Crowd Funding

How is crowd funding affecting the relationship between institutions and audiences at the Publishing, Design, Marketing and Distribution level? Answer with Assassins Creed and Double Fine Adventure

One of the key changes in the video game industry is coming through Crowd Funding, an idea where people can post their ideas on the internet for things such as Music Albums, Films, or in this case Video Games. Here I will be talking about the effects that Crowd Funding has on the Development, Publishing, Marketing and Distribution, with Assassins Creed and Double Fine Adventures as the main games in this essay.

Crowd funding has changed the relationship in the development of the games. In most games the publishing of the game is done solely through big companies such as Sony, EA or in the case of Assassins Creed, Ubisoft. Assassins Creed has developed as a franchise and has appealed to a larger audience through its many different genres. But in recent years we have seen changes around this, and now the audience of the game are starting to become involved through websites such as Kickstarter are enabling smaller companies and developers to put their ideas on the internet. The audience are then able to fund the game and allow the people who develop the games to use the money to make them games. They do this by being offered incentives, and the incentives vary based on how much is pledged. Double Fine Adventure is a game which has been made through this process. Tim Schafer was turned down by various companies, and via kick start he managed to raise $3,336,371, much more than his target of $400,000. He managed this through video presentations on YouTube, and this encouraged 87,172 people to pledge through various incentives, ranging from a copy of the game, to a t-shirt, to a lunch with the creators of the game.  The plus side to this that they only have to give 5% of the money away, and they still keep full control over the game.

The Design and Production of games produced via crowd funding are very different to that of Ubisoft. Ubisoft have a “closed door” policy, where the only time that we find anything out about the game is via the marketing or an occasional leak which doesn’t involve the audience in the game. However, with Double Fine Adventures the audience of the game are much more involved in the story and the looks of the characters meaning that it can actually be fine tuned by the audience, and this also provides much of the marketing of the game, therefore saving large amounts of money that games like Assassins Creed cannot. During the production of the game Tim Schafer produced several making of videos to inform the audience as to the progress that is being made and they can see what their money is being put towards. The production of the game can then be tailored towards the audience much more than conventional games.

Crowd Funded games have the added bonus of not having to spend money on the marketing of the game. They have their target audience and can keep them informed via email about the game, and therefore they can use free advertising, as well as word of mouth of the customers across the internet, and in particular the 87,000 who are already supporting Double Fine Adventures. Last year (2011) Ubisoft announced that they had lost $45million, and a large percentage of this had been spent on the marketing of the game alone as they have had to put a large sales drive in to try and force people to buy the games.  The Indie Developers don’t have this problem, allowing them to spend more of their money on the game, allowing them to make a much higher quality product than they might otherwise have been able to.

Finally, we have the big impact on the distribution that cloud funding is providing. With the lager games companies when trying to get their games into retail they have to spend vast amounts of money on just getting it into the shops. Retailers such as Amazon and Game are two of the main retailers in the UK and many games come through them. However with Crowd Funding they already have the information of 87,000 people, who will all receive the game, and the rest of the copies of the game can be bought through Steam, The App Store, The Android Market, The Playstation Store and The Xbox Live Market, meaning that Double Fine Productions do not have to pay all the costs of putting the game onto discs and getting them in boxes, they can simply get the games on the market and then they will never run out of copies.

In Conclusion I feel that Crowd Funding could be the next big thing to revolutionise the way we play video games. Judging by my findings I think that by the time that the next generation of games consoles come out the more well known companies in the video game industry will start to see declining sales, while the Indie Games makers and the Crowd Funded games will start to become much larger than they currently are.

Assassins Creed Franchise

How do Franchises establish and develop continuing sales figures? Write a response to the question using Assassin's Creed III and detailing the following areas: Publishing, Development, Marketing and Distribution

The Assassin's Creed franchise is a franchise based on a game that was initially released 5 years ago, in 2007. The game back then sold over 8 million copies, and since then the series has continued to sell in such high figures. The narrative of the whole series has remained pretty much the same throughout, although this is a very popular structure. We start off with Desmond, who is the ancestor of a series of Assassins. He is the main character, yet we very rarely play as him in the game. The game starts with him entering the animus, a system for where he can relive the memories of his ancestors to collect artifacts from history.

 

 Altaïr From The Original Assassin's Creed

In the publishing of the game Assassin's Creed III has been aimed at the same audiences as before. Males, although this time around they have aimed the game at people older than 18 rather than 15, and some of their fans have grown up with the series, much in the same way that the Harry Potter fans have grown up with their books and developing the characters, while at the same time the books have beocme much more adult. And in the 5 years of Assassin's Creed it has increased in the age. Over the course of the three main Assassin's Creed games (1, 2 and 3) there have been three main characters; Altaïr, Ezio and Connor. Each of these have also developed throughout the series, so much so that Ezio became a very key figure in the series, and was a very popular character amongst the fanbase.

Connor from Assassin's Creed III

Assassin's Creed has used a very similar engine through the series, however improvements have allowed for improvements. The first Assassin's Creed game used the Anvil Engine under the name of Scimitar. This is an engine which is also used by Prince of Persia. Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelation are all also on the Anvil Engine. However, the brand new AnvilNext engine allows for better weather cycling, and for a crowd of up to 2000 people in any one place at a time whereas it had previously only a few hundred, these developments have been huge in making the franchise better for the gameplayers and the fans. AnvilNext also allows for characters to disappear during the game, as well as Ai and graphical improvements. The game design has also increased in size over each of the Assassin's Creed games, meaning that the players have much more to achieve in each game, meaning they are more likely to keep on playing the game. Gameplay has also improved, as Assassin's Creed I feels much more rigid when compared to Assassin's Creed III which has much smoother movement due to the increases in the quality of the engine, leaving gamers much more reasurred that the character will follow their commands rather than following a different path when free-running. 

 

In the marketing of Assassin's Creed the developers of the game have been releasing data about the game in the build up to Assassin's Creed. These include things such as images, information about the story, gameplay videos and videos about the making of the game. The luxury that companies have nowadays is that they can post videos on YouTube for free, and therefore gain free advertisement of their games. These videos and pieces of information about the game are key for the players of the game, and all fans of the series begin to anticipate the games more and more. These are also very exciting for the new gamers as they allow a sneek peak at a product that they may way to purchase. There are many franchise games which release demos too which also allow for people to sample the game, perhaps for the first time, and this allows them to make a good judgement on trying out the game. In March 2012 Ubisoft also announced that they would be spending over £4 Million to try and increase the sales figures. This is as well as lots of interviews which people from the game to say that this Assassin's Creed is possibly the best ever.

The distribution of the game is the final aspect in the creation of the game. Companies such as Game, Amazon and Play are large distributors of the game, and do schemes in the pre-ordering of the game to allow discounts or bonus features for the people who buy the game. Supermarkets such as Morrisons, Sainsburys and Tesco all get involved in the sales of the game, and contribute towards the expected 8 million sales of the games. Another form of sales on the games are on the Xbox Live Market and the Playstation Network for people who don't want a disc copy of the game, but instead would rather download the game onto their device.  

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Formats Released In

Playstation 3

Xbox 360

Microsoft Windows

Mac OS X

Cloud

Copies Sold

As of May 2011 Ubisoft annouced that 8 million copies of the game been sold

Money Made From The Game