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.

Dark Souls II Case Study

Name of game: Dark Souls 2

Release date: March 11th 2014

Institutions behind the game (game studio/publisher): FromSoftware in Japan and Namco Bandai in the rest of the world.

Print:

Print adverts;




On the print adverts, the viewers can easily identify the game name situated at the top alongside what edition the game is (collectors, black armour, standard etc). The typical font used in the souls game series is used once again on the print adverts which can somewhat be a feeling of nostalgia to the fans. The slogan 'Prepare to die' is surprisingly not shown on these print adverts because these are used to show what editions the game has instead of a print advert of the game itself. The image of the knight wearing the certain armour is used in different things such as the collectors art book, the game cover itself and even the CD. The colour scheme resembles a dull atmosphere of purely grey (the colour known to be colourless) and black (possibly smoke) with fire as the background.

Reviews;

'Despite this schism, it’s definitely a nice world to look at.' Positive.
'The game looks gorgeous when you're roaming around outside in a naturally lit area, or carrying around a torch.'  Positive.
'Iconic bosses also provide a ton of memorable moments of pain and regret that eventually become triumph.' Positive.

Dark souls 2 was also shown in the EDGE gaming magazine. This is extremely effective in promoting the game because gamers and fans can learn more about the game or even find out about it through this magazine as some fans who are interested in gaming might read these magazines but are not notified through social media when a new game is released. This allows a wider range of audience to be targeted.
This front cover was especially successful because it shows the same knight as the background (which became as somewhat a logo to the game) and shows other reviews of related things such as PS4 or XBOX ONE. 

Broadcast:

TV advert;

Game trailer;

This trailer is effective because not only does it show you sections of the game and game play, it also gives the audience a brief of the story of the game too. This is really good for the gamer fans because they will be interested in the plot behind the game.

Another huge way the game is promoted is through YouTube. Dark Souls 2 is played by many YouTubers but the most YouTuber promoting this game is Pewdiepie. Pewdiepie is a video game commentator and player and most games he plays his fan base sooner or later buys the game. He has the most subscribed YouTube channel therefore since he does a Let's Play series on Dark Souls 1 and 2, the game is promoted to millions of people worldwide simply through Pewdiepie.

E-Media:

The main website for the game is www.darksoulsii.com/uk/.  This website is essential for core fans and gamers because it tells you all the latest news relating to the game, the website has links to the games Facebook and Twitter pages with recent tweets and comments shown. You can pre-order the game from that website as well as the date of release of the PC version (25th of April 2014). Furthermore, there is a designated Media section where all the screenshots of the game can be found as well as videos (past trailers etc). On addition, the large community can be found on the website and can be accessed via different ways such as the forums where fans and gamers can share there experience playing Dark Souls 2 and ask for tips and advice.

YouTube examples;

As said above, this helps promote the games as the subscribes (especially on Pewdiepie's) might like the game and buy them themselves.

The Facebook page of Dark Souls 2 is literally called  Dark Souls 2 and has 46,009 likes currently.

These screen grabs promote the game additionally because they show different sections of the game section. The different areas show how the game has a large variety of different places to explore. Also, the award from one of the best gaming websites in the world IGN of being the best game on March is hugely important in the promotion of Dark Souls 2 because gaming fans who might not know about this game but check what are the best games according to IGN regularly will see this game and might buy it.

The Twitter hash tag for the game is @DarkSoulsGame

The campaign on Twitter was unfortunately not so successful due to the lack of followers in being slightly under 8,000.