Zynga

Business model

the model Zynga uses is based on payments through credit cards and and players buying things within the game. In one of the games your characters uses energy an eventually your characters energy will run out, the player can buy more energy from Zynga using paypal.  Also players can buy points to get better in the game and upgrade their characters. Another method used to make money would be Zynga would send out a questionnaire that would have to be payed for, this will improve the game and include other add ons. People will pay credit cards for DLC and other add ons. They also use advertising fees to gain money.

Farmville 2

On 26 june farmville 2 was announced an it was later released in september 2012. It will have a 3D feature and full 360 degree turning, a massive advancement from the first game. Farmville 2 will be marketed through adverts from facebook as this game is mainly played on this social networking site. There will be adverts announcing farmville 2 all the time on facebook and it will get as many people interested as possible. There will be a press event called 'unleashed' and this will market the game to investors and get the game more popularity, the fact that the game has already got into a press event suggests that it going to be big. I have also found that there has been youtube adverts released prompting people to get a facebook account and to 'join in the fun.' Farmville 2 has also announced that there will be a new petting zoo feature involved in the game and this is where characters can buy animals an let people visit their animals, they can visit their friends animals and trade with them and buy new ones.

Sky-lander giants notes

Skylanders is a new way of marketing games and a way of getting people to purchase the game and much more, it is almost like a modern version of trading cards such as Pokemon or match attacks as it encourages younger children to 'collect them all.' It was originally released in 2011 with a game called 'Spyros adventure' an sold millions an proved to be a very successful product, as it was the most sold toy of 2011. Skylanders Giants was released in 2012 and already has up to 32 characters to collect with more to be rumored on the way. It has now became a huge franchise spreading over the USA and Europe and is still expanding. In this game it involves buying actual figures to progress in the game, for example if in one mission the person needs a tall character, they would have to go out and buy an actual tall figure and unlock that character. different characters have different abilities. It has proved so popular that it is no longer only on PC but is now on all consoles and is set to be on the new WII U, and from the research i have done i found that the original SkyLander series sold over 30 million toys, this shows how popular the game is. Skylanders is made by Activision who are responsible for a variety of other games such as the Crash Banticoot series, the Call of Duty series, Spryo the dragon, Tony Hawk series and even Guitar hero, the game is expected to be fairly good because of its developers history. In my opinion i think the Skylander figures are a bit expensive for what they are but this is expected because the Skylander franchise is the first of its kind and nobody else has thought of this idea until now, Activision would have to charge a fair amount to make sure they make a profit. I found that you can buy Skylander starter and booster packs from Amazon for around 30-50 pounds wich will get you a few characters, if you ask me i would say that this is a bit expensive for a toy, but i have been proven wrong because skylanders giants is already selling and doing amazingly well. the figures on their own are fairly expensive, ranging from 15-19 pounds from a lot of places. This game gets a lot of advertisment through television and internet sites as children are always looking for new characters and new levels that are set to come out, but from reading forums and websites i found that a lot of people are finding this new way of 'gaming' to be a bit of a con and a way of ripping people off and in my opinion i have to agree with these comments made, i cant see how this game correctly priced and how it sells so well, why cant they bring the characters out in DLC rather than figures. Although with it selling so well, maybe this is the 'new' way to game?

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy is where two parts of the same company work together and collaborate to ultimately produce a single fianl product or goal.

Symbiosis is where different companies will work together to make a profit, for example a company could allow another company to make toys of their products, for example disney could pay a toy company to make toys of their films, they are still not in the same company, just working together.

Rockstar Family Task

The Rockstar family

Rockstar Japan- rockstar Japan were never any other company but they became part of the rockstar family in 2005 and still are.  They represent all localization of Rockstar titles in all of Japan.

Rockstar Leeds- Rockstar Leeds joined the Rockstar family in 2004 and are still a part of this family, they were previously known as Mobius Entertainment and were based in Leeds England.  They helped create Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Vice City for the PSP. The most recent game from the Leeds Studios is the microsoft windows version of L.A. Noire and was very successful.

Indie games- the impossible game

Indie games are small games made by a very small group or company or a single individual person, who do not get any support from game publishers.  Indie games rely massively on digital distribution as it is the cheapest way to get their games out there without paying manufacturing and shipping costs.  Minecraft is an example of a game made by a single individual, and it has been very successful.  Indie games usually hardly have any budget or have a very little one, this means the game cannot be 'amazing' but still have the capability of being quite fun.  Alot of indie games strated out on the pc as flash games and get made into better more in depth games.  Indie games have their own section in games consoles such as the xbox live market place, it has a massive wide variety of indie game that you can buy or trial.  Indie games are becoming a mssive market in the gaming world as more cretive people are thinking of new ideas foe new games, this means more and more indie games are oming about all the time! There are many cases of small indie games sarting small and ending massive like, minecraft, super-meat boy amd many others. Indie games do not have the funding to compete with AAA games that are being produced as these 'bigger' games have always had the graphical and funding advantages, although indie games can still pack a punch as there is a whole audiance who much rather prefer indie games to the AAA blockbusters and this market is ever growing.
The impossible game

 The impossible game is an indie game made and developed by FlukeDude that is small indie company and was realeased on November 23rd 2009. This happens to be the only game that they have developed but will soon produce more. In this game you are a moving cube on a platfrom based game, the aim of the game is to get passed as many obsticles as possible without dying or failing. This game is extremely addictive and very, very frustrating! The cube moves quickly and you have to perfectly time your jump over things and make sure you dont die, you can put checkpoints down but if your good you will do it in one! The music is very catchy and gets stuck in your head but can also be very distracting at the same time, it was originally a flash game but then got brought onto the ipod touch and is now on the xbox 360 indie games section and has sold millions. i bought this game on my ipod and got very addicted to it for a while, up to the point where i got really stuck and 'rage quitted' if you will. i have got the trail on the xbox 360 an strongly recomend this game it is very hard and very fun.

Reality is broken

1. They're the world of war craft fans who are so intent on mastering the chellenges of their favourite game that, collectively, they've written a quarter of a million articles on the WOWwiki- creating the single largest wikipedia.

2. In the United states alone, there are 183 million active gamers

3. 69 percent of all heads of households play coputers and video games

4. 97 percent of youth play video games.

5. 40 percent of all gamers are women!

notes on indie games

Tent pole buisness model: this is where a company will creaste a game that will almost give their company a kind of stereotype to what most their games will be like in the future.  This alows the company to make their target market more to what they are aiming for in later games.  They will release a blockbuster game to get the publics attention annd m,ake sure that their game is always going to on the market an this will make people buy their future games.  They can then take risks when creating new games an make games that they usually wouldnt make.  For example Grand Theft Auto made alot of money Rockstar allowing them to invest in smaller other games.

The Hollywood model-

GTA- Hot Coffee MOD

The hot coffee mod was a mini game that was going to be put into the GTA game but developers decided against it although, they did leave it within the games coding, this means that if somebody knew how to hack this coding then Rockstar would get into some serious trouble. Unfortunately for Rockstar thats exactly what happened. The mini game includes a sexually aimed game with the main character and hios girlfriend. By the end of July 2005 the minigame had gained a fair bit of controversy on PC, PlayStation and xbox and it had obviously offended alot of people. This MOD effected the games age rating because originally the game was rated as 'Mature' and after the MOD got released it was then changed to an '18' rating, this also  effected sales as because the age rating had gone up alot of younger players could no longer access the game. The stakeholders lost money because they took the games of the shelves for a while, although one thing it did do was get the game publicity, this was good because it made the game more known an most likely increased the sales in the long run. The platform holders may have been effected because it may have of given them a bad name as people would associate these platforms with bad content and this may put people off buying them consoles. Retailers would of been effected in the same way as if people saw it in their shops then it may put them off buying from there and they would lose sales.