Task 1 - Structure

Developers

Developers are the people who organised, finalise and confirm certain decisions. They are the main people who come up with the story line, concept art and development of the game and character. The developers produce their own game using their own funding's or the publisher of the game provides them with funding's to create the game. Overall, there are 2 types of developers that most known where there are some that have a small indie game company and then there are the largely populated and well known developers like infinity ward and treyarch, where Activision are the publishers of the Call of Duty as activision own the certain rights of the game.

Publishers

The publisher is the company that publishes video game that they have developed by themselves or been developed by a different game developer. Their main job is to receive the game, provide public relations assistance, quality assurance and makes sure that the game is looking nice and clean with no in game bugs. After the game is checked and is polished up, it is published onto the market where the game is bought or downloaded from.

Console Manufacturers and First Party Publishers

Console manufacturers which is also known as a first party publisher is when a company makes their own game for their own device. For example, Nintendo is a great example as they have made plenty of games for the wide range of different platforms including games such as Mario (Nintendo). This could also bring in competition into the industry between certain manufacturers, for example, PlayStation and Xbox have practically been battling it out in which is the best console on the market. The idea was to make exclusive games for each console to give the console a better finish with their own exclusive game which could inspire the consumer to purchase the product.

Distribution and Retail

Distribution and retail is practically where the game can be obtained from or where the game is marketed. These can be actual stores or it can also be accessed, purchased and downloaded through the internet. A few examples of some stores that a game can be purchased from could be from places such as: Game, HMV and GameXchange. This is a good method as you are more likely to be able to find out extra information about the product to be able to see that the money you pay would be 100% worth for the game. Games can also be purchased online through stores such as Steam. App store and Playstation store which makes this process more effective, less in depth and morally easier. This is because you can buy it at whatever time you need whilst not even moving outside of the house. 

This diagram shows where the product,in this case the game, travels down the line which starts with the developer and then ends up to the consumer. This affects how the income is received to each individual company as the pay received could be either high or low.

The product also has another way of being sold quickly and efficiently, where the game is sold instantly without having to go through the secondary distributors. When a retailer wants to sell the game to a consumer, then they have to have an account with a distributor to be actually be able to sell the product.

Outsourcing Companies

Outsourcing Companies is effectively the process of having a separate company help the process of completing game in process where jobs such as artist, audio and developers. This is very good at it makes sure that more work is being effectively added to the game which also would speed up the process which means that everything will be completed by the deadline and it would most likely be completed to a high standard. This also allows the leads of the team be able to ensure that the game is released looking very polished.

Another objective of an outsourcing company is to create accessories that revolve around a game. For example, some common accessories that usually occur are things such as distributed posters, cards, figures, bracelets and a lot more. Outsourcing companies aim to create accessories in order to promote the game and it also helps the company gain more outcome as fans of the game are likely to buy them or inspire them to buy the game.

Press and Media

The press and media create things that promote the game such as trailers, gameplay, advertisments. These are useful as they can come up oftenly in media associated things such as the newspaper, articles, television, adverts on websites and  Press and media is basically the method of people who rate the game ex IGN. Their job is to give the game an overall review of what was good and bad about the game and then they give the game an overall rating out of 10. This helps the consumer to finalise the decision of whether they should actually buy the game or not, especially if it is a parent buying it for a child. If the game is filled with strong language, sexual content and violence, then it's probably not the best idea to let a child play the game as they could let it get to their imagination which means that they could end up committing crimes in real life which would obviously be very bad.

Today, YouTube is an amzing way to find out what a game performs like and what features are held within the game as certain trusted YouTubers receive early access to play a game which gives an audience a taste of what the game actually consists of and also if the consumer would enjoy playing the game themselves.  For example, some YouTubers have been given early access to the game being released in March 2016 which is called "Pokken Tournament", a cross between Pokemon and Tekken. A YouTuber know as "shofu" Records game-play of 1 vs 1 fights using different characters where they establish what the characters are capable of, who they think performs the best and what they would like to see in a future version of the game.