Minecraft Essay

Explain the impact of digitally convergent media platforms on video game production, distribution and consumption. Refer to Minecraft to support your answer. (15 marks) 

  

Minecraft is a sandbox game, which has been described as a virtual world of pixelated blocks that involves simple instructions in order to explore, mine and build. The Swedish-based Mojang Studios created it in 2011, which sold it to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5bn. 

The player explores a square world, facing threats of monsters, animals and building amazingly detailed creations, for example the millennium flacon from star wars or the NASA space shuttle.

In the past 7 years the game has evolved dramatically adding new blocks, animals, biomes and servers letting the players progress with the game, and be inspired to create different things every time they play.

They can also play on different devices like phones, laptops and their Xbox with friends and family at the same time by using multiplayer mode allowing children, teenagers and adults to work together to produce different builds, pleasing vast range of audiences. The development of digitally convergent media platforms has had a major influence on the way the game is produced, allowing the same versions of the game to be downloaded and played on multiple devices, thus providing a cost saving for the company. Furthermore, the development of social media, such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, has enabled online fan communities to have an active voice in the on going development of the game, for example through feedback and taking part in beta tests of the up coming updates.

In 2012 piracy was actually publically condoned by Minecraft developer, Notch. In gaming, players copying coding and creating their own versions of the game on servers is seen as a positive thing, giving players different mods, which evolve there games give them different objects and services then everyone else. Even though they are not financially benefitting Microsoft, they have not prevented Minecraft selling 122M copies worldwide in 2017 and remaining the biggest selling PC game of all time.

In conclusion Minecraft is an example of the way the explosion of digitally convergent media platforms have transformed the video gaming industry in terms of the way games are produced, how they are distributed and how they are consumed across a myriad of devices. 

Will You Survive treatment

Media drama treatment

Title:

Will you survive?

Logline:

Taylor is a teenage girl whose family has an odd family business. With her mother and father being divorced they both kept different parts of the business, which slowly changed into 2 very different rivaling organizations.

Paragraph:

This small beach side town in the north of England, has its peaceful norm interrupted by two rivaling organizations which have an unusual reason for the conflicting opinions, how to bring up there children. The two supervisors, who used to be unhappily married, the only difference about this broken family is the fact the mother wants her daughter dead… because she found out her biggest secret.

Episode outline:

Pilot: Starting with a girl being chased, the audience being unaware of why. After the chase scene there would be a time change back to 2 months before hand, showing the girl at home with her father and grouchy brother having breakfast being ignored what ever she says. She spends the day at school with her best friend complaining about the fact she has to go see her mother that night. Later that night she’s at her mother’s apartment in central London where she’s exploring around her office, she can open a draw and looks for key, once found key she forces open draw and finds docs with secret information on it, as her mothers ‘assistant’ walks into the room and sees her holding this huge secret in her hands.

Main story arcs:

The brother changes from being grouchy to helpful and strong. Taylor has to change to adapt to new life meaning that she has to be strong and understand why things happen and also learning about her parents jobs and how to take over her dads job at such a young age.

Stranger Things Research

Creators:

 Matt Duffer,  Ross Duffer

films they have also directed Hidden   We All Fall Down  Eater



key dates =
series 1 - 15 July 2016 (UK) - release date 
series 2 - 27October 2017

key actors 
 Millie Bobby Brown 
 Gaten Matarazzo
Caleb McLaughlin
Finn Wolfhard 
 Noah Schnapp 


Interesting facts 
On IMDb they rate it 9.0/10

The budget was 6 million for season 1

They've had millions of views 

Andrew Goodwin

Goodwin's theory intro and tasks from Naamah Hill

The Jungle Book 1967

Over the five decades since The Jungle Book 1967 came to the silver screen, there has been a complete technological revolution. While the 1967 film was only released on the one available platform – the cinema – the 2016 film is – one year on – already on multiple platforms for audiences to view globally, including online streaming.

Firstly Digitally convergent media platforms have had a large impact on movie production since 1967. For example while until recently film companies had to make individual copies of every film, which got passed around the cinemas for weeks at a time. Now synergies in production produce cost savings for Disney, for example copies of the 2016 Jungle Book can be shown across a number of convergent platforms e.g. smart phones, Netflix, TV channels and cinema. This is constantly developing, however: Disney announced it will end its streaming and distribution partnership with Netflix in the hopes of launching its own movie, TV and live sports streaming service in 2018. This means that Netflix subscribers will have to move over to Disney in order to watch films like ‘The Jungle Book’, giving Disney even more power over the movie market than it has already.

Convergence between social media platforms has enabled Disney’s audience to have an active voice in its on-going production through feedback and commentary through YouTube, Facebook and online fan communities. "The media landscape is increasingly defined by direct relationships between content creators and consumers," – Robert Iger, CEO of Disney.

The internet’s availability over a multitude of different platforms has acted as an enabler to movie companies in terms of how they distribute films, for example vastly cutting down on distribution costs and increasing audience. 

In some cases the impact of digitally convergent media platforms has also increased the risk of movie production for movie companies, for example through leaked content that is playable across a number of convergent platforms and online piracy – it is easy for audiences to illegally download Disney movies and TV shows, Through websites such as Netflix , 123 movies were you can even get subscritions t watch all the avalible films you wish to see at any time.

An additional monetisation feature exists to gain additional revenue and also capture further audience information to refine future products, such as Disney Life and Disney Universe.  Also investigating partnerships with other companies online such as Lego.  

Definition of Symbiotic

Definition of Symbiotic


living in symbiosis, or having an interdependent relationship: 

Many people feel the relationship between humans and dogs is symbiotic.

disney uses the symbiotic relationship between different media platforms to promote its films, for example youtube showing the films trailer to get the viewers interested. This means that different social media websites work together to promote different film companies which would help to raise the usage of there website and increase there views. 

The Jungle Book 2016 Marketing Tactics

This was the first marketing stunt for “The Jungle Book,” which cost roughly $175 million to make. By going to happy Disneyphiles first, Disney ensured that the movie’s initial blast on social media would be a positive one.

• Major push to have bloggers write on the theme that Favreau had used sophisticated, hi-tech filmmaking techniques to create the animal characters  and make them compelling — this to overcome any resistance to the “talking animals” concept.
• Recognizing that there was a need to keep the film from looking too childish in order to appeal to the finicky high school crowd— older siblings tend to influence younger brothers and sisters — Disney consciously filled the first trailer with scary moments (pouncing panther, snarling tiger, stampeding buffalo) while hiding the musical numbers and keeping Baloo’s goofier moments to a minimum.
• To elevate “The Jungle Book” in the minds of grown-ups, Disney in March circulated dramatic photographs that paired voice actors with their onscreen characters — Idris Elba with the tiger Shere Khan, Ben Kingsley with the panther Bagheera, Lupita Nyong’o with the wolf Raksha.
• Recognizing that the Disney Magic Castle logo is not an automatic plus for the male demo, Disney aggressively and repeatedly pitched “The Jungle Book” to male audiences on ESPN and elsewhere  as coming not from the studio that made “Cinderella” but “from the studio that brought you ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’An extended 3-D trailer for “The Jungle Book” was attached to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which had an audience that was 58 percent male. And Disney rolled out an action-oriented trailer during the Super Bowl.
• Aiming at the Hispanic market, Disney teamed with Univision for a five-week stunt that brought “Jungle Book” characters and clips to telenovelas, talk shows and sports coverage. Disney even built a tool to allow Univision personalities to appear in scenes.
• To emphasize the “immersive world” (think Avatar) Disney introduced a mazelike Law of the Jungle website in partnership with the female-leaning Tumblr; ran special promos at IMAX theaters focusing on the snake Kaa; and created a touring virtual-reality experience and 360-degree Facebook video emphasizing the “Avatar”-like world of its jungle.
• Various corners of the Disney empire pitched in to promote “The Jungle Book.” A New Year’s Day stunt on the Disney Channel, for instance, was used to portray the film as one of the year’s first blockbuster offerings for families and children.
• But the synergistic heavy lifting was done by Disney theme parks. During the jam-packed spring break weeks, park theaters in Florida and California offered sneak-peek footage of the movie, with Mr. Favreau providing introductions.The many (many) theme park stores that sell Disney merchandise had “Jungle Book” sections. And Disney built photogenic “Jungle Book” sand sculptures at its Animal Kingdom and Epcot parks in Florida.

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