Tuesday, 18 November 2014
Task 1
Hypodermic needle
Hypodermic needle model is the theory that the media control the public and have a huge impact and influence on what the public which either received a positive or negative reaction. An example of this is the war of the world’s broadcast of 193 which caused wide spread panic and mayhem. This sparked a research movement which aimed to disprove this theory, successfully they found out it was actually the audiences personal attributes which contributed to what they did individually when they read a piece of media.
Inoculation Theory:
Inoculation is a theory developed to strengthen existing attitudes and beliefs and build resistance to future counterarguments. For inoculation to be successful it is critical that a threat (motivation for resistance) is imposed upon these existing ideas and refutational preemption (ability to cognitively build defenses to potential counterarguments) takes place after the inoculation. The argument that is presented through inoculation must be strong enough to initiate motivation to maintain current attitudes and beliefs, but weak enough that the receiver will refute the counterargument. Inoculation has been proven successful through many different trials and research. This article attempts to highlight all vital parts of the theory, however, there is a large amount of quality research on the theory that was not mentioned. Also, while numerous studies have tested the theory, there continues to be a need for improvement and new hypotheses.
Two Step Flow Theory:
The Two-Step flow model is a theory that is broke up into two phases; the first phase is that an opinion leader gets information from a mass media product such as a newspaper, The internet or magazines. The next phase is for the opinion leader to then pass on the information to their Influential audience such as family; friends and peers however create their own opinion on it and give the information in a more opinionated version. An example of this was the Scotland independence vote, it was estimated 50% of the voters had been influenced by their opinion leaders.
The uses and Gratifications theory:
The use and gratification theory is the approach to understanding mass communication, when the audience have control over how the reader takes in the information that is presented to them. Also what the audience will do when they receive information such as actions and opinions. The audience choose the media that suits their needs and wants and are no longer viewed as passive. The basic models include Educate, Entertain and social interaction. Educate is the basic model that means being able to understand the information that the individual has obtained. Entertain is whether what the media portrays is to the audiences liking and interests. Finally social interaction is the ability for the media to produce a topic of conversation between other people. An example of this is the game Minecraft, This game can be played together in large groups this is an example of social interaction as well as entertainment, Education is present in many websites that show tutorials on how to build certain components for a structure or a certain crafting tool.
Reception Theory:
A branch of modern literary studies concerned with the ways in which literary works are received by readers. The term has sometimes been used to refer to reader‐response criticism in general, but it is associated more particularly with the ‘reception‐aesthetics’ (German, Rezeptionsästhetik) outlined in 1970 by the German literary historian Hans Robert Jauss. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics, Jauss argued that literary works are received against an existing horizon of expectations consisting of readers' current knowledge and presuppositions about literature, and that the meanings of works change as such horizons shift. Unlike most varieties of reader‐response theory, then, reception theory is interested more in historical changes affecting the reading public than in the solitary reader.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100407730
Task 1
Fps (First person shooter)
Halo 5
The Halo 5 : Guardians multiplayer has a set amount of space of where the player can go, but makes it possible for the player to be able to go anywhere they want to go on the map. The objective of the multiplayer section of this game can vary from Capture the flag to Assault (two teams must place a bomb at the enemy base whilst defending their base), however in the video below the game-play is of new game-mode called Breakout. Breakout is a team based objective where two teams of four fight with one life each and must kill the opposing team to win. The characters can interact with the player as, unlike the other Halo games, the character you play as will shout out certain phrases to other players to help in the game such as "I see one" or "Enemy down". Characters in this game, male and female are both seen as strong characters. An example of a strong female character from the Halo series is Sarah Palmer.
Battlefield Hardline
The Battlefield series has had a history of great maps because of the amount of destruction that can be made to the maps and the vast size of them. Battlefield Hardline steers away from the series main theme of military combat and creates a cops vs robbers game with high amounts of action and tons of destruction. Battlefield games have a variety of game-modes like Death Match and Conquest, however this seems like a new game-mode for the series. The objective of this new game-type is, as the robbers, you must collect as much money from the armored truck and escape with it, whilst being chased by the cops whose objective is to stop the robbers. Battlefield has had only two female characters appear in the whole of the series. You play as one in a fighter jet and the other is a character in the story of Battlefield 4.
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty has taken a different path in the last few years including advanced technology more into the stories. Call of Duty games like Black Ops II and Ghosts have had lots of technology in the stories in the shape of military equipment but Advanced Warfare is where technology is heavily based in the story with exo-skeletons, drop-ships and hover bikes. When Call of Duty : Ghosts was released the multiplayer it introduced the used of female characters for the first time in the Call of Duty series.
Halo 5
The Halo 5 : Guardians multiplayer has a set amount of space of where the player can go, but makes it possible for the player to be able to go anywhere they want to go on the map. The objective of the multiplayer section of this game can vary from Capture the flag to Assault (two teams must place a bomb at the enemy base whilst defending their base), however in the video below the game-play is of new game-mode called Breakout. Breakout is a team based objective where two teams of four fight with one life each and must kill the opposing team to win. The characters can interact with the player as, unlike the other Halo games, the character you play as will shout out certain phrases to other players to help in the game such as "I see one" or "Enemy down". Characters in this game, male and female are both seen as strong characters. An example of a strong female character from the Halo series is Sarah Palmer.
Battlefield Hardline
The Battlefield series has had a history of great maps because of the amount of destruction that can be made to the maps and the vast size of them. Battlefield Hardline steers away from the series main theme of military combat and creates a cops vs robbers game with high amounts of action and tons of destruction. Battlefield games have a variety of game-modes like Death Match and Conquest, however this seems like a new game-mode for the series. The objective of this new game-type is, as the robbers, you must collect as much money from the armored truck and escape with it, whilst being chased by the cops whose objective is to stop the robbers. Battlefield has had only two female characters appear in the whole of the series. You play as one in a fighter jet and the other is a character in the story of Battlefield 4.
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty has taken a different path in the last few years including advanced technology more into the stories. Call of Duty games like Black Ops II and Ghosts have had lots of technology in the stories in the shape of military equipment but Advanced Warfare is where technology is heavily based in the story with exo-skeletons, drop-ships and hover bikes. When Call of Duty : Ghosts was released the multiplayer it introduced the used of female characters for the first time in the Call of Duty series.
Tuesday, 9 September 2014
HA7 - Task 3 - Presentation of Research Results
Task 3 – Presentation of Research Results
My research gave me results I was fairly expectant of;.
I found that more people had not played the game than ones who had. Correlating this to the genders, there were more females who took my survey and this means that there are less females that play the game than males. In the industry, the survey answers can and are individually compared for example if a male answered no to playing gta, this will be added to the final result of finding out which gender played the game more.
50% of the answers said the age was under 18. This depends on how and where you focus your interest. I.e the age group, I gave most of my surveys to people who looked the young adults therefore it is no surprise if most of them are under 18. One of the answers was from a 31+ and this helps widen your results.
From my results there were more females who took my survey, there were less people who had played gta than ones who had and the age groups went in favour of under 18s. Now this can relate to all the previous questions and in the industry it isn't odd for companies and researchers to look for patterns. The pattern I see here is that under 18 young females do not consider themselves gamers and mostly do not play games.
These questions help categorise what area geographically, the game is played the most in so the companies know where to focus their energy more than other areas.
It appears that most of the surveyed people are single, one is married and one widowed. It is not uncommon for 'gamers' to be seem as or represented as single/lonely because that's what the society's perception is of this type of people. The stereotype is that gamers do not leave their rooms and hobbit holes for hours and hours on end and they are socially awkward thus being in a relationship is out of the question, so the stereotype says at least. Even if I was to disagree with that, I'd still be proven wrong because there is proof of primary research here showing that the highest chosen option was single.
Again, depending on where the survey is given questions like this will have reasonably predictable answers. For example its no surprise 99% of my answers said they're of the Caucasian background because my survey was given to people I knew from or outside college. In the industry a game can really take advantage of knowing their customer base' ethnicity because they can then think about how to expand within this certain race and how to reach out to other ethnicities of humans.
HA7 - Task 2 - Applying Research Techniques
Task 2 – Applying Research Techniques
To find out statistics about Grand Theft Auto 5 I created a simple questionnaire that consisted of 10 questions. These helped me gather quick and factual information provided by people who different professions, age groups and demographics.
The first question I asked was have you played GTA 5? With the options of a simple yes or no, it was easy for me to now find out how many people have or have not played the game.
Yes
|
41.67%
5
|
No
|
58.33%
7
|
| Total | 12 |
41.67% Said Yes and 58.33% said No so I instantly know more people have not played the game compared to ones who have. Information like this if used correctly can massively affect a product because making the right decisions after results gathered can help companies focus on the right demographic. For example
Relationship Status
As the stereotype goes, people who play games are single. My results say exactly that because 8/12 people said they were single, 2 in a relationship, 1 married and 1 widowed.By having the results show the players' age, martial status and gender, I'm able understand the diversity in the players of Grand Theft Auto 5. I found the majority of players were under the required age of 18 to play the game. There are more males than females who play the game despite the fact there were more females than males who took the questionnaire and there are more single people playing the game than of other statuses.
For qualitative research I asked questions that required an answer, in other
words these were open questions. I wanted to find out opinions that are not
strictly facts for example what is someone’s favourite aspect of the gameplay.
The answer to this
will be different for everyone because someone may prefer the singleplayer
aspect of the game and the story. Whereas another person may prefer the
multiplayer for whatever reason. We can see how this applies to people in the research I conducted as one of the people I researched said they like the 'free roaming and exploring' of the game. Compared to this, another feedback says they like the races. We can see how opinions of people differ on the same product, the same game with the same gameplay. It comes down to an opinion and preference and
for my qualitative research I decided to go for people’s opinions to show what
qualitiative data is compared to my previously illustrated quantitative data.
By asking a question like this, I not only ask people about the game but at the same time I get their opinion. If it was my own game I was surveying people about, with this question I would find out which character in my game (GTA 5 in this case) is most liked by the community.
By asking a question like this, I not only ask people about the game but at the same time I get their opinion. If it was my own game I was surveying people about, with this question I would find out which character in my game (GTA 5 in this case) is most liked by the community.
Most people favor the character Trevor and say its because 'he is very funny' and 'he is unpredictable and crazy'. With the feedback not only do I know what people's favorite character is but also why they like him/her or favor him.
As a games developer despite the company name or the development reasons, feedback on the game is important. It is crucial to know whether the game is liked whether there are bugs and if the game is liked. Here is an example of one of the simplest questions a developer can ask players. 'How could the game improve' this simple question will let players say anything that they think will improve the game and because the question is not limited in any sense, the answers can be very broad.
As we can see, one of the answers in completely different to the other. A feedback says 'Release more missions for the players to do' meaning they want more campaign and the developers can then look at making DLC content depending on how much demand there is for it by the community. The next answer says 'Make collectibles easier to find' and this answer is completely different to the other because this player wants a certain game mechanic to be slightly tweaked compared to the other demand that requires more work and additional content for the game.
HA7 - Task 1 - Research Techniques
Quantitative Research
1/2 of its types, quantitative research is numeric in data. The questions used in quantitative research are always looking for quick short answers that help categorize the person being surveyed. For example asking for their gender would have a simple answer, male or female. That question is used to sum up how many males and females were surveyed. Such questions are also referred to as closed or narrow questions because the answer requires specific and small amount of detail. Quantitative research is best used to categorize people into groups based on their feedback. Census finished a 10 year long research project in 2011 which was based on the people of England and Wales. It will tell us how many people live in each one. how old they are and what sex they are and when you mash that up with data from previous census', you can see how those places have changed.
Here is an example of quantitative research undertook by Census. The facts are based on numbers and not specific to someone's particular objective thought.
''Other key facts are:
• There were 27.6m men and 28.5m women in England and Wales.
• The population of England and Wales has grown by 3.7m in the 10 years since the last census, rising from 52.4m in 2001, an increase of 7.1%. This was the largest growth in the population in England and Wales in any 10-year period since census taking began, in 1801. It compares with a rise in population of 1.6m between 1991 and 2001
• The median age of the population in England and Wales was 39. For men, the median age was 38 and for women it was 40. In 1911, the median age was 25
• The percentage of the population aged 65 and over was the highest seen in any census at 16.4%, that is one in six people in the population
• There were 430,000 residents aged 90 and over in 2011 compared with 340,000 in 2001 and 13,000 in 1911
• There were 3.5m children under five in England and Wales, 406,000 more than in 2001
• In England and Wales the average population density was 371 people per square kilometre; however in London this figure was 5,200. If the London figures were excluded, the average population density for the rest of England and Wales was 321 people per square kilometre''
Here is research undertook by the Internet Advertising Bureau Gaming Britain. This survey particularly talks about the audiences in gaming and how we differ age and sex wise. It also talks about time patterns and how when we play our games differs for example any gaming and gaming except mobile gaming is played the most by all ages around mid evening (8pm-10pm)
Qualitative Research
2/2 Qualitative research is word data put in the simplest of terms. Instead of numbers and facts, qualitative research consists of open questions and the data is/can be subjective. Qualitative research asks people questions that make them think for example what do you feel about the color of your hair compared to a quantitative and closed question like what color is your hair. Your hair can be black and you would be just another figure in the bigger picture if this was quantitative research however when a question that asks of one's opinion is asked, there are a lot more words involved compared to a yes or no question. Qualitative research is used to find out what people think about things and it can be used by anyone to find out about anything. One of the industries its best used in is the gaming industry where consumers openly leave reviews of the game they have bought and this helps the developers and the companies to find out what it is about the game that people like or dislike. It also helps them design a sequel given enough information on what people wanted from the current version of the game. An example is Grand Theft Auto IV although the game was brilliant for it's time and people for completely different demographics would play, there were tiny details that could be added to make the game even better. How do we know what the next game should have? By looking at the reviews people have left for the game. When Rockstar announced GTA 5 people were excited because this company always delivers using the qualitative data they have gathered. To find out what people are expecting in from the game, all Rockstar had to do was release an official survey or use the easier method that is, search what people want in Gta 5
10 Things we want in Gta 5:
http://www.cheatcc.com/extra/top10_thingswewouldliketoseeingta5.html
Here is an example of the review system that best defines qualitative data
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft-auto-v
Profiling
Audience profiling is a term used to describe the
characteristics of those who read, view, or listen to a given medium, such as a
television channel or a magazine. Such a profile generally contains economic
information, such as approximate income, home ownership, car ownership, and
buying patterns. It may also contain information about social habits and
geographic location. An audience profile can be particularly important to
advertisers who want to display their advertisements where people likely to buy
their products or services will see them. General social and economic
information about the audiences of various media sources can greatly help
advertisers choose the most effective placement for their advertisements. The
audience profile shows what percentages of the audience earn various levels of
income, the amount of time spent on vacation, and similar information. An
audience profile helps an advertiser target its ads better.
Demographics
Studies of a population based on factors such as age, race, sex, economic status, level of education, income level and employment, among others. Demographics are used by governments, corporations and non-government organizations to learn more about a population's characteristics for many purposes, including policy development and economic market research.
Geo-demographics
Geodemographics is the study of the population and its characteristics, divided according to regions on a geographical basis. This involves application of clustering techniques to group statistically similar neighbourhood and areas Audience Profiling.
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer profile. Market researchers conduct psychographic research by asking consumers to agree or disagree with activities, interests, opinions statements. Results of this exercise are combined with geographic place of work or residence, demographic age, education, occupation, etc.characteristics to develop a more 'lifelike' portrait of the targeted consumer segment.
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