EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ECONOMIC FACTORS IN THE GAMING
INDUSTRY. USE MINECRAFT TO SUPPORT YOUR ANSWER.
Ownership affects a products production, distribution and circulation. Specifically in the case of Minecraft when it was originally owned by creater Markus Perrson under the company Mojang a niche company with a small budget. This affected production in that it was produced to be a sandbox game and only distributed via PC. Minecraft was not officially released until November 2011, therefore was supported by word of mouth to circulate amoung the niche audience of programmers and moders. In 2012 Minecraft became multidevice available on xbox. The ownership of Minecraft changed when it was sold for $2.5 billion to microsoft, a large conglomerate in the gaming industry. under this new ownership production has changed as versions of the game on Nintendo switch and nintendo DS are available to download. With the gaming industry worth $100 billion microsoft makes up a large amount of this number with it's ownership, therefore has the money to advertise and further distribute and circulate the game expanding it's market. As of now over 122 million copies of the game have been sold across all platfroms. New technologies mean that producers can target audiences differently in low economic contexts then how they target them from high ones. New technology means that physical copies are not needed to play the game as it can be downloaded on multiple devices due to the proliferation of hardware. In a low economic context under production of mojang audiences for minecraft were targeted through word of mouth appealing to programmers. In 2011 Minecraft synergised with sony allowing for minecraft to move out of it's niche market and appealing to older audiences loyal to sony. In a high economic context however, under production of microsoft as of 2015 new modes of the game including storymode and minecraft realms target a wider audience of families. Audiences interact differently due to it's multimedia nature, therefore audeinces can engage on any platform. The sandbox gametype allows audiences to be the producers creating active audeinces. With the youtube and yogcast videos this further allows audiences to interact with game as well as eachother creating communites and is used as a method of audience advertising.
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