Zynga

Business Model
Zynga is supported in two manners: direct credit card payments and partner businesses. Several Zynga games require an "Energy" characteristic to play. Playing missions a core feature of many games, consumes a certain amount of energy. After expending energy, it slowly replenishes to the character's maximum limit. This can take minutes or several hours (energy replenishes whether or not players are logged into the game). After energy is replenished, players can engage in additional missions. Waiting for energy to replenish is a significant limiting factor in the games. Their support mechanisms take advantage of this. Zynga games are linked to offers from a number of partners. Players can accept credit card offers, take surveys or buy services from Zynga's partners in order to obtain game credits, which would allow them to replenish their character's energy or receive premium currency that could be exchanged for other various virtual goods.

Farmville 2
Farmville 2 was released earlier this month. They started advertising the game at zyngas press event at there headquarters where it was developed. It was also advertised through other zynga games like the first farmville game. This is done so people can viral market the game on that social networking website.

Zynga

Electronic Arts has asked a federal judge to dismiss claims filed by Zynga, which say that the copyright infringement lawsuit leveled against it by EA actually violated an agreement made by the two companies last year. Electronic Arts, the creators of The Sims Social, sued Zynga in August, alleging that Zynga violated copyright infringement with its new game, called The Ville. It also claimed that EA senior executives who left to work at Zynga had revealed details about the strategy and development of The Sims Social. In response, Zynga counter sued, seeking to stop EA from threatening to sue them, or from interfering with its hiring. Zynga claimed that EA had breached the terms of an agreement the two companies had signed in September 2011, which stated that EA stated that it would release claims it had made related to Zynga recruiting former and current EA employees. In exchange, Zynga would agree to no longer solicit EA employees. In its counter suit, Zynga also accused EA CEO John Riccitiello of getting Zynga to sign the agreement as part of an anticompetitive and unlawful scheme. EA says that the agreement only had to do with claims through the period when the it was first signed, giving it the right to level this current lawsuit at Zynga.

Skylanders Giants

Skylanders Giants

Skylanders: Giants is an upcoming 2012 video game in the Skylanders series, and it is going to be the direct sequel to the 2011 game Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. This game will be availabel for Xbox 360, PC, Playstation 3, Wii and Wii U. It will be one of the first games out on the Wii U. 

Skylanders: Giants utilizes the first game's engine by building upon the fundamentals of the first game: merging a line of cross-platform toy figures with the video game world itself. The game will introduce over 40 new collectible figures, some of which are more than twice the size of the original Skylanders cast in both physical and virtual form. Their in-game powers and abilities reflect their colossal scale. It will also include a set of interactive characters that feature new light technology integrated into the toys. This allows the interactive figures' base to light up on contact with the "Portal of Power". Players will also be able to import characters and their progress from the first game, since they are backwards compatible with this title.

The game will feature new arenas and more gameplay options in Battle Mode for head-to-head play, as well as enhanced Elemental Zones, new Hero Challenges, and other features that encourage players to collect and level up every character.

 

Reality is Broken

• 3 billion hours of gameplay a week.
• If we are going to solve problems over the next 100 year we need to play about 21 billion hours of gameplay a week. This to stop obesity, poverty, hunger, etc.
• We all need to paly 10,000 hours of gameplay before we are 21.
• At the moment there are 500 million gamers
• So far we have spent 5.93 million years gametime on World of Warcraft.

Synergy and Symbiosis

Synergy is two or more things coming together to make an outcome that is better than an oringinal idea that they had separately. An example of synergy in the video game world is when games are made of films that are coming out and they do this if the game is building up to be a big seller so they make it so people buy the game. A good example was avatar as it was made into a film as the film was a big hit.

Symboisis is when different companies work together to make a product. These companies aren't related whatsoever and example of this is when angry birds and mcdonalds worked together and made happy meal toys of angry birds. They did this so angry birds got out there and mcdonalds did it to get the audience what they want.

Rockstar Studios

  
Rockstar Japan
2005- present
This rockstar company produces all rockstar games that come out in asia. It works in conjunction with capcom.


Rockstar Leeds
2004- present
Was previously known  as Mobius entertainment. This part of rockstar has created GTA: liberty city stories and Vice city stories for the PSP, Max Payne for the game boy advance, GTA: chinatown wars for the nintendo ds and La noire for the Xbox 360.


Rockstar Lincoln
1999- present
Was previously known as Taratula studios. This studio is responsible for games testing and translating.


Rockstar London
2005- present
Rockstar london has developed the games manhunt 2, midnight club los angeles and max payne 3.


Rockstar New England
2008- present
This company was previously known as mad doc software and they have created the pc and xbox 360 versions of Bully.


Rockstar North
2002- present
Previously known as DMA Design. They are famous for creating GTA, Manhunt and Lemmings.

Indie games

Indie games are games that are created by individuals to go on a marketplace of a video game console or the app store. These games like i said are created by one, two maybe three people. This means they are not like the big companies like rockstar who employ over 100 people to create their video game. This means that game could take from anywhere from a year to six years depending on how many people you have, what skills they have and how complexed the idea is. Examples of an indie game is minecraft. This is now one of the biggest selling video games of all time and this is an indie game so it was only created by a handful of people.

Braid

Braid is a puzzle game created by Jonathan Blow. The game was released on August 6, 2008 for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade service. A Microsoft Windows version was released on April 10, 2009. Hothead Games ported and released the game to Mac OS X on May 20, 2009 and the PlayStation Network on November 12, 2009.

The basic story elements unfold as the protagonist, Tim, attempts to rescue a princess from a monster. Text passages laid throughout the game reveal a multifaceted narrative, giving clues about Tim's contemplations and motivations. The game features traditional aspects of the platform genre while integrating various powers of time-manipulation. Using these abilities, the player progresses by finding and assembling jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Blow designed the game as a personal critique of contemporary trends in game development. He funded the three-year project with his own money. Artist David Hellman drew the artwork, which underwent several iterations until it satisfied Blow's vision. A preliminary version of Braid without the final artwork won the "Innovation in Game Design" award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival; the final version received additional accolades. The game received highly positive reviews from critics, eventually becoming the highest critically rated title on Xbox Live. Some reviewers, however, criticized the game's price relative to its length.

Template business model and Indie games

The tentpole business is the the big blockbuster games that are released by the big copmpanies because they know people will buy it whatever its like when it comes out. These tentpole games normally bring in the massive money so the business can spend it on making new and risky games. Grand Theft Auto, Fifa, Call of Duty, etc are examples of games that are hollywood blockbusters and that will bring in the money. Hollywood model is where parts of the game are contracted out to other people to create the perfect model they want. Big companies like rockstar games, ubisoft, etc send parts of the game out to differnt people to make it the best it cxan be but this comes with a cost as it is very exspensive to do this. Indie games (Independent games) are games made by people like us who want to make a game. This is also expensive for the people to create and put this game on marketplaces as it costs money to make the game and for the software to be downloaded for a certain console.

Gaming History

My name is Oliver and i own and Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii. My favourite games are the Call of Duty series, Fifa series, and the International cricket series. I have many other games which incloude fable 2, fable 3, dj hero, operation flashpoint, f1, etc. I have xbox live and and i go on my xbox for 30 minutes to 1 hour a day. I go on my wii with the family when there is a chance too. We normally go on the likes of Wii sports, Wii play, etc.

Hot Coffee- GTA: San Andreas

The hot coffee mod is a mini game in the game grand theft auto: san andreas. This mini game was hidden in the game so nobody would know about it but modders found this level and unlocked it. This level portrays sexual intercourse between the main character Carl Johnson and his girlfriend. This made massive controversy with politicians and lawmakers getting involved. This meant that the game was re rated as an adult game and it was taken of the shelves. This game has since been released again onto the shelves with the mini game deleted from the content. Despite this, a more advanced hack still gives access to this minigame, even on the updated version.

This impacted all of the stakeholders with the publishers and developers losing money as the game was removed of the shelves for a long period of time. The platform holders also lost money with added content not being accessible as the game was taken of the shelves the platform holders lost money and gamers. The consumer also weren't happy with the removal of the game so they may have lost interest in this game and may have lost interest in the console all together.