogames industry. It
looks as if GTA 4 has arrived at a tipping point where everyone knows about
the game, whether or not they know about its content.

o What does this suggest about intertextuality in the game?
To put it another way, what kind of prior knowledge of
media texts will enhance the experience? Consider film &
TV shows.
o What genres does it borrow from?
o Compare these two posters. What similarities can you
indentify?

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The primary objective for TV executives and/or broadcasting ‘must-see TV
which produces ‘watercooler moments’ the following day – where people talk
about what they saw in last nights episode of Lost or Prison Break for
example. GTA 4 has achieved a similar status, and within 24 hours of its
release established itself with the status of a ‘must-play’ game.

Some sections of British society and the British media see videogames as
agents of moral corruption and as blunting the social skills of games. A
counter argument could be that gamers talk about games like GTA 4 in the
same way as they might discuss a TV programme or film. Plot twists,
character profiles and game achievements are some possible areas of
discourse. In addition to this are the on-line gaming communities which
communicate and play against each other using teamwork and careful
planning to overcome challenges posed by the game itself or gamers from all
over the world.

fan sites, web forums and virtual communities have been set up by gamers in
the wake of GTA 4’s release. On such example
community is www.gtaforums.com. Here it is
possible to enter threads of discussion on a wide
range of issues revolving around the game such
as tactics, tips, even critical views on the
game/plot/characters etc.

Enabling players to learn about the game and to
engage socially with types and numbers of
people which would not be popular in the real
world. Fans of the game are socialising with
each other – both in the real world and virtually,
people may be forging bonds and friendships
over a game. In the process a sub-culture is
developing. This kind of social interaction is
often driven by individuals, not by corporations.

We need to be vigilant about how we perceive
the effects of media texts on those who choose
to consume them.

o Using the Uses and Gratifications model detailed below,
identify what audiences get out of this particular video
game.

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Uses and Gratification Model
(Blumer, McQuail & Brown)

The model is concerned with how and why people consume the media.
Theorists have identified four major types of consumption:
• To reinforce personal identity by comparing our own roles with
similar roles in the media: What do gamers feel a part of here? What is it
about the games that an audience identify?

• The need for companionship and interaction: Who or what are they
interacting with? How could we address companionship?

• The need to be informed: What is the game telling the audience? What
information offered up from the game could be identified as useful? Does it
inform lifestyle for example?

• The need for entertainment and diversion

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Manhunt 2, Rockstar Games, 2007
BBC news Tuesday, 19 June 2007,
Censors ban 'brutal'
video game
British censors have banned a violent video
game from the UK for the first time in a
decade.
The video game Manhunt 2 was rejected for its
"unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal
slaying", the British Board of Film Classification
said.
It means the Manhunt sequel cannot be legally
supplied anywhere in the UK.
The parents of a Leicester schoolboy who
blamed the original game for the murder of
their 14-year-old son said they were "absolutely elated".
The original Manhunt game was given an 18 classification in 2003.
Manhunt 2, for PS2 and Nintendo Wii consoles, is made by Rockstar Games.
The company has six weeks to submit an appeal.
The last game to be refused classification was Carmageddon in 1997. That
decision was overturned on appeal.
David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said: "Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from
recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of
tone.
"There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these
killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game."
'Morally irresponsible'
The original Manhunt game caused huge controversy and was blamed for the
murder of Stefan Pakeerah.
The boy was stabbed and beaten to death in Leicester in February 2004.
His parents believe the killer, Warren LeBlanc, 17, was inspired by the game.
Stefan's mother, Giselle Pakeerah, had condemned the sequel, branding the
gaming industry "morally irresponsible".
"We have been campaigning against these games for a long time and the
BBFC made the right decision," she said.
Police said robbery was the motive behind the attack on Stefan in Stokes
Wood Park on 26 February 2004 - and not the video game blamed by Stefan's
parents.
Manhunt's maker Rockstar North has always insisted its games are geared
towards mature audiences and are marketed responsibly.
Leicester MP Keith Vaz, who campaigned with the Pakeerahs against the
original version of Manhunt, praised the decision to ban Manhunt 2.
He said: "This is an excellent decision by the British Board of Film
Classification, showing that game publishers cannot expect to get interactive
games where players take the part of killers engaged in 'casual sadism' and
murder."

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o What were the main concerns of the BBFC over this game?
o How might we apply the hypodermic syringe model (below)
to video games such as Manhunt 2 and GTA 4?
o To what extent might this article be seen as a part of a
moral panic on video games?

Hypodermic Syringe Model
The media are powerful agents of influence, capable of ‘injecting’ ideas and
behaviours into passive audiences:

• Children and teenagers are considered to be particularly susceptible
to the harmful effects of the media.
• Moral Panics get generated by the media itself (often the tabloid
press). This in turn leads to heightened public concern and
sometimes new laws or regulations.

Edge Magazine
June 19, 2007

Manhunt 2 Banned, Rockstar
Responds

The ruling means it will be illegal to supply the
PS2 and Wii-bound title anywhere in the UK.

“Rejecting a work is a very serious action and
one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in
the case of games, modifications which remove the material which
contravenes the Board’s published Guidelines,” said BBFC director David
Cooke.

“In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is
distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting
bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which
constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or
distancing.

“Against this background, the Board’s carefully considered view is that to
issue a certificate to Manhunt 2, on either platform, would involve a range of
unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors, within the terms of the
Video Recordings Act, and accordingly that its availability, even if statutorily
confined to adults, would be unacceptable to the public.”

Rockstar has responded to the BBFC's decision by expressing
disappointment at the ban. The company suggested that ratings of media
products should act as a guide enabling consumers to make up their own
minds about what they wish to purchase.

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"We are disappointed with the recent decision by the British Board of Film
Classification to refuse classification of Manhunt 2. While we respect the
authority of the classification board and will abide by the rules, we
emphatically disagree with this particular decision," reads a statement from
the company.

“Manhunt 2 is an entertainment experience for fans of psychological thrillers
and horror. The subject matter of this game is in line with other mainstream
entertainment choices for adult consumers.

“We respect those who have different opinions about the horror genre and
video games as a whole, but we hope they will also consider the opinions of
the adult gamers for whom this product is intended. We believe all products
should be rated to allow the public to make informed choices about the media
and art they wish to consume. The stories in modern video games are as
diverse as the stories in books, film and television. The adult consumers who
would play this game fully understand that it is fictional interactive
entertainment and nothing more.”

Paul Jackson, director general of ELSPA (Entertainment & Leisure Software
Publishers Association) believes that the BBFC’s decision to ban Manhunt 2
proves that the UK has an "effective" ratings system.

“A decision from the BBFC such as this demonstrates that we have a games
ratings system in the UK that is effective. It shows it works and works well.
Any decision the BBFC takes, it takes on the basis of its remit to rate on
screen entertainment,” he said.

"The games industry is a creative phenomenon that produces all kinds of
games across all kinds of genres that appeal to all kinds of people across the
country, young and old, male and female. The important thing to know is that
all games are rated according to age suitability, with over 70 per cent of
games being available to all ages over three years," he added.

Rockstar has the right to appeal the decision under the terms of the Video
Recordings Act.

o Read through this article. What argument does Rockstar,
the games developer, offer as a counter-argument against
the BBFC’s ruling?
o Can you identify problems with the Hypodermic syringe
model?

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Clearly, games such as GTA 4 and Manhunt 2 require classification which
makes them suitable for adults only. Indeed they both carry 18+ certifications
issued by the BBFC (Manhunt 2 was granted a UK release in October ’08 on
the basis of ‘significant cuts’ to its more graphic scenes). But, with an industry
which is enjoyed by both children and adults, there has been a real cause for
concern in terms of children accessing such games without parental
knowledge or understanding of content. Following the Byron report in spring
2008 which looked at the issue of children and digital media, the government
issued the following statement:

Written Ministerial Statements
Thursday 27 March 2008

CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES

"Safer Children in a Digital World" (Byron Review)

On video games, Dr. Byron recommends a range of high profile and
targeted efforts to help inform parents and children of the appropriateness
of different video games and to restrict inappropriate access such as:
Lowering the statutory requirement to classify video games to 12+, that is
consistent with film classification and easier for parents.
Putting in place a hybrid classification system, using both PEGI and BBFC
mechanisms with one set of symbols, from BBFC, for parents to
understand.
Having clear and consistent guidance for industry on how games should be
advertised.
Challenging industry to provide sustained and high profile efforts to
increase parents understanding of age ratings and improved parental
controls.

• Who then, in terms of demographics is playing video games?

• What might the psychographic profile be of someone who plays
GTA 4 and how might this game meet these needs? Consider the
aspirations and desires of the demographic.

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The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008
‘Fresh guns for hire...’

The computer game Grand Theft Auto IV is set to become the
biggest-grossing title ever, with sales outstripping Hollywood's
biggest films. But is it art? We asked three critics - and GTA
novices - to fire up their consoles and put it to the test
Peter Conrad, Observer writer and academic

As a non-driver who hardly remembers being a teenager, I don't belong to the
demographic category targeted by video games. But I agreed to man the
console of Grand Theft Auto IV because I'm curious about the future. Can it
be true that this geekmobile will have more customers than Hollywood's
noisiest, flashiest blockbuster? Industrial spies report that the movies may
soon vanish into the gadget I was gripping, with its fiddly gearsticks and
handbrakes, its zoom control and directional pad: technology is being
developed that will enable you both to direct and to perform in the film you're
watching.
I spent an afternoon hijacking cars and totalling a satisfactory number of
pedestrians. My alter ego at the wheel was a granite-visaged eastern
European thug called Niko, sent to ferry his mobster cousin's cronies around
New York. I realised - once I got over the lethal joy of running red lights and
skidding on to the pavement - that I had signed on as that dreariest of
nocturnal drudges, a minicab driver. But I soon gave up asking where I was
going, or why. The plot is an excuse for motion: cinema is kinesis, and I'm
happy enough to watch John Wayne riding or Steve McQueen driving or Matt
Damon running. Hitchcock once likened his films to rollercoasters, and
interestingly GTA IV skirts the derelict funfair at Coney Island in Brooklyn.
Hitchcock knew that he was programming sensations, infecting audiences
with motion sickness as his characters struggle to control runaway cars;
smirking sadist that he was, he would have liked the way video games place
us in the driver's seat and allow us to crash and burn.
GTA IV is about the revved-up tempo and suicidal trajectory of our
mechanised lives. But it has a more reflective dimension: games like this
dramatise the interplay of fate and chance, or destiny and contingency. Niko's
cousin asks what he's doing in America. 'What's anyone doing?' he shrugs.
'I'm just trying to make the right decisions.' That's also the gamester's
occupation. Do I go left or right? Forwards or in reverse? Do I return the call in
which the slinky Michelle begs for another date? Such decisions are quickly,
unthinkingly made, but their consequences unfurl peripherally in a nuclear
chain reaction. 'This is fucking chaos,' someone says during a highway snarl-
up. In fact, it is chaos theory: I began as a fluttering butterfly an hour ago, and
the result of my impromptu thumb-twiddling was this thunderstorm of
concertinaed metal and squirting gore.
Although GTA IV takes place in a mythically sombre America, its producers
are based in Edinburgh, and I suspect they have designed a satire on the self-
destructive superpower across the ocean. Liberty City (which is what they call
their version of New York) enshrines the glutted liberality of capitalism, but the
freedom it offers - to turn this way or that, to drink Patriot beer or the imported

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brew called Pisswasser, to go bowling or lap-dancing - deludes us with
variants of the same thing. All routes lead to a dead end. 'You got capitalism,'
snarls a voice on the car radio, admonishing the Americanised Russians in a
cabaret called Perestroika. 'Now enjoy what you asked for.' In the game's
guidebook, an ad for a grease-clogged burger rants against the liberal
obsession with healthy eating and asks: 'What are you doing to us, America?'
The designers may be voicing the same complaint, which is why they create a
virtual realm and goad us to sabotage it. 'Is your best friend a terrorist?' a
shock jock on the car radio asks as I dry-hump the competition on a freeway.
If I could have seen my face in the rearview mirror, I might have winced. With
the console in my hands, I was indeed a terrorist. A minute later, the screen
faded to black. Had the X-Box 360 malfunctioned? No, it was my fault: I was
dead, though I had the satisfaction of taking several fire hydrants, lamp posts
and letter boxes with me. Not quite the World Trade Centre, I know, but I am a
beginner. Is this a game, or a holy war conducted by other means?
Bidisha, author and critic
It's a long, hard, bitter task filling the shoes of Niko, the avatar-protagonist of
Grand Theft Auto IV. Cursed with a chunky, clenched-bottomed running style
and stilted right hook, labouring under the weight of a massive racist
stereotype, garbling unfunny puns in a comedy Balkan accent, Niko acts as a
gofer for his greasy cousin Roman's syndicate of lowlifes, hustlers, skanks
and shysters and their ethnically cliched associates. There's the jive-talking
Rasta dealer, the timid and inarticulate Oriental shopkeeper and the Serb
thugs.
Liberty City, the sarcastically named venue for this obvious trawl, is an
expansive, pixel-speckled wasteland of tenement buildings, dead ends,
wafting litter, chicken wire and trees that look like yellow and green cotton
buds. It's not arcane enough to create any frisson of otherness (as the epic,
mythic games Halo and Assassin's Creed do) and not realistic enough for you
to imagine that you're in an actual metropolis with its own infrastructure. Still,
there are neat details such as the chinked glass of a shattered windscreen,
sunlight filtering into an underpass, the chunky matt grey of a discarded bullet.
Niko's small, dead eyes, thick skull and broken nose bear poignant witness to
his brutalised biography: Tiny Tim goes techno.
Visually this is a basic arena in which bored, boring men engage in lumpy
mutual rucks scripted with bad guy-on-guy thug porn in mind. Peripherally,
though, it's witty. There's the Memory Lane bowling alley, the hijacked car that
has asinine sat nav droning in the background, the hyper radio advert that
crows, 'For too long TV game shows have been the province of women
clucking over things they know nothing about,' and promotes 'The Men's
Room, bringing masculinity back to television'. Another radio phone-in listener
bawls, 'I blame the blacks and the Jews!' while a woman touts 'a Ukrainian
delicacy: chocolate-covered pig fat'. In Roman's office the boss is ribbed for
his aftershave: 'What's it called? Sex Pest?'
Whoever scripted these incidentals should call HBO and pitch a show, leaving
the rest of the team to design more hit-and-runs. When I was done I went
home and happily played my Dungeons & Dragons board game by myself.
Laura Cumming, Observer art critic

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1. How does the journalist campare the game to a film?

2. How does he compare GTA 4 with the films of Alfred Hitchcock?

3. The game takes a satirical look at modern America. Can you
summarise what form this takes in the game?

4. What could be said of the character types in the game?

• Using the article from The Observer and your answers,
apply the Encoding/Decoding model to GTA 4

Encoding/Decoding Model
Developed by Stuart Hall and David Morley to analyse audiences
responses to media messages
• This takes into account the social position, age, gender and ethnicity
of the demographic
• Media texts are encoded so that preferred reading is presented to
an audience.
• The audience may or may not accept the preferred reading

There can be three types of audience response:
1. Preferred reading – when the audience reads into the texts
what the sender wanted them to.
2. Oppositional reading – when the audience take the opposite
reading to the one the sender desired.
3. Negotiated reading – when the audience combines a
preferred and negotiated reading

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