Media Effects Question

Video Game Statistics (America)

• The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) ‘Essential Facts About The Video Game Industry 2022’

• 65% of American adults play video games
• 71% of American children play video games
• 215.5 million active video game players across USA

42% said that their preferable game type was ‘shooter’ games and 41% said ‘simulation’

Metroid: Prime 2 Echoes

• Released in 2004, Nintendo

• Narrative is centred around “violent game play” and the objective to kill opponents.

• The multiplayer function allows players to take part in two modes: one “in which players attempt to kill their opponents as many times as possible within a set amount of time” and one “which focuses on collecting coins that injured characters drop”
• Narrative is pre-written, leaving less room for player input or interactivity. Audiences become more passive as they view the violent action and the effect this has. (Hypodermic needle theory – Laswell) Linking to Gerbner who suggests that repeated intake of violence on screen could mean that violence is slightly desensitised for the player, meaning they are more likely to uptake these kind of acts – “a kind of monkey-see-monkey-do effect”

Sims Freeplay

• Released in 2011, EA

Player has the ability to create their own avatar which they ‘design’ before entering the game play.

Is played on mobile devices, meaning that the game is easy to access/portable, as phone user enters their online existence they are also creating a new existence in a separate virtual world (The Sims), layers of meaning and representations that are different to reality.

• Quote from EA website (“Will your Sims be friends – or enemies? Form relationships with a slap, a high-five (or some Woohoo!).”) Encourages binary oppositions
• Quote from Facebook (“Live out your perfect Sims story at every stage of life from Babies to Seniors”)
• These messages promote an idealistic perspective. Perhaps audiences use Sims as a way to create their “perfect” existence or are they made to feel that their reality in the real world isn’t perfect enough. For example, the game constantly encourages players to upgrade elements of the game to promote a consumerist society
• On the other hand, it seems that The SimsFreeplay wants to find ways of championing diversity (“Last year you told us you wanted more culturally diverse hairstyles for your sims”) so perhaps the audience of Sims is more active whilst playing: they want to see a virtual simulation that mirrors the diversity of identity in the real world.

Simulation: Creation of an alternate reality that is hyper-real and mirrors reality in the real world through neologisms that are a warped version of modern society. Eg. ‘simlish’ and ‘simoleons.’ In extreme cases, this could be difficult to separate (what is reality?, what is simulation?, blurred lines between what is constructed or natural). Players can purchase virtual currency with real currency (in app-purchases).

Theoretical Links

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08b6de5274a27b2000b2b/MediaEffectsweb.pdf

• Bandura (Bobo-doll experiment), linking to B.F Skinner and his similar experiments in the 1950’s

• Gerbner (Mean world syndrome, cultivation theory)

• Baudrillard (Post-modernism)

Ever-improving, realistic graphics and increased amounts of video game play, the audience may find it difficult to see the fine line between true reality and the simulation they play along to.

• Laswell (Hypodermic model – passive audiences)