Media Studies NEA – gaming front cover 

I intend to name the gaming magazine ‘’Azeroth Times’’ as I am trying to make the magazine based off the MMORPG game called ‘’World of Warcraft’’. For the masthead I intend to use a font commonly used within the game and I will include a shield similar to the one used within the ”World of Warcraft game front cover.This shield will be placed behind the ‘’Azeroth times’’ title to make the masthead more appealing and eye catching. In the gaming magazine front cover I plan to target the role playing games community as it is a broad audience which would perfectly suit a gaming magazine.To target the role playing games community, I have decided to create a character within the program ‘’Fuse’’ that will resemble an Orc from the game that I am basing my front cover on, and I will use the character as my main image in the front cover.The character will be positioned in a running pose in order to look more ferocious and grab the consumers attention.Behind the character I will add 3D effects which such as a drop shadow and a crack within the background in order to add more noise within the background of the gaming magazine cover as I believe it would be much more bland otherwise. To add onto the theme of World of Warcraft, I’m going to use a background which resembles an old piece of parchment as it will relate to the role playing games community more due to many of their games being based off fantasy worlds with swords,dragons and other mythical creatures.Along the sides of the main image I am going to add cover lines that will give insight info about what information the magazine includes. In order to appeal to my target audience more these cover lines will mention information that a role playing games community member would find interesting. For example I will mention in game competitions,guides and prizes to be won or redeemed within the game. I also plan to add a puff which will say ‘’chance to win a World of Warcraft token’’ as this will further interest my target audience and persuade them to purchase my product. The text within the puff will appeal to the target audience as it informs them that they can win 1 months worth of game subscription for the game ‘’World of Warcraft’’.

INTENTIONS

• World of Warcraft based gaming magazine
• Logo of game at the top ”world of warcraft weekly”
• Main colours = brown, blue green ( medieval theme to recreate RPG themes )
• Border to match the logo of the game
• recognizable image from game as main image
• plugs overlapping main image
• target audience = RPG community
• uses and gratifications = inform & educate, entertain

1. Barthes – Leading theorist of the study of semiotics (Roland Barthes) 

1. Pierce – father of the iconic indexical and symbolic sign theory 

1. Saussure – He was a Swiss linguist and semiotician. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiology  

1. Semiotics – Study of signs 

1. Sign – A gesture/action used to convey meaning, information or instruction 

1. Signifier – A signs physical word as distinct from its meaning  

1. Signified – the meaning or idea expressed by a sign, as distinct from the physical form in which it is expressed. 

1. Icon – a sign which has a characteristic in common with the thing it signifies, for example the word snarl pronounced in a snarling way 

1. Index – a sign or measure of something. 

1. Symbol – a mark or character used as a conventional representation of an object, function, or process 

1. Code – a system of words, letters, figures, or symbols used to represent others 

1. Dominant Signifier – a mainly accepted form of a sign 

1. Anchorage – when a piece of media uses another piece of media to reduce the amount of connotations in the first 

1. Ideology – A set of beliefs and values that form a persons or entities thoughts  

1. Paradigm – A typical example or pattern of something; a pattern or model.  

1. Syntagm – A syntagmatic relationship is one where signs occur in sequence or parallel and operate together to create meaning. 

1. Signification – The representation or conveying of meaning/ importance.  

1. Denotation – What is being shown by a symbol/object. What we can clearly see 

1. Connotation – What a symbol/object implies about its meaning/context 
3. Myth – A widely held but false belief or idea/ misinterpretation of the truth. 
4. Radical Text – when a text opposes the dominant ideology of an idea
5. Reactionary Text – A text conforming/agreeing with an ideology

Gaming Front Cover and Statement of intent

ICONIC SIGNS: 

– Image of gaming character 

-image of game logo 

INDEXICAL SINGS: 

-Magazine title 

-World of Warcraft logo 

-GTA VI logo 

-Xbox logo 

SYMBOLIC SIGNS: 

-Titles  

-Subheadings 

-Puffs 

-Cover Line 

– Buzz words  

– Colour 

Media Studies Summer Task – gaming front cover 

The gaming magazine will be called ‘’Game Planet’’ as I am trying to make the magazine come off as well known and retro styled. For the masthead I intend to use 3D fonts that will look similar old school arcade game titles.For my front cover for a gaming magazine I plan to target the role playing games community as it is a broad audience which would perfectly suit a gaming magazine.To target the role playing games community, I have decided to use an image from the game ‘’Assassins Creed’’ as my main image in the front cover.The image will show a main protagonist from one of the many games that have been released by Ubisoft in a ‘’Leap of Faith’’ position.I am using this image because the exclusive story will be about the ‘’Assassins Creed’’ series and  its new and upcoming games .This will allow me to include other conventions around the image as it wont take up much space on the cover. I intend to make the front cover predominantly red and white as it will compliment the character shown in the main image as he is wearing darker clothing. In the bottom corners of the front cover I plan to include multiple puffs and teasers in order to affect a broader audience, for example I will include a second image with a game title saying ‘’World of Warcraft Classic’’ and a buzz word underneath it saying ‘’What to expect from the rebirth of Vanilla WoW’’.This will interest many people from the role playing games community as the re-release of the 2004 ‘’World of Warcraft’’ is a highly anticipated event happening this year in summer 2019.In the other bottom corner of the magazine cover I intend to use  a buzz word saying ‘GTA VI Update, What’s going on?’. This will interest a large amount of people as GTA has an enormous community Rockstars 2013s ‘GTA V’ has been expecting a sequel for a long time. I also intend to include a banner mentioning other gift codes for games, goodies and contests.The banner will say something along the lines of ‘free code to xbox live included inside!’’ . Along the sides of the front cover I plan to include conventions such as cover lines to feature what is inside the magazine. The cover lines will mention other new game releases such as ‘’Final Fantasy VII remastered,Diablo Immortal,Elder Scrolls VI etc’’, gaming competition and tournament stories such as ‘’Leage of Legends World Championships,World of Warcraft Arena 1v1,Dota 2 world championships’’ and guides to games like ‘’Getting started in Diablo III, Learning the ropes in Red Dead Redemption Online, Tips and Tricks for Assassin’s Creed – Odyssey’’