Btec Game: Unit 3: Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industries

PEGI (Pan European Game Information) is the European video game rating system. It is there to inform adults about the games content and help them to decide if that game or movie is right for their children to watch or play. The game is labelled with stickers or imprints on which the age rating and the content is shown.





PEGI is very relevant for parents to decide. Some parents don’t care about the game their children are playing, but the most parents are upset if they see their son or daughter playing horror games or ego shooter. Especially because they aren’t experienced at all and don’t think there is a difference between shooting a few polygons in a game and a real human being. It is relevant for the bigger part of the society. PEGI is successful in the most times. It has its logic points to decide what age the game should be rated. They make a good job and parents are watching out what their children are playing by taking these labels seriously.















The game got critics due to its high level violence. Many times it was labelled as the “murder simulator”. All the assassinations and murder sprees have led to the point where this game was rated “Adults only”. Only The Punisher (2005) had this rating for violence besides Manhunt 2Postal 2 for example had the fact that the player was able to urinate on corpses and that the game included some soft-pornographic contents that led to the “adults only” rating. The game was labelled with the Violence and the Bad language symbol.


The USK in germany decided to ban the game from the german market due to its realistic and violent kill sequences.
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Justus Rave
The results of the videogame questionnaires

The graph above shows that 15 people took part in my survey about console gaming. 7 Females and 8 males took part. I tried to get the genders equal for a clear result.

This graph shows what age the volunteers are. The biggest amount of people that were doing the survey, are between 10 and 16 years old. Maybe it is because as a teenager the people have enough time and money to buy and play games.

The graph above shows how many people actually play video games. The main part (13) said yes.


The graph above shows that First Person Shooter are often played on consoles. The “other” section was chosen that often because of the huge variety of game genres and I only took 3 genres to choose.

 The chart above shows that the majority of the people do play games sometimes. The reason for that is that the most people have a laptop or pc on which they play too.

The majority of console gamers are playing the Playstation 3 due to its better performance and graphics. Ninendo Wii was taken the least because the games that are played on Nintendo consoles are targeting the younger audience and many people don’t like that.

Many people are buying new games because they want to be sure that game is working. The ones who took the Second Hand choice do know that on flea markets the games are so cheap that it’s just worth the try and in GameStop they usually don’t take broken games and even if, you can bring them back and take another.

The subjects are willing to pay a certain amount of money for games. 10£ is a usual price for Second Hand games in GameStop


The chart shows that the subjects rather buy the games online because it’s more comfortable and the online store can’t run out of copies. (Which the Real Life store can) There is no long line, no fear of not getting the game the player wants, no house leaving. It’s basically just more comfortable and the majority knows that.

The majority thinks games have improved. The graphics of course yes but in some games the story and gameplay just loses importance but the graphics improve.

In this chart we see that the subjects were choosing every number relatively equal. Consoles have good things and bad things. Younger children and “non-gamer” (people who play maybe once a week and only play titles like FiFa or Calll of Duty) prefer the console because the controls are easier to learn and it’s cheaper than a pc. The pc gamer knows that games are more fun on pc. (see PC MASTERRACE MEME)





The hyperlink was leading to an PC MASTERRACE image.
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Evaluation of the focus group

The first question about my game was “How many players should be playing at once?” They answered that there should be the possibility to play with 2 players and if the player would play alone the characters should be switchable. That is very good for me because I wanted to include puzzles and jump ‘n run on 2 player base. That’s why I will put a split screen in it.

The second question was “What kind of level design do you prefer/want?” The answers again were pretty positive to what I wanted to do anyways. They said it would be good to have an open realm with partly linear levels. Means the player does what he wants to do but if he does a mission or something like that it’s a linear level.

The third question was “what kind of weapons do you want to see in the game?” They answered that there should be laser guns and rail guns. They also said there should be some kind of weapon editor or creator like in Fallout. I like that idea. I thought I would just put a few weapons in the game but stay with melee weapons only. I like that idea more. Maybe I’ll do something between these both things.

The fourth question was “what do you think about jetpacks? Would they fit in the game?” They said they think the idea is good but the scientists should build them in the game. I thought about having these jetpacks from the beginning or at least that the player gets them at some point of the game but maybe it can be possible that there are jetpack upgrades you need to solve different problems or quests.


The fifth and final question was “what genre do you think would fit to the game?” They said RPG what is great. I will probably make a mix of hack ‘n slay, 3D plattformer and RPG in a mixed look between Jak and Dexter and Borderlands 2.
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2D Game review
Zombie Tactics
Zombie tactics is a round based strategy game developed on the flash engine and made by Epace Games. The game was published on Funny Games and I found it on NotDoppler. The game starts with a nurse, a lumberjack and a retired soldier. They are talking about that there were outbreaks in the prisons nearby. The first fight starts. The battleground is a field that is patterned in hexagons. These hexagons are the fields where the characters stand on. Every character is able to walk 2 fields for free and 5 fields with loosing stamina. The stamina is necessary for the characters to use their skills. There are 3 characters in the beginning: a nurse, a lumberjack and an old or retired soldier.

The nurse’s skill she’s starting with is a healing skill that heals everything in a radius of one field. The lumberjack has got a single target melee attack. The soldier has got a bow with which he’s shooting on zombies. There are characters coming in the group later in the game with different skills to keep the game interesting after a long period of time spending with playing it.


After every round the characters get experience points (XP) and gold. The XP makes the character level up. For every level the player can unlock new skills or upgrade those. With the gold the player is able to buy items that buff the characters.The Items buff things like health, stamina and damage. They can be found or bought from the merchant (the guy with the beard on the lower right.)
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Same game on two different platforms
There are plenty of examples of games that are meant to be the same but are different in some aspects. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (2006; Namco Bandai/Atari (NA)) is one of these titles. It was released on the Playstation 2 and on the Nintendo Wii and there are a few differences between the two versions
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The Playstation 2 version was sold 790,000 times. It’s rated PEGI 12+. It’s played with the Playstation 2 controller. It’s a 4 button (Triangle, Square, Circle and X) combination for melee and different combinations of buttons that makes ranged combat possible (Triangle, R1, R2 and the Arrow buttons). It’s possible to hit one button all the time, but the better the combinations are the player makes, the easier it is to win. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has 129 playable characters. Almost every one of these characters has at least one special form. Every character has a basic ranged attack, a charged ranged attack, 4 blocking animation, a various amount of different melee attack animations, 2 strong abilities (could be melee or ranged), one ultimate ability (could be ranged or melee), a dying animation, a weakened model (shows when the health bar is orange), 4 different flying animations  and a voice. The abilities are mostly shown in cut scenes and can’t be blocked but dodged. Some characters have special moves only they are able to use (Son Goku is able to do a fusion with Vegeta and some characters are able to teleport to dodge an ability). The game has 16 different maps. All of them have destroyable objects and (depends which planet, Earth or Namek) can be formed in a different map (Destroyed Namek and Destroyed Earth). The game is able to be played alone or with a second player. The character designs and backstory as well as the character of the characters are based on the anime/manga series Dragon Ball (1986-1989), Dragon Ball Z (1989-1996) and Dragon Ball GT (1996-1997). The games story has an open world feeling. The player is able to choose what he's going to do next. He has to do the missions to get a higher level and new items and to unlock new missions. The fights with another player are always in split screen. That's because it's not possible to play the story with another player. It’s only possible to play against each other.


Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (Wii: 2006; Namco Bandai): This is the Nintendo Wii version. It got sold 620,000 times. The PEGI rating is 12+. The player is able to play the game with the Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuck or the N64 controller. On the controller the controls are similar to the Playstation 2 version, but on the Nintendo Wii Remote the player has to move himself to make one of the stronger abilities. And the button controls are different to make the whole game feeling more comfortable for the player. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has 135 playable characters. Almost every one of these characters has at least one special form. Every character has a basic ranged attack, a charged ranged attack, 4 blocking animation, a various amount of different melee attack animations, 2 strong abilities (could be melee or ranged), one ultimate ability (could be ranged or melee), a dying animation, a weakened model (shows when the health bar is orange), 4 different flying animations  and a voice. The abilities are mostly shown in cut scenes and can’t be blocked but dodged. Some characters have special moves only they are able to use (Son Goku is able to do a fusion with Vegeta and some characters are able to teleport to dodge an ability). The game has 16 different maps. All of them have destroyable objects and (depends which planet, Earth or Namek) can be formed in a different map (Destroyed Namek and Destroyed Earth). The game is able to be played alone or with a second player. The character designs and backstory as well as the character of the characters are based on the anime/manga series Dragon Ball (1986-1989), Dragon Ball Z (1989-1996) and Dragon Ball GT (1996-1997). The games story has an open world feeling. The player is able to choose what he's going to do next. He has to do the missions to get a higher level and new items and to unlock new missions. The fights with another player are always in split screen. That's because it's not possible to play the story with another player. It’s only possible to play against each other.


Both games share almost the same content, the number of possible players and the basic playing experience
The things they don't share are the controls, the gameplay, the game feeling and the number of characters.
The Playstation 2 version of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 gets my personal rating of 8/10. The reason is, because the controls are actually working. For me it was always easier to play with the controller instead of the Wii Remote. Even when I finished the story I(continued playing. That's the RPG element the developers implemented in the game. I just couldn't stop levelling and making side quests to get items for my personal Son Goku. The fact that the player has to unlock everything in the whole game is just addictive. It was one of the biggest parts of my childhood (besides the jak&dexter trilogy and Lego)



The Nintendo Wii gets a personal rating of 3/10. The reason for the low rating is that the controls aren't very fluent. Especially the movement doesn't really work. The player put too much effort in one attack. The fun of that game is almost not there after 30 minutes of gameplay. If the player would make one of the special abilities, the 2nd player would know instantly, because most of the time the player has to do the moves he needs to do to make the special ability a few times. Somehow the characters are unlocked in the beginning of the game and the RPG feeling is completely gone. So the story is completely unnecessary to play and the PvP mode is just boring. Everyone i played the game with was getting very angry when the person lost the game. I got angry too. It's just not a game someone ever should play with these controls.

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Method
Qualitative or quantitative
What is it? Examples
Cost
Time
Comments
Secondary research



depends
Research from existing researches like twitter comment or the us census
Free or low cost
fast
There’s not always a secondary research
surveys



Quantitative
It’ s a feedback the consumer gives. Like thee feedback cards in restaurants.
Huge variety
medium
If you don’t have time, money or enough people who are giving you feedback it’s senseless.
Focus groups



Qualitative
Direct feedback from the group the developers are targeting
Medium
Takes some time.
Direct feedback for the producer is great
interviews



Qualitative
Could be a cheaper version of focus groups. Depends on the amount of interviews
Low to medium
Very long

Observation



Usually Qualitative
The subject is testing the product while the researchers are watching the subject
Medium
Medium
The researchers have facts and not just the spoken things. This is often combined with interviews or the focus groups scheme
Experiments/field trials



Quantitative
It’s a test the subjects doesn’t know making it. It’s useful when a company can’t decide between 2 different images or ads and they put both of them on the website and they’ll see which one was clicked on more.
medium
medium

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