Videogame advertising: Institution

Task 1: developers and publishers

Rockstar Games
Background: 1998 in New York City, USA
Owner/founder: Take-Two Interactive
Most successful games: Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, L.A. Noire
Interesting fact about the institution: As of February 2014, Rockstar Games titles have shipped more than 250 million copies. The largest franchise being the Grand theft Auto series which alone have shipments of at least 157.5 million.

EA (Electronic Arts)
Background: May 28, 1982, Redwood City California USA
Owner/founder: Trip Hawkins
Most successful games: Battlefield, Need for Speed, Medal of Honour
Interesting fact about the institution: Originally, EA was a home computer game publisher.

Zynga
Background: July 2007, San Francisco, California USA
Owner/founder: 

• Mark Pincus
• Eric Schiermeyer
• Michael Luxton
• Justin Waldron
• Kyle Stewart
• Scott Dale
• Steve Schoettler

Most successful games: FarmVille, ChefVille
Interesting fact about the institution: Zynga became the #1 Facebook app developer with 40 million monthly active users.

Nintendo
Background: September 23, 1889, Kyoto Japan
Owner/founder: Fusajiro Yamauchi
Most successful games: Wii U, Wii Mini, Nintendo 2DS
Interesting fact about the institution: Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889, originally named Nintendo Koppai.

Sony Computer Entertainment
Background: November 16, 1993, Tokyo Japan
Owner/founder: Shuhei Yoshida 
Most successful games: Playstation
Interesting fact about the institution: The company has sold more than 400 million PlayStation consoles worldwide.

Task 2: Advertising agencies

W+K Amsterdam:

W+K Amsterdam stands for Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam.

W+K Amsterdam have advertised many brands but they are mostly known for the campaigns for Nike, Facebook and Coca-Cola.

I think that the most creative campaign on there website is the Nike campaign because although it is the most known, the campaign involved many things such as the famous "Just do it" tagline and how it was created (coined by Dan Wieden, and inspired by the final words of executed murderer Gary Gilmore). Also, that campaign featured famous things that are not related to Nike such as the song "Revolution" from the Beatles. 

One videogame that W+K Amsterdam advertised was FIFA 14.

In the "It Just Got Real" FIFA 14 campaign by W+K Amsterdam, W+K chose to show a gamer morphing into Lifesize Messi as a metaphor for “how the game now feels more alive” than ever. This was addressed as 'Messimorphis' to show how the gamer slowly morphed into Messi. Unfortunately, there were a lot of complaints regarding this campaign as it did not show much game footage and to some fans that are in some way 'sensitive' caused them to avoid this campaign as it is quite disturbing to watch.

Rokkan:

Rokkan advertising agency has been around for 14 years. The agency was launched in the year 2000  from a living room in New Jersey with founding partners John Noe, Chung Ng and Charles Bae.

Rokkan is based in New York but there are plans to open offices in L.A. and Chicago.

Rokkan advertised brands such as jetBlue, Sharp and Nestle PURINA.

Rokkan's campaign for Dishonored was so successful because of the extremely realistic graphics which gave the audience a precise insight of the game.

The publisher of Dishonored are Bethesda Softworks.

Task 3: Regulatory bodies:

PEGI:

What is PEGI and where is PEGI based? 

PEGI stands for Pan European Game Information. It is a European video game content rating system established to help European consumers make informed decisions on buying computer games with logos on games' boxes. The developers are based in Belgium.

How does PEGI rate games? 

PEGI rates games through adding logos on games' boxes which depicts if the game has violence or sexual content etc. and adds an overall rating such as 18+ or 3+.

What are the age classifications used by PEGI?

3, 7, 12, 16, 18

What are the seven aspects that PEGI look for when giving a game a rating (e.g. violence)?

Violence, Bad language, Sexual Content, Use of drugs, Gambling, Fear, Discrimination, Online games.

What is PEGI online? What does PEGI online regulate?

PEGI online was formed in 2007. It's an addition to the PEGI system for online games and aims to give young people in Europe improved protection against unsuitable online gaming content and to educate parents on how to ensure safe online play.

ASA:

What is the ASA's mission? 

Quoted from there website:

"Our mission is to ensure that advertising in all media is legal, decent, honest and truthful, to the benefit of consumers, business and society.

We aim to achieve our mission by getting better at regulating ads in all media, and in particular by:

• Making a success of regulating online ads
• Being an effective part of the response to societal issues shown to be affected by advertising
• Placing more emphasis on prevention rather than cure
• Being more efficient and in tune with consumers, business and society"

What are the ASA's values?

Quoted from there website:

"Our shared values are to be:

• Consistent and proportionate
• Reliable and ethical
• Fair and respectful to all
• Accessible and helpful
• Intelligent and thorough, but also timely and proportionate
• Open and accountable, acting with integrity and never being afraid to admit when we’re wrong
• An excellent team, inspiring excellence in each other"

Complaint:

The company that was advertising: Beko PLC

Why someone complained:

 Indesit challenged whether the claim "The UK's bestselling home appliance brand":

1. was misleading and could be substantiated, because they understood that the claim was based on a subset of the home appliances product group and not on the entire range of home appliance products; and

2. was misleading, because they believed that most viewers would not understand to what the qualifying text "GfK, Total MDA 6, volume sales, Aug12-Jul13" referred.

Whether the complaint was upheld and why: Upheld because the ASA understood that the claim "The UK's best-selling home appliance brand" was based on sales of GfK's MDA6 category.