The Sims FreePlay was developed by EA Mobile and Firemonkeys Studios. It has a PEGI rating of 12, due to themes that may be unsuitable for younger children.

EA Mobile is based in America, whereas Firemonkeys Studios is an Australian developer, making the game a global product.

The game is a single player mobile strategic life simulation focusing on emotional and social needs of characters, as opposed to having a specific narrative story.

The game was released on various different platforms over different time periods. It’s iOS release was on December 15 2011, Android on February 15 2012, Blackberry on July 31 2013 and Windows Phone on September 12 2013. It is still updated to this day, although Windows Phone support ended in 2017.

CSP Focus – Representation

Task 11: Using the table below, consider the ways in which the CSPs reinforce or challenge dominant ideologies around the representation of women.

Applying Feminist Theory

Task 12: To what extent can Aloy be regarded as a feminist icon?

Task 13: Intertextuality – How has her character design been influenced by representations of women in sci-fi films?

Applying Queer Theory

Task 14: How do Butler’s ideas on Gender Performativity connect with representations of characters featured in the CSPs?

Task 15: Explain the differences in the narrative structure featured in the three CSPs

Task 16: To what extent do you agree that representations of gender reinforce dominant ideologies?

Task 2:

• Why, according to the news report, do investors like the video game industry so much?

Investors like the video game industry because of it’s rising popularity, roughly 26% of the world’s population are gamers, and revenue, In 2020, the gaming industry generated $155 billion in revenue.

• What are Esports?

It is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams.

• How is new digital media technology changing the way that video games are accessed by consumers?

The percentage of time spent gaming on mobile devices has eclipsed these more traditional gaming platforms and the influence of the internet.

Producers are now able to directly connect with players, share updates, and get feedback, building a community around a game, this boosts player engagement.

• What does FPS and MMORP stand for?

FPS stands for First Person Shooters and MMORP stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing.

Video Games and Moral Panics

The term Moral Panics was coined by Stanley Cohen. The term refers to a mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behaviour or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society’s values and interests.

Goode and Nehuda suggested that moral panics are defined by at least five crucial element, these are:

• Concern – In this first stage of a moral panic, there is a heightened level of concern towards some sort of deviant behaviour or concept. This concern, or fear, is evident in the increased media attention, such as editorials, exclamatory headlines, trends and the number of shares and retweets.
• Hostility – The negative reporting of the events increases the level hostility against the group of people in question. They are consistently categorised as the enemy of society because they are threatening the established order and values. They are stereotyped and defined as the Other.
• Consensus – In a moral panic, there must be widespread agreement, or consensus, that the threat posed by the deviant behaviour is substantial and serious. 
• Disproportionality –  The media’s representation of the deviant behaviour is disproportionate to the actual threat.
• Volatility – Moral panics are unpredictable and volatile. They can “erupt fairly suddenly” or “lie dormant” until another scandal hits the headlines.

Task 3: Apply the above to any of the video game case studies featured.

Task 4: Case Studies

Case study one: Sandy Hook shootings influenced by “Call of Duty” and other FPS games.

Case study two: Korean couple starve child 2014 while raising virtual one online in MMORP.

Research into the affects of video games on audiences

The Byron Review 2008 – This study highlighted the need of PEGI ratings.

Anderson et al 2000+ – Shows a correlation between playing violent video games and showing violent behaviour. It also shows the correlation of lower academic achievement.

Media Regulation – The PEGI System

The PEGI System is a video game content rating system which allows consumers to see if the game’s content is suitable for them or others.

The ratings are 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18.

Livingstone and Lunt Regulation Theory, Key Information:

• There is an underlying struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens and the need to further the interests of consumers on the other. 
• It argues that the interests of citizens and those of consumers cannot be easily reconciled.
• The theorists noticed that regulating media to protect citizens from harmful content can limit freedom of expression.
• They say that consumers require regulation to protect against detriment.

Task 5: How does the work of Video Standards Council connect with the ideas of Livingstone and Lunt on the need for Media Regulation?

The VSC’s work connects with Livingstone and Lunt’s ideas because the PEGI System regulates what ages are able to play and purchase certain games in order to not expose vulnerable age groups to content that is inappropriate for them.

Video Games and Addiction

Recently there was a study, by Brigham Young University 2020, that took place for six years, the study was on video game addiction. The results found that 90% of gamers don’t play in ways that is harmful or causes negative long-term consequences, however, a minority of people were found to become severally addicted to games and would suffer mentally, socially and behaviourally as a result.

Task 6: Explain how the latest research into the connection between playing video games and addiction serves to reinforce or challenge the ideas of Bandura, Shirky and Jenkins?

The latest research into video games and addiction both reinforces and challenges the ideas of Bandura, Shirky and Jenkins.

The vast minority of people who get addicted to video games often result in developing destructive and damaging behaviours, this links to and reinforces Bandura’s theory because by observing the characters and content of the video game these gamers start mimicking and learning these “new skills” which results into altering their old behaviours.

This also reinforces Shirky’s End of Audience theory. His theory stated that mass amateurisation allows anyone to create new forms of media and are able to compete with large, professional institutions, this links to the latest research on video games and addiction because with these type of capabilities, people become more addicted with creating their own content and using it to challenge others which leads to destruction and conflicts. We can see this similarity of behaviour through those who become severally addicted to video games.

On the other hand, this theory challenges Jenkins’ theory of participatory culture. This is because his theory states that members in a participatory culture, e.g. a gaming community, contribute and connect with one another, however this latest research goes against this theory as this minority of people are often socially distancing themselves from others and the outside world, they don’t connect or contribute to their community.

Task 7: Horizon Forbidden West

• Who made the game?

Guerrilla Games

• What is the audience rating?

PEGI 16

• Where was it made?

The game was made in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

• what is the genre, player perspective and narrative content?

Action role-playing game in a third-person perspective that is set in a world populated by dangerous, animalistic machines.

• Why was it chosen?

Because of it’s advanced visuals, combat, the cast’s performance and quest design.

Task 8: Sims FreePlay

• Who made the game?

EA Mobile and Firemonkeys Studios

• What is the audience rating

PEGI 12

• Where was it made?

America

• What is the genre, player perspective and narrative content?

Strategic life simulation game in a third person perspective. Players create and manage their own virtual characters, known as Sims, players then are tasked to fulfil the needs and desires of their characters by cooking meals, going to work, and building relationships with other Sims

CSP Focus: Media Effects Theories

Task 9: Look at Neuman’s table and highlight any of the theories that you feel you need to know more about and then find further info on those theories.

Media Audience Sample Question: How useful are some of these theories in understanding the relationship between media audiences and texts?

Horizon Forbidden West was developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It received a PEGI audience rating of 16.

Guerrilla Games, part of PlayStation Studios, is based in Amsterdam, which is where their games are developed, including Horizon Forbidden West.

The game is a single player action RPG, with a post apocalyptic narrative in which the audience play as Aloy, who battles a robot swarm in order to investigate a dangerous plague. It is a third person game, as opposed to using a POV perspective like an FPS would. It is also the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 PS4 Game.

The game launched for PS4 and PS5 on February 18th 2022, and released on PC on 21st March 2024.

CSP:

• Horizon Forbidden West
• Sims Free Play

Define the terms:

Active Audience – An audience that engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it.

Passive Audience – An audience that is more likely to accept the messages encoded in a media text without challenge and are therefore more likely to be directly affected by the messages.

In what ways do media products impact audiences cognitively, affectively and behaviourally?

One way in which media products impact audiences is through entertainment and diversion. Audiences consume these media products, such as fantasy films, as an escapism from their everyday lives.

Another way audiences are impacted is through informative and educational products. Audiences consume this when they want to be informed and educated, these products inform them of what is happening in the real world. An example of this is documentaries.

Social interaction is another strategy that media products use to impact their audiences. Shows like X Factor provoke interaction and spark and immediate reaction from the audience while the action is happening.

One last way media products impact audiences is through personal identity. Audience members may choose to consume this as a way of comparing their life experiences with those represented the product, for example soap operas.

Albert Bandura – Social Learning Theory

The Social learning theory is a theory that emphasizes observational learning, or acquiring new skills or information, or altering old behaviours by watching others rather than overt, trial-and-error behaviour.

It considers how both environmental and cognitive factors interact to influence human learning and behaviour.

Bobo Doll Experiment

Children learn and observe from the people around them behaving in various ways. This is illustrated during the Bobo Doll experiment by Bandura 1961.

The aim of this experiment was to conduct a controlled lab experiment study to investigate if social behaviours such as aggression can be acquired by observation and imitation.

They tested 36 boys and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School aged between 3 to 6 years old. The researchers pre-tested the children for how aggressive they were by observing the children in the nursery and judged their aggressive behaviour on four 5-point rating scales.

The results of this experiment showed that:

• Children who observed the aggressive model made far more imitative aggressive responses than those who were in the non-aggressive or control groups.
• There was more partial and non-imitative aggression among those children who had observed aggressive behaviour, although the difference for non-imitative aggression was small.
• The girls in the aggressive model condition also showed more physically aggressive responses if the model was male, but more verbally aggressive responses if the model was female. However, the exception to this general pattern was the observation of how often they punched Bobo, and in this case the effects of gender were reversed.
• Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls. The evidence for girls imitating same-sex models is not strong, the boys also imitated more physically aggressive acts than girls. There was little difference in verbal aggression between boys and girls.

Henry Jenkins – Participatory Culture

According to Henry Jenkins, participatory culture is a culture where its members believe that their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another.

This culture has relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.

They build on participatory cultures and organize such communities toward civic and political goals. An example of a participatory culture is the media platform YouTube.

Clay Shirky – End of Audience Theory

This theory explores the sociological side of social media. It addresses the idea that modern audiences are turning into creators.

Shirky argued that audience behaviour has progressed from the passive consumption of media texts to a much more interactive experience with the products and each other.

He also argued that we are using our cognitive surplus to construct incredibly powerful forms of human expression. He stated that everyone is a media outlet and had called this mass amateurisation.

Mass amateurisation refers to the capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professionals and the ways in which they have applied those capabilities to solve problems that compete with the solutions offered by larger, professional institutions.

Task 1: Explain how Bandura’s view of media audiences is essentially different to that held by Shirky and Jenkins

Bandura’s view of media audiences may be different to Shirky and Jenkins’ view because of contextual factors that could have affected and influenced his Bobo Doll experiment.

One of these factors may have been the model. The model played an effect on the child’s subsequent behaviour because all variables other than the independent variable were controlled.

Another factor was that some children were familiar with the Bobo Doll and the ones who weren’t were found to be five times as likely to imitate the aggressive behaviour displayed by the models.