This unit is all about cold, hard facts
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| You'll find loads of key facts on the YouTube channel |
How significant are economic factors in the videogame industry? Refer to the Assassin's Creed franchise in your answer
Above is a potential question that could come up in the exam. In today's lesson, we're going to work out how to answer it.
First of all, what does it actually mean? Well, economic factors are broadly to do with making money. The question asks 'how significant" is making money to the videogame industry? Well, the answer should be pretty clear: economic factors are very significant for the videogame industry!
So how does the videogame industry make money? We've already looked at a few examples.
We have learned that videogames are a specialised industry.
We have looked at how videogames are developed and marketed.
And, in just the last session, we looked at how important trailers are for marketing the Assassin's Creed franchise to both niche and mass audiences.
One thing we have not looked at so much is the company that actually make the Assassin's Creed franchise; Ubisoft themselves.
Ubisoft - a multinational conglomerate videogame developer
Task - Before you do anything else, watch this video on Ubisoft and media diversity, making notes as you watch
It explores once more how Ubisoft minimise risk and maximise profit (Hesmondhalgh), and goes over the concepts of vertical and horizontal integration. This concepts are essential for any industry response in the exam!
Task - research Ubisoft and their games. You can find instructions in the image below. You cannot pick an Assassin's Creed game for this bit!
Assassin's Creed: building a fact file
The exam specification states that you can refer to the Assassin's Creed franchise as a whole, but it would be good to pick out a particular game to make reference to in the exam.
I have already stated I would like you to make reference to the (as yet unreleased) Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and its marketing material (particularly its trailer). For this task, you will research any other Assassin's Creed game.
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| Wikipedia is great for harvesting raw facts! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! |
Task - pick an Assassin's Creed game that has been released, and research it to answer the following questions
(If you really don't know what game to pick, then let's make this easy: you're doing Assassin's Creed: Unity)
Use Wikipedia and other sources to research the following
- Title
- Premise (what country and era is it set in?)
- Platform (eg Playstation 4 and Xbox One)
- Release date
- Development time and cost
- Which studio developed it? (eg Ubisoft Montreal)
- Commercial success (how much money did it make?)
- Re-releases and special editions
- RRP on release
- Critical reception (google name of game and 'Metacritic' to make this easy. Post a couple of review quotes)
- Merchandise
- Anything else?