Friday 30 December 2011

HISTORICAL TEXT ANALYSIS & RESEARCH

Doom
A landmark 1993 first-person shooter video game by id Software. It is widely recognized for having popularized the first person shooter genre, pioneering immersive 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game)

Following the release of the influential Doom in 1993, games in this style were commonly termed "Doom clones";[8][9] in time this term has largely been replaced by "first-person shooter".[9] Doom, Encyclopædia Britannica, Accessed February 25, 2009
 
Carmac (programmer) turned his attention to three-dimensional gaming graphics, writing a “graphics engine” for id’s Wolfenstein 3D, an action game published by Apogee, that depicted the environment as the player’s character would see it. This set the stage for Doom as the next step of this game genre, the “first-person shooter.” (Typically, in first-person shooters the players move through mazelike corridors and rooms filled with adversaries—controlled by other players or the computer—and through stealth or more accurate shooting try to outlive their opponents.) Doom added numerous technical and design improvements to the Wolfenstein 3D model: a superior graphics engine, fast peer-to-peer networking for multiplayer gaming, a modular design that let authors outside id create new levels, and a new mode of competitive play devised by Romero called “death match.”
 


 
Wolfenstein 3D is a seminal first-person shooter game first released in 1992, pitting the player, a captured American spy, against a horde of WWII-era Nazis ensconced within Castle Wolfenstein. The graphics based off the previously released Catacomb 3D. Sparked the popularity of the FPS genre.


The History of FPS Games Vol 3 1992-1994

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Amazon Book references

Video Game Censorship, Including: Counter-Strike, Duke Nukem 3D, Everquest, Wolfenstein 3D, Soldier of Fortune (Video Game), Carmageddon, Grand Theft [Paperback]

- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Video-Game-Censorship-Including-Counter-Strike/dp/1242983147/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323166964&sr=1-1

 

Censorship in Australia: Censorship in Australia, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Internet censorship in Australia, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, List ... of banned video games, Pornography by region [Paperback]

- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Censorship-Australia-Chatterleys-Broadcasting-Corporation/dp/6130033117/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323167010&sr=1-3


Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy [Hardcover]

- "They have been successfully marketed to youth and are easily obtained regardless of age."

A Primer in Game Theory [Paperback]

- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Primer-Game-Theory-Robert-Gibbons/dp/0745011594/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323167252&sr=1-1

Computers, Games, and Art: Artificial Intelligence and Political Representation [Paperback]

- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computers-Games-Art-Intelligence-Representation/dp/3838357388/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323167293&sr=1-3

Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence [Hardcover]


- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stop-Teaching-Our-Kids-Kill/dp/0609606131/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323171589&sr=1-1










Video game controversy: Video Game, Graphic Violence, Crime, Video Game Addiction, Aggression, Hate Crime, First-person Shooter, American Psychological Association, Video Game Content Rating System [Paperback]

- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Video-game-controversy-First-person-Psychological/dp/6130313888/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323171589&sr=1-3


Violence in Video Games, Including: Tactical Shooter, Kill Stealing, Shooter Game, Full Spectrum Warrior, Fatality (Mortal Kombat), Mothers Against Vi [Paperback]



- Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World [Hardcover]

Thursday 1 December 2011

Video Game Censorship Articles (The Guardian)


·         The internet can't be censored and it's wrong for governments to try- "We're seeing another experiment in finding out if the internet can indeed be censored"

·         Calling on the audience to live the dream- "This remains true of the expanding sphere of participatory art, assuming we accept video games as art" 


·         Australian internet censorship - at last, the game version- "Censorship, the internet and the Australian government - that eternal threesome who never seem to tire of each other."


·         Modern Warfare 3: Tom Watson leaps to game's defence- "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, in which players engage in gratuitous acts of violence against members of the public"


·         The trouble with video games isn't the violence. It's that most of the characters are dicks- "It's a very popular franchise; devoted fans camp out on pavements for a launch copy, which makes it the royal wedding of violent video games."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/charlie-brooker-modern-warfare-3

Critical Investigation: 10 Possible Links

Thursday 3 November 2011


Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings

Jun 6, 2011 

DUBAI // The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.
Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them.
All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.
These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.
In part by using the social networking sites, activists organised and publicised the unprecedented protests that gave rise to the so-called Arab Spring, which has so far seen longtime governments in Egypt and Tunisia fall, regimes in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain clash with the opposition, and leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE offer more benefits to their populace.
Social media – its rise and its new activist uses – have “played a critical role in mobilisation, empowerment, shaping opinions and influencing change,” the report said.
Just how integral its role was has been debated, it said, “with some camps labelling them the main instigators and others relegating them to mere tools.”
“Regardless, it can be stated that many of the calls to protest in the Arab region were initially made on Facebook,” it said. “As the initial platform for these calls, it cannot be denied that they were factor in mobilising movements.”

Facebook usage swelled in the Arab region between January and April and sometimes more than doubled, the report found.
Overall, the number of users jumped by 30 per cent to 27.7m, compared with 18 per cent growth during the same period in 2010. In the past year, the number of users has nearly doubled from 14.8m.
Usage in Bahrain grew 15 per cent in the first three months of the year, compared with 6 per cent over the same period last year.
Egypt saw 29 per cent growth compared to 12 per cent last year.
Tunisia had 17 per cent growth compared to 10 per cent last year.
The exception was Libya, where usage fell by 76 per cent. One possible reason is that many there have fled amidst fierce fighting between the regime and rebels.
During the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, the vast majority of 200-plus people surveyed over three weeks in March said they were getting their information from social media sites (88 per cent in Egypt and 94 per cent in Tunisia).


This outnumbered those who turned to non-government local media (63 per cent in Egypt and 86 per cent in Tunisia) and to foreign media (57 per cent in Egypt and 48 per cent in Tunisia).
On Twitter, the hashtag “Egypt” had 1.4 million mentions in the three months of the year. Other hashtags – which are essentially search terms – “Jan25” had 1.2m mentions; “Libya” had 990,000; “Bahrain” had 640,000; and “protest” had 620,000.
The flurry of tweets spiralled during the turning points of the uprisings.
In Tunisia they peaked around the January 14 protest start date. In Egypt they spiked around February 11 when longtime President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. And in Bahrain they jumped in the days after the demonstrations began on February 14.
Government attempts to ban such sites ended up backfiring, the survey of Egyptians and Tunisians found.
Just over a quarter of those polled (28 per cent in Egypt and 29 per cent in Tunisia) said the blocking of Facebook disrupted their efforts to organise and communicate.
But more than half (56 per cent in Egypt and 59 per cent in Tunisia) said it had a positive effect, motivating them to press on and mobilising newcomers.
The authorities’ efforts to block out information, the report said, ended up “spurring people to be more active, decisive and to find ways to be more creative about communicating and organising”.

Thursday 20 October 2011

Learning Resource 20/10/11

Facebook and Twitter are the top social networking rivals today with annual revenues reaching $4.27 billion according to eMarketing. Facebook and Twitter both took two different angles when it came to social networking, Facebook a more structured yet large site, and twitter being a simple yet small site. From research firm eMarketing, $150 million figure by comparing Twitter with Facebook, which had ad sales of about $150 million in 2007.
In terms of e-media, and online retailers, Amazon and eBay are the leading institutions and have gained a lot of consumers due to their

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Media Representations


who is being represented?   

  • In what way?


  • By whom?





  • Why is the subject being represented in this way?
    • Is the representation fair and accurate?
    • What opportunities exist for self-representation by the subject?

    The Dark Knight consists of a Super Hero protagonist, Bruce Wayne AKA the Batman, he is shown to be a strong and hardworking, yet is lead astray from his working life to bring justice to the criminals of Gotham City.

    The villain of the film is the Joker played by Heath Ledger. He is represented in a negative roll as being a psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic who's only goal is to destroy the fabrications of the social order in Gotham City, yet is faced with a barrier when batman decides to team up with the new district attorney and shut down all criminal activities.

    The princess, using the theory of Vladimir Propp is Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), she is the only female portrayed in this film and to be one of the main characters. She is shown to be a damsel in distress however she builds her character by

    Furthermore the film also carries a false hero figure, Harvey Dent played by Aaron Eckhart. Dent is portrayed as the "White Knight" as he is the district attorney of Gotham City and uses his connections to put away the criminals of Gotham city.



    Media Languages and Forms

     Media Audience
  • What are the denotative and connotative levels of meaning?

  • What is the significance of the text’s connotations?

  • What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, positional communication, clothing, props etc)?

  • What is the significance of mise-en-scene/sets/settings?

  • What work is being done by the sound track/commentary/language of the text?

  • What are the dominant images and iconography, and what is their relevance to the major themes of the text?

  • What sound and visual techniques are used to convey meaning (e.g. camera positioning, editing; the ways that images and sounds are combined to convey meaning)?




  • The main non-verbal structures of meaning in the text is depicted during a meeting of the mob bosses, the joker barges in and offers them a solution to their failures of laundering money, by killing the batman. After receiving negative feedback from the bosses the joker leaves silently, Placinghis card on the table.
    The mise-en-scene allows the audience to gather information about the story as it plays. The setting of the film is a fictional city called Gotham City; the filming took place in the streets of Chicago, portraying Gotham City as a more modern and safer city contrasting to the depictions in the previous batman.
    There is a significant sound that is only played when the joker is acting out a criminal activity; the sound is played in the opening scene creating anticipation and helps build the dramatic feel, like a coiled up spring ready to burst into action.
    The dominant image/ iconography of the text is the joker, he himself creates the action codes in the film with the mise-en-scene adding to the effect, (his costume, his extravagant make-up and his relationship towards the batman). This relates to the themes of the film, as one of the themes is that the joker should represent anarchy and chaos.
    In a scene of Harvey Dent lying on a hospital bed after being burnt in several places, one being the left side of his face. The camera is placed to the right side of his thus only showing a medium shot of his right side, creating an enigma code, a sense of anxiety for the audience as they become uncomfortable and anxious as they either feel like looking away from the face of Harvey dent or begin to feel sympathy for him due to his loss.

    Narrative

  • How is the narrative organised and structured?

  • How is the audience positioned in relation to the narrative?

  • How are characters delineated? What is their narrative function? How are heroes and villains created?

  • What techniques of identification and alienation are employed?

  • What is the role of such features as sound, music, iconography, genre, mise-en-scene, editing etc within the narrative?

  • What are the major themes of the narrative? What values/ideologies does it embody?





  • The narrative of The Dark Knight is linear as it consists of a beginning, middle and end. The film also has binary opposition present as there are many characters, some with a positive nature and some wanting a negative outcome. The structure of The Dark knight includesthe theory of Tzvetan Todorov by having equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium.
    In The Dark Knight a villain is created from a false hero, Harvey Dent to Two-Face.  Two-Face is created after the tragedy of him lying in a pool of oil and it being set alight, and having to live with the loss of his close female friend and colleague.
    The joker’s noise as its referred to is to let the audience know that the joker is up to his antics once again and will return to their screens shortly causing more destruction and chaos.


    Genre

  • To which genre does the text belong?

  • What are the major generic conventions within the text?

  • What are the major iconographic features of the text?

  • What are the major generic themes?

  • To what extent are the characters generically determined?

  • To what extent are the audience’s generic expectations of the text fulfilled or cheated by the text? Does the text conform to the characteristics of the genre, or does it treat them playfully or ironically?

  • Does the text feature a star, a director, a writer etc who is strongly associated with the genre? What meanings and associations do they have?



  • The Dark Knight is classed to be in the fantasy, action genre as the batman is a superhero which makes it lie in the fantasy genre. We can tell that the film is in the action genre at there are many key conventions of the genre portrayed in the film, for example, the violent fighting scenes, and explosions.The major generic convention featured in this text is violence, which tells the audience that isin the action genre.
    The iconographic features of the film are the weaponry shown, batman’s gadgets and the joker’s artillery.The characters in the film are generically determined as the audience can easily distinguish who the good characters and bad characters are.
    The film features a director who strongly associated with the genre, Christopher Nolan. Nolan has filmed the prequel to the Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Inception and is to direct the latest instalment of his batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. The Dark Knight also features a writer who is not only strongly associated with the text, he is associated with the director too, Jonathan Nolan Christopher’s brother wrote the story and screenplay for The Dark Knight and the soon to be Dark Knight Rises.The dark Knight also features a star, Christian Bale who is strongly associated with the films genre as he starred in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Terminator Salvation and many more.


    Media Institutions

  • What is the institutional source of the text?

  • In what ways has the text been influenced or shaped by the institution which produced it?

  • Is the source a public service or commercial institution? What difference does this make to the text?

  • Who owns and controls the institution concerned and does this matter?

  • How has the text been distributed?



  • The institutional source of the film ‘The Dark Knight’ is Warner Bros. Pictures (presentation), Legendary Pictures (in association with), Syncopy and DC Comics.Warner Bros. Studios was founded in 1918, and Warner Bros. Pictures was founded in 1923 by four brothers Jack, Harry, Albertand Sam Warner.
    Warner Bros. Pictures is a commercial institution, this makes a small difference to the film to that if it were a public service, as the institution has built its name and reputation so its audience will know that the text is of good standard and that a lot of money and effort has gone into the production and development of this film and that they will be willing to spend their money on such entertainment.The Dark Knight was distributed around the world in theatres everywhere.



    The film is addressed to the mass of Batman/ Super hero fans. The target audience of The Dark Knight is both males and females aged 15-30 social class B, C1. As the audience is of a young generation, they are more technology savvy that the older generation and more importantly, more internet savvy. This allows them to gain more information about the text even before it’s been released, such as Face book groups being made, allowing its users to gain information about the upcoming film or even receive tweets from the various produces or actors about the film. The internet also allow UGC (User Generated Content) Such as various campaigns; the ‘I believe in Harvey Dent’ online campaign.
    As an audience member I view the film as a source of escapism and a form of entertainment. Being in the target audience age group has no effect on how I read the film, as I have seen the previous depictions of the film such as Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), Batman Begins (2005)and have played one or two of the games. I had no real expectations, only to see who the villain would be and how the actor/ actress would portray them and the late Heath Ledger did a brilliant job.


    Thursday 7 July 2011

    Summer Research Project

    Ideas

    TV
    Eastenders
    The Apprentice
    Emmerdale
    Hollyoaks
    90210
    GLEE
    One tree hill
    Desperate Housewives
    KUWTK
    KENDRA


    Film
    Transformers
    The Dark Knight
    Harry potter(ALL7)
    Green Lantern
    XMen
    Badteacher
    Hangover
    Pirates of the caribbean


    Video Games
    Fifa
    LBP
    NFS
    BLACK OPS
    MODERN WARFARE 2
    GTA
    DIRT 3
    MINECRAFT
    TEWAWWIA
    TOYSTORY 3