A level Media Exam Blog

 Audience Read this App Store description and the customer reviews for The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions:   1) What game information is provided on this page? Pick out three elements you think are important in terms of making the game appeal to an audience. The screenshots of gameplay on iPhone and iPad, the game description and the rating/reviews. 2) How does the game information on this page reflect the strong element of participatory culture in The Sims? It writes how audiences are able to choose, create and play with their own freedom 3) Read a few of the user reviews. What do they suggest about the audience pleasures of the game?  I think is it diversion where players are so immersed into the game it becomes their new reality. The constant demand for more updates with newer feature/objects shows how players actually want the game to reflect their real life but in a better and self controlled way. Participatory culture Read this academic journ...

  Part 1: Background reading on Gamergate Read this Guardian article on Gamergate 10 years on. Answer the following questions: 1) What was Gamergate?  A harassment campaign that broadened to include all women working in video game development or the gaming press, as well as the industry’s LGBTQ+ community. 2) What is the recent controversy surrounding narrative design studio Sweet Baby Inc?  Sweet Baby Inc is secretly forcing game developers to change the bodies, ethnicities and sexualities of video game characters to conform to “woke” ideology. They think that Sweet Baby has written and controlled almost every popular video game of the past five years, shutting straight white men out. 3) What does the article conclude regarding diversity in videogames? Nobody is forcing diversity into video games. It is happening naturally, as players and developers themselves diversify. Gamergate didn’t intimidate women out of video games 10 years ago, and we won’t be intimidated now. P...

 Language / Gameplay analysis Watch The Sims: FreePlay trailer and answer the following questions: 1) What elements of gameplay are shown? Character customisation, house living, customisation in general, interaction with other sims, wedding, pets, teens, night life (disco/club) 2) What audience is the trailer targeting? Targeting younger adults and teens due to the representation of work and adult living while also appealing to a younger teen audience due to the sandbox aspect of the sims. 3) What audience pleasures are suggested by the trailer? Diversion- players are able to make a whole new persona in game and live their dream life away from reality and creativity in designing characters and homes, social interaction through gameplay. Personal identity- Create characters on people around them to make it seem as if its their real life. Now watch this walk-through of the beginning of The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions: 1) How is the game constructed? It is c...

 1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential). 2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three specific aspects from Figure 1 (the Google Home advert) that you could have mentioned in your answer (e.g. selection of image, framing and focus, colour, text etc.) - Reinforces white, western, middle-class representation of family life to the exclusion of other backgrounds (race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, class). Presents the white, western ‘2.4 children’ average as desirable, aspirational lifestyle – some audiences will reject this. - Google presenting its smart speaker as a ‘natural’ part of home life will be strongly rejected by audiences concerned with data, privacy and the power technology companies such as Google have in modern western societies. 3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (Hesmondhalgh - validit...

Factsheet #107 - Fandom Read Media Factsheet #107 on Fandom . Use our Media Factsheet archive on the M: drive Media Shared (M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets) or log into your Greenford Google account to access the link. Read the whole of Factsheet and answer the following questions: 1) What is the definition of a fan? Fans do more than just like or even love a particular media text, ‘true fans’ have a devotion that goes beyond simply consuming media texts, and is, as Matt Hills argues, part of a person’s identity in much the same way as gender, class and age define who we are. 2) What the different types of fan identified in the factsheet? Hardcore/True Fan ,Newbie, Anti-fan 3) What makes a ‘fandom’? Fandoms exhibit a ‘passion that binds enthusiasts in the manner of people who share a secret — this secret just happens to be shared with millions of others.’ Fandoms are subcultures within which fans experience and share a sense of camaraderie with each other and engage in partic...

Language and contexts Homepage Go to the Voice homepage and answer the following: 1) What news website key conventions can you find on the Voice homepage? Top menu bar: range of content such as 'hard' and 'soft' news to appeal to target audience. Subscription icon: Diversification/convergence -> print media to online content stay in the loop uses + gratification -> sense of surveillance information gained Advertisements: marketing jobs for target audience ad for book on the history of The Voice -> example of product placement Variety of thumbnails offer content linked to top menu bar (hard + soft news) feature/represent the black community  Images centrally placed to grab target audience's attention. Attempt to hold interest through digital content (clickbait) 2) What are some of the items in the top menu bar and what does this tell you about the content, values and ideologies of the Voice? Drop down from top-menu bar  uses + gratifications - diversion...