Video GamesTypes of Audience

Key Terms• Casual Audiences – do not experience the product as a

special event.• Devoted/Dedicated Audience – makes a specific choice to

access a media product and will return to it several times. They will identify themselves with some media products over others and will enjoy the experience. They are likely to play MMOFPS as a single player.

• Avid/Loyal Audience – will want to involve themselves in a media product beyond a simple (often passive) engagement – the chosen product becomes part of a person’s life. They are likely to subscribe to an online game to access more rewards and they may well take part in the social networking aspects of the game. They will also want to buy associated merchandise.

• Niche Audience – a small audience with a specific interest.

• Core/Primary audience – main audience for the text

• Mainstream – conventional audience – the most amount of people

• Demographic – measurement of the audience in terms of gender/age/income etc.

• Appeal of Video Games• Immersive nature of some gaming narratives –

audiences not passive, but active participants and can interact not only with the game’s characters and its narrative but with other gamers.

• Games can create a world free from consequence where violent and immoral actions are rewarded - gamers flee the stresses of modern life for the hyper-reality of the game world – first person shooter games…

• Many games offer simple choices – but those with complex narratives that offer choices that can drastically affect the world the game is set in as well as the narrative e.g

• Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream for Playstation in 2010) – gives the player a number of choices that determine which characters survive and which narrative resolution the player experiences. The main characters can be killed and certain actions may lead to different scenes and up to 17 different endings.

• The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, for a number of platforms, 2012) released in five separate episodes – episodic point and click adventure based on the comic book series and linked to the TV series. The player controls the game’s main protagonist and he survives by solving simple puzzles within the game world and interacting with other characters. The player is rewarded with the unfolding of the narrative and the choices they make can affect how the characters interact with the protagonist. The player can choose responses when in conversation with other characters. In one scene the player has to decide which one of two characters will survive and subsequent scenes will play out differently.

• PEGI Rating System – Pan European Game Information – similar to BBFC Film Classifications – suggest a suitable age for games (3,7,12,16 and 18) based on the content of the game. E.g. Pegi 18 may contain violence unsuitable for under eighteens.

• Concern – especially first person shooter games – immerse the gamer in the experience to the extent they can be influenced by the ideology of the game – for instance in games like Battlefield 3 where the enemies are Iranian terrorists, the PLR– could both play on and encourage racial prejudice and a simplistic view of world events amongst the gamers.

• Fear of media measures being injected into an audience to persuade them to act a certain way derives from The Hypodermic Syringe Theory. This runs counter to the Uses and Gratifications Theory that suggests audiences are active consumers of media products and pick and choose the gratifications they get from them.

• Desensitisation Theory – long-term exposure to certain media messages eventually makes the audience susceptible to the product’s message.

• Two-Step Flow Theory – suggests there are opinion leaders (like gaming magazines such as PlayGamer or PlayStation or PCGamer or gaming magazine apps like Atomix, the first exclusive gaming magazine for iPad) that can influence people’s opinions and attitudes – think also of ‘celebrities’ who endorse games