17-11-17

Call Of Duty WWII
Call Of Duty WWII has sold 57% more copies than the previous one (Infinite Warfare) 
1.8 million copies sold in the first week 
Released on the 3rd November 2017 
Sells for $/£50
Earned over $500m in 3 days

·      Mine craft & Technological change? By the development of Microsoft Realms & online subscription payments Minecraft & Technological change?

Physical copies of Minecraft were often released six months after the downloadable version, most likely as a way to limit the impact of piracy, hacking and file sharing.

A chance to offer digital versions of the same game across the Windows 10 operating system to promote the Microsoft brand across home computers, a form of synergy. 

Users were often encouraged to download the game through the cloud servers rather than a physical copy of the game which would incur more of a cost for the institution. 

The introduction of Minecraft Realms (2013) has tried to give the producers more control over the distribution and circulation of the game since some pro-am consumers were creating their own virtual spaces and hacks across illegitimate servers. 

It is an official subscription-based server (£5.59 a month) hosting service that allows players to create and manage their own private Minecraft servers. Hosted by Mojang

Realms provides an easy and fast way to allow owners to manage their gaming content.

In Minecraft Java Edition, Realms also allows players to choose from a list of minigames to play temporarily, as well as several pre-made world template

     What is your view on the role of game producers protecting themselves and its customers from hacking.

        My view is that game producers should be protecting themselves a from hacking because they have worked hard and spent a lot of money on trying to produce a game. They're profits and revenue will go down because of someone else making a potentially cheaper knock off game. Customers need to be protected because they nave have private information on the database. 

What is view on accessing games through piracy.

     The Main reasons why people hack games through piracy is because they may not be able to afford the game but they really want to play it. 

·      Patterns of ownership and control. Recognize the way Minecraft developed as a grassroots movement in Mojang. Recognize how “Microsoft Studios” have diversified the brand and product offerings

Founded in 2009 by Markus “Notch” Persson who developed Minecraft.

Following the release of the game in 2011 it has sold 121 million copies worldwide.

It is a grassroots program meaning the program developed through input from its users.

Microsoft Studios bought out Mojang and the intellectual property rights of Minecraft in

2014 for 2.5 $Bn. 

Mojang Studios is the only first-party studio in Europe.

Microsoft Studios is the video game production wing for Microsoft, responsible for the development and publishing of games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Games for Windows, Steam, Windows Store and Windows Phone platforms

Produced Halo and Fifa- teenagers and young adults 

Microsoft work with third party development studios. Their decision to invest US$2.5 billion to purchase Mojang was taken as Minecraft enjoyed global success and a loyal fan base. This meant that they would  receive long term revenue  

Other collaborations with games developers includes Telltale Games who helped develop the Minecraft: Story Mode in 2015. Playstation versions were developed by 4J Studios.

The vision of the founder Markus Persson to use Mincraft as a grassroots (bottom up) collective for the development of the brand appears to be lost.

Following his transfer of intellectual property rights to Microsoft. There is evidence to suggest that Persson did not wish to develop a virtual reality version of the game with Oculus.

Under Microsoft's ownership plans to work on a virtual reality version of Minecraft were renewed.

Question.  Discuss whether you believe “independent” game developers and prosumers need to surrender their creative license to conglomerate interests (Microsoft) to maximise profits. 

I think that independent game developers should try and be in business with big conglomerates as long as they get it still have some input into the game. I think this because they can make more profit and the game can become worldwide known and successful.  The conglomerate will have to pay a big sum of money to the independent developer so that they can potentially create new games and sell them as well. 



The significance of economic factor. Recognise why Minecraft’s production costs under Mojang were substantially lower compared to Mainstream games producers. Recognise how Minecraft is linked to Not for profit organisations

Budgets for games vary and Minecraft is a good example of a game that was made and developed using readily available open source software within the gaming community; creating the original Minecraft using Java gave it the advantage of being cross-platform: it will run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Other mainstream games that require entire teams of programmers, artists and engineers to make video games that have budgets equal or exceeding that of mainstream films.  

COD cost $250 million to produce, Grand Theft Auto cost $265 million. 

Call of Duty is a first-person shooter video game franchise. The series began on Microsoft Windows, and later expanded to consoles and handhelds. Several spin-off games have been released

Minecraft has also been linked to non-profit projects such as the UNs Block by Block project, which encourages communities around the world to redesign their neighbourhoods using Minecraft. An educational version has also been developed, MinecraftEdu (2012), which has several applications to help teach subject and develop a culture of computer programming amongst digital natives. 

COD- 'may contain content inappropriate for children'. 17+. Swearing, blood, blowing things up, fighting, sounds. flashing lights. http://www.esrb.org. Since 2003 it earned $10 billion. Marketing with teasers up 6 months before release, buy new maps between launches, using faces everyone would recognise- Kevin Spacey, treat every launch as a comeback, costs $50 to $100 million to launch, relays on China, TV adverts. 

Minecraft was marketed through 81 blog posts in a month and youtube videos,  he uses discounts, time pressure and experiments with different revenue models. Less market budget so there is a big difference in early minecraft and Call Of Duty. 

Maintaining audiences

The cultural impact of Minecraft is significant .  Much of Minecraft’s success was due to word of mouth and audiences sharingtheir own mods and game footage across web forums and video sharing sites such as YouTube. 

Different versions of Minecraft were released to entice different audiences, moving away from creation only narratives to include story modes, spectator modes and multi-player functionality across Minecraft Realms. 

Lego:  Minecraft’s association with LEGO was done to

–encourage younger audiences

–Develop merchandise opportunities

Culturally, other developers and games studios have made intertextual references to Minecraft across games such as Runescape and The Elder Scrolls V

In 2019 there will be a joint venture with Warner Brothers to release Minecraft the movie, this will be anticipated as having as much commercial success as The Lego Movie, also a Warner Brothers Movie. No doubt, there will be several spin-offs as a result of this

Growing the brand using youtube videos from people who aren't related to microsoft in any way is a good way to maintain and gain players. This can be because you feel like it is a true point of view about the game. Having people of all different ages reviewing things makes it more relatable .Joining brands such as lego is a good way to maintain and gain audience because the lego company may have a bigger audience. The lego minecraft set 21118 coast £289.99 to buy. 

Lady Gaga, South Park and The Simpsons have also parodied Minecraft. All of this benefits the game by heightening its exposure to audiences. Making it more publicly aware because these are all popular brands and there is a famous you tuber minecraft player in the music video. This changes what the target audience is because all of the companies doing parodies have differently aged target audiences. 

Regulatory framework

UK Video Standards Council applies the PEGI rating system to Minecraft. (Pan European Game Information)

It is regarded as being family friendly and the initial Minecraft series was rated a PEGI 7 but the later series is higher

The introduction of Minecraft Stories were classified higher because narratives and dialogue were being introduced. 

Minecraft- 

Tetris- 

Minecraft Xbox 1 edition is rated PEGI 7 because it contains non realistic violence

Minecraft and Tetris have different ratings because Tetris contains no speech, sounds or violence and no flashing light 

Minecraft Realms are hosted on specialised servers by Mojang.

The terms and conditions require users to comply to the following regulations:, it must

•not be offensive to people;

•not be illegal or unlawful;

•be honest and not mislead, trick or exploit anyone else nor impersonate others;

•not infringe anyone's copyright or other rights;

•not be racist, sexist or homophobic;

•not be bullying or abusive;

•not damage our or another person's reputation;

•not include pornography;

•not include advertising.

They have done these regulations os that people will  diseases such as epilepsy won't be harmed and young children won't get potentially scared. 

Minecraft was developed using Java code which meant that it could be used on a variety of devices form iOS to PC’s and android phones. This makes it more widely available for different audiences. 

The use of Java has meant that there are several rival and clones to the game Minecraft. http://castleminer.com/ is just one example of a game with remarkable similarities and there is much scope for debate about how you go about copyrighting ideas if everyone is using open source software. Different caprices of the clones can mean they want to buy that version instead.

When Microsoft purchased Mojang there was a surge in clone titles for rival consoles, such as Nintendo.