Ownership and the Assassin's Creed franchise
Explain how ownership shapes media products. Refer to Assassin’s Creed to support your points
How does ownership 'shape' a media product? Students often have an issue with the wording of this question. However, if we boil things down nice and simply, it just refers to how a media product is the product of the production context. To put this even more simply, a big company is more likely to produce a BIG product. A small, indie company is more likely to producer a smaller product, with less resources. Ubisoft are a huge multinational media conglomerate that specialise in making BIG, AAA games. So what are some examples of Assassin's creed being the product of a huge conglomerate?
- Huge funding and resources give their games high production values, including high quality lighting, high render distance, detailed textures, NPC quality, sound quality
- Specific audience targeting. The assassin’s creed series targets a vast audience through high profile advertising campaigns
- Ubisoft are a conglomerate and an established brand. Consumers are more likely to buy games from companies they trust, which gives Ubisoft more revenue
- Multiplatform! Can be played on many different consoles, which creates substantially more work
- Political bias: the AC games lack a political bias! This allows the games to appeal to huge target audiences
- Multinational developer creates multinational games. A variety of different cultures, languages and other elements
- Diversification. AC has been spun off in to many different media
- High production values, excellent graphics. Realism, textures, sharpness, movement and animation, voice acting, sound effects, soundtrack
- Extremely large budget
- Multiplatform - makes games significantly harder to develop for!
- Multinational ownership leads to a multinational product that can appeal to consumers from around the world. A range of different languages and cultures
- Inclusive representation: allows Ubisoft to minimise risk and to maximise profit
- Presold audiences. The AC series has big brand identity, which is only possible for a big studio
- Uncomplicated political perspectives which ill not alienate audiences
