The History of Computer Games

A useful article...long, but worth a read...

The history of computer games – from text to DirectX
The world of gaming has changed massively since the first game, Spacewar, appeared in 1961
Iain Thomson, Personal Computer World 18 Apr 2008

ENT

Ever since the birth of the home computer, people have wanted to play games on their PCs.

The patent for the first game using a CRT monitor was filed in 1947.

When the first DEC PDP-1 mainframe was delivered to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1961 it took staff just months to write a shooter called Spacewar.

But it was the boom in home-computer ownership in the 1970s that saw games take off. Since then designers have developed code that uses computing power to the fullest and have been pivotal in the development of hardware, such as sound and graphics cards.

Today the industry is worth billions and the population of online gaming communities outnumbers that of some nation states.
Modern professional gamers are at the cutting edge of computer hardware and gaming machines are used to design the new generation of mainstream computers.

1970s and 1980s

The early years


When home computers began to rise in popularity during the late 1970s, the public was already used to playing electronic games. The video arcade boom had seen a generation grow up playing games, and consoles using Rom cartridges were becoming a feature in many homes.

The first computer games were built primarily by university staff and students because they had easy access to computers. They were mostly text adventures with no graphics.

However, before long the first 3D maze game, Mazewar, was created, which also became the earliest example of a first-person shooter (FPS) after a combat system was added.

University systems were increasingly networked, so the sector also gave us the first multi-user dungeon (Mud) games. These were played by a limited number of people navigating an imaginary landscape using text commands but they also allowed participants to talk to one another.

It was mainly the work of hobbyists that led to these games being played on standalone computers. They either shared games among themselves or distributed them via magazines such as Creating Computing, which printed out the source code for others to input and play.

But games design was hampered by a plethora of platforms and limited hardware capabilities. The Apple II, considered powerful for its time, lacked a sound chip, so used an innovative software hack to vibrate the speaker at different frequencies to simulate notes, for example.

Data transfer was another problem, with most computers storing software on cassette tape that was limited to between 500 and 2,000bits/sec and required careful sound control to work. Although 5.25in floppy drives were available at this time, they were primarily for business use.

Living colour 
Colour was also pivotal. In arcade games, it was provided by coloured stencils across the screen but in 1979, the first true colour game, Galaxian, arrived -– though colour games had yet to reach computers.

But in 1982 things changed, with the launch of the Commodore 64 in the US and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in Europe. The powerful Commodore and inexpensive ZX Spectrum dominated the games market for the next few years.

The Commodore 64 was built using a graphics controller that had been designed for a games console and was capable of displaying 16 colours, bitmapping and screen scrolling.

The three-channel sound chip was created by a former synthesiser developer, leading games designers to start incorporating music themes into games.

The ZX Spectrum was slightly more limited, with 15 colours (seven in two tones and black) and an effective resolution of 256x192.

Its single-channel speaker could cover only 10 octaves but at half the price of the Commodore, it sold in the millions and was also widely cloned in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Birth of legends 


The increasing amount of computing power available in the 1980s made new types of games possible.
In 1980 Flash Attack became the first game to allow two players to link their computers via a serial port and play against each other using home-made cabling.

Flash Attack has been cited as the first strategy game but for most, the original examples of this were Utopia and Stonkers.
Utopia was certainly the first simulation game, where the player managed resources to build up an empire, but there was no player-directed combat. Stonkers, on the other hand, had player-controlled combat but lacked the intricate management side of Utopia.

Despite these advances, it became clear that PCs were reaching a limit of what they could do on their own as users demanded better graphics and sound.

Visual awareness 
Graphics cards for bigger computers had been around since the 1960s but it wasn’t until 1981 with the first IBM PC that they became common in home computers. However the card was limited to one colour, with four-colour (or 16 text colours) CGA as an expensive upgrade.

After IBM launched the IBM AT in 1984 and standardised around the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which offered 16 colours for graphics, it was at last on a level pegging with the competition.

But the IBM AT also had a simple design that was easily cloned by other manufacturers and this led to much wider ownership of computers as prices fell. It also made widescale games distribution for the platform more economically viable.

After a brief standards war, IBM settled on the video graphics array (VGA) standard in 1987, allowing much more colourful games with 256 colours, and by the end of the decade the new extended Graphics Array (XGA) protocol was giving 65,536 colours at a resolution of 1,024x768.

This gave designers a lot more leeway in how to use colour and sharp graphics. Strangely it was the simple games that used this most effectively. Tetris, invented in 1985, was quickly turned into a brightly coloured game with simple rules that proved highly addictive.

The improvements in graphics made a big difference to the computer games market, allowing text-based adventure games to move into graphics.

One of the most popular of these was Leisure Suit Larry, a scrolling puzzle adventure game in which the hero tried to find a girlfriend. It became one of the most pirated games of the decade and went through many follow-up versions.

By the end of the 1980s the new graphics capabilities were used to create more realism, leading to the game that brought simulation games into the mainstream, Sim City.

The aural experience 
Around the end of the decade affordable soundcards also began to make an appearance.

The first came from Canadian company Adlib in 1987 but it was quickly superseded by Creative’s Soundblaster card, which dominated the market and drove Adlib out of business.

Up until that point, game sound came from a single PC speaker. The development of a dedicated card, into which could be plugged proper stereo speakers and subwoofers, revolutionised game sounds.

The advent of high-quality sound also caused a significant change in the way sound was used in games. The ability to generate not only stereo but later surround sound meant that for the first time, when a player heard a sound they could tell roughly where it was coming from. This made FPS games more exciting and realistic, rather than just having tinny music playing in the background.

Games such as the Alone in the Dark series made great use of the improved sound capabilities to make unsettling music an essential part of gameplay.

Other games, such as Carmageddon, even allowed players to integrate their own music into games, an approach taken by many manufacturers.

1990s

Shoot first, ask questions later


If there was one type of game that dominated the 1990s it was the first-person shooter (FPS). In 1992 Wolfenstein 3D, in which the player infiltrates and destroys a Nazi stronghold, was released and gained a cult following.

A year later a similar game from the same manufacturer called Doom began to achieve massive success, because of its superb simulated 3D environment and bloody game play. Another key factor in the success of Doom was its initial distribution as shareware. Freeware and shareware were relatively recent business ideas and many in the games industry thought games distribution wasn’t suited to those methods.

They were proved wrong and by the end of 1995 Doom had a bigger user base than Windows 95, many of whom paid for the full software version. As a direct result, many games developers now habitually release demo versions as free or shareware to publicise the game.

The success of these two games inspired a host of other first-person shooters, including Doom’s sequel Quake, Marathon for Apple users, Duke Nukem 3D and Half-Life. All refined the principle, adding better physics engines, more realistic gameplay and more innovative environments.

However, the graphic nature of these and other games caused public concern. Computer games had traditionally been seen as more respectable than video arcades and escaped censorship but the new generation of ultra-violent games caused governments to act.

In the US the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was formed with congressional approval in 1994, to rate computer games in the same way as films. Germany banned Wolfenstein 3D almost immediately for its use of Nazi imagery and other governments soon introduced bans or restrictions.

Carmageddon, where points are gained for running down pedestrians, was effectively banned by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) until the developers made it less gory.

The worries weren’t helped with the launch in 1995 of the first 2D/3D graphics cards, followed by true 3D cards a few years later.

These cards used their power to free up the computer’s CPU while allowing for much greater realism during games.

The game that capitalised on this capability to best effect was Duke Nukem 3D, launched in 1996. This used a different physics engine from Doom and, while it wasn’t a totally 3D game, the player could for the first time fly above the playing area or swim below it.

It also came with a large and easy-to-use developer kit – a factor that was to become increasingly important for many games during this decade.

Mod for victory 
Games such as Duke Nukem 3D and Doom were released with developer kits that allowed players to design their own levels and share then with friends. The companies also discovered a lucrative sideline in licensing their game engines to other developers.

A good development kit became crucial to a game’s success. Gaming communities developed around games and teams of fans would submit their designs and modifications for general use.

This was made possible largely by the growing popularity of the internet. Gamers had always been early adopters of communications technologies and games communities were some of the most active bulletin board sites.

While games were small this provided enough communication but the 1990s saw large-capacity games being developed by huge teams with multi-million pound budgets. Modifications were now big chunks of code and a reliable transfer mechanism was needed.

As it turns out, two arrived. First physical storage underwent a revolution. In 1991 Tandy and Commodore released computers with CD-Rom drives built in, increasing the storage capacity of removable media from the 1.44MB floppy disks that were standard at the time.

The new medium allowed people to share files and gave games manufacturers a huge amount of capacity to build gameplay. In 1993 a game called Myst used the storage capacity of the CD to generate a huge playing landscape that was beautifully rendered in a way that would have been impossible without a huge stack of floppy disks.

The advent of the CD-Rom was another boon to the strategy and simulation gaming market. Sim City’s success proved the market for simulator games was viable and inspired a host of similar titles including Railroad Tycoon and Theme Park. The company behind Sim City also expanded the field with The Sims, which became a big worldwide hit.

Meanwhile Civilisation and other strategy games benefited from more scenarios and better graphics, allowing developers to focus on gameplay in ever-increasing detail.
The second big revolution was the growth in bandwidth throughout the 1990s, together with the advent of the World Wide Web and the browsers to use it, which gave games players an easy way to talk and share files.

Bandwidth was also useful for playing games online.

It was easy to play non time-dependent games, such as chess, by email.

But other games, where reaction time was critical, were painful to play at dial-up speeds.

The advent of broadband at the end of the decade saw a surge of interest in online gaming, as shown by Counter-strike (see Classic 2000s games below).

As broadband spread towards the end of the decade it also spawned a new kind of game – the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

These games were versions of existing role-playing games, where players assumed a character and interacted with each other online.

A version of this was tried very early on, in 1984, when Compuserve became the first ISP to host an online RPG, Islands of Kesmai. However gameplay wasn’t in real time and it was expensive to play, with hefty data charges.

More recent MMORPGs such as Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds in 1996, Ultima Online in 1997 and Everquest in 1999 are based purely online, with virtual worlds stored on remote servers that players sign onto in exchange for a monthly fee.

Paying regular subscriptions to play has grown in popularity and the market is now worth more than $1bn annually worldwide.
2000s
Reality bites 
Parts of the computer games industry entered the 20th Century under a cloud. The 1999 Columbine massacre was taken by some as proof of the harmful effect of video games.

This didn’t stop ever more graphic and gory games coming onto the market. Even the US Army got in on the game, developing and releasing its own FPS called America’s Army as a recruitment tool.

The game, released on Independence Day 2002, was developed around the Counter-strike physics engine and was designed to be as realistic as possible. It is available as a free download and the army is pleased with its success. Figures show nearly a third of recruits play the game before joining up.

The new decade also brought Microsoft into the gaming market in force. While the PC had become the de facto gaming platform of the last decade, PC games still only made up about a fifth of total games sales. The rest of the market went to consoles such as the Sony Playstation, so Microsoft decided to get in there and launched the Xbox. This was a big shift for the company and has proved increasingly successful.

Meanwhile for PCs the computer gaming market now actively shapes computer development. Computer manufacturers have realised that gamers represent the highest-value computer buyers.
Dell’s takeover of games specialist Alienware and HP’s VoodooPC purchase show how seriously they take the market. HP uses VoodooPC engineers to develop its next generation of systems.

“Gamers are early adopters and high-performance enthusiasts who can test drive advanced technologies that could some day be broadly applied to other computing capabilities,” said Rahul Sood, chief technology officer for HP’s global gaming business unit.

Meanwhile, ever-increasing broadband speeds and falling usage costs have continued to stoke demand for online gaming. MMORPGs are growing ever more sophisticated and in 2003 Project Entropia set up the first game currency that was backed by real-world money.

This popularity was spurred further by the launch of World of Warcraft (WoW) in 2004. The game has grown to have more than nine million subscribers worldwide.

But as MMORPGs have grown ever more realistic, so too real-world problems have been introduced into the games.
Shortly after WoW was launched players began to receive copious amounts of spam in their gaming inboxes and new technology had to be built in to shield users.

Simulation games too have gone virtual. In 2002 the Sims Online was launched, taking the original Sims family and transplanting them to a massive online world of 13 cites.

So far the game has had moderate success, but not on the scale of the offline version.
Meanwhile in the FPS genre, games have come close to the pinnacle of realism and are now diversifying to keep gamers interested.

In 2000 Deus Ex combined the experience points system of an RPG with FPS tactics to create a highly successful game.
For the mainstream FPS market new developments continue apace. Half-Life 2 uses increased computer power to let computer-generated characters show realistic facial expressions and has a highly detailed playing environment.

Doom 3 has concentrated on improving the physics engine of the game for greater realism. This provided the developers with a good source of income from licensing the physics engine to third parties.

FPS games are also making it into virtual worlds, giving rise to a new class of game called a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS). This takes a multiplayer FPS and puts it into a virtual world similar to MMOPRG games.

The first such game was World War 2 Online, published in 2001. This allowed thousands of players to fight across a scale map of Europe and has spawned a number of sequels and imitators.

What’s next? 


The past 30 years have seen computer games change from a hobbyist’s pastime to a multi-billion dollar industry involving the biggest players in computing.

Games have been one of the most rapidly developing areas of programming and their progress has to an extent been governed by the speed of the development of the PC industry.

The development cycle has come full circle and games play an increasing role in pushing the development of hardware for a new generation of mainstream computers.

1980s game technology: 3D graphics 
While true hardware-supported 3D graphics cards wouldn’t arrive until the 1990s, clever software design made realistic simulations possible and, by the end of the 1980s, 2D scrolling games were almost extinct.

Techniques such as texture wrapping, where colours are placed around an object to give the illusion of texture and depth, made this possible. Later engines allowed for irregularly shaped walls and floors to further give the illusion of depth.

Such software shenanigans were known in the industry as 2.5D and they lasted until 3D graphics cards came onto the market. Not only did they get the best of low-powered hardware, they ensured the entry price for computing stayed low, because there was no need for extra kit to play a game.

This differs from today’s situation, in which games developers work closely with hardware manufacturers to make sure new games use the computer’s resources to the fullest.

Classic 1980s games

Elite 
The 1984 space trading game Elite was created by two Cambridge University students and managed to squeeze 3D wireframe graphics out of the 32MB of Ram on the BBC Model B computer.

The two also used a planet generation algorithm that gave players 256 planets spread across eight galaxies to explore.
Elite was very popular. It made the UK national news and a bidding war followed among games manufacturers for porting rights to other platforms, showing the increasing financial clout of the gaming industry.

It was also the first game to include such ancillary material as a novella about the game, a full manual and even stickers to brand PCs.

Sim City 
Sim City was the first mass-market simulation game, where players would design, build and run a city rather than destroy things. This involved laying down road and rail links, providing utilities to residents and taxing them to fund further improvements.

The game was significant for two other reasons. It was one of the first computer games where players didn’t win or lose a game, simply maintained the status quo.

This may also have contributed to its other distinguishing factor -– its popularity with women. Sim software has a far higher percentage of female players than others and is among the best-selling games worldwide.

Sim City has now been expanded into several franchises, notably The Sims, where players raise a virtual family unit from the cradle to the grave. The Sims is officially the world’s best-selling computer game at 16 million copies.

Classic 1990s games

Doom 
Doom was a revolution when it was introduced. With a 3D environment, excellent use of colour and shading, extreme violence and dark humour, Doom was a smash hit and dominated the first-person shooter games format for years.

The game attracted a big following partly because the initial levels were distributed free as shareware. Within two years more than 10 million PCs were running Doom and many of those players bought the full game.

Doom also popularised network play, with the initial game allowing for up to four people to compete in a deathmatch. This became such a problem that many companies, including Intel, banned the game in the workplace because it was consuming too much network bandwidth.

Civilisation 
The Civilisation franchise has been widely recognised as the gold standard for real-time strategy games. Players start with a settler and have to build cities with manufacturing and financial infrastructure, conduct diplomacy with neighbours, research scientific goals and fight battles.

The eventual goal is to wipe out all other players or build enough capacity to send a spacecraft to seed other planets.
This gives the game a broad appeal to both aggressive and constructive gamers, and the educational nature of the game appealed to parents.

One of the key characteristics of this game is the amount of time a single game takes to complete – sometimes up to 20 hours.
The immersive nature of the game and the time it takes were blamed by author Iain Banks for the late delivery of one of his books, which was only finished after he smashed the game’s disc.

1990s game technology: DirectX 
Just as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer became the de facto standard browser in the 1990s, so too did its DirectX software become the standard for games developers.

Microsoft introduced DirectX at the same time as Windows 95, because it was concerned that games developers would stay writing for Dos unless a compelling reason to change platform focus was given.

The DirectX suite is a collection of standardised APIs for controlling how graphics, sound, peripherals and networking are managed.

Hardware manufacturers write their own drivers and the net result is that any game should run seamlessly on any Windows PC.
There have been accusations that Microsoft uses DirectX to encourage people to upgrade their operating system. The newest version, DirectX 10, is available only to Windows Vista users, so gamers wanting to play the latest games will have to upgrade.

2000s game technology: moving online 
As the internet has spread into homes, games manufacturers have been quick to incorporate it into their games. Although multiplayer games have been around in some form for decades, it is the growth of the internet, particularly broadband, that has profoundly changed how people play games.

Some types of games, such as first-person shooters, benefit because people can play against each other, which is much more satisfying than beating the game’s intelligence engine. Broadband has been crucial in this genre, since a slow internet connection makes it easier to get killed.

Role playing in totally online environments has been revolutionised by broadband. Games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft have millions of users inhabiting completely artificial worlds that are, in essence, limitless in scope.

Classic 2000s games

Counter-strike 
Doom may have paved the way in the computer games market but Counter-strike remains one of the classics in the multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) genre.

The game was nothing more than a modification of an existing game, Half Life. Developers created a series of skins that allowed players to fight as terrorists or police playing over a variety of maps.

Two things set Counter-strike apart. First the environment was very realistic, with accurate weaponry that experienced recoil, an excellent physics engine and sound that mimics the playing environment perfectly.
Second, it was easy to network and was much better played online in real time against live opponents, allowing friends to form clans to play against other.

Later versions allowed players to talk to each other during the game via USB headsets, and this reinforced the community aspect of the game.

Counter-strike clans still play regularly and it is now the most popular FPS in the world.

World of Warcraft 
In the new century World of Warcraft (WoW) has dominated the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and is the most popular game of its type, with nine million paying customers.

Warcraft games had been around for a decade but WoW shifted the game from being a simple strategy game to an entire online world inhabited by human and computer avatars that fight, trade, and develop crafts and guilds controlled by players who pay a monthly fee to enter.

There was little new in WoW when it was released but the intricacy of the online environment, the ability to convert actual currency into gaming tender and the opportunity for players to buy land and develop it proved popular. This latter function has made some players a decent living in real world money.

The game has provoked concern because of its very addictive nature. Some countries, including China (which has a third of the world’s players), limit gameplay to three hours after a few players died from exhaustion and harmed themselves by simulating gameplay in the real world.

Using an emulator to play Dos games 
Many people grew up with classic games written in the age of Dos and want to play again, but much of the older software is incompatible with modern versions of Windows.

In order to solve this problem emulators have sprung up. These can handle older games at their intended run speed without interfering with the modern operating system.

Dosbox is an open-source emulator, and one of the most popular. The installer is included on this month’s special bonus cover CD, or can be downloaded from the Dosbox website and is available for a wide variety of platforms. Once it’s installed you should copy old games onto a folder on your hard drive.

Dosbox has no graphical user interface (although third-party GUIs are available) so an easy-to-remember folder location on the C: drive, such as C:\DOSGAMES, is best.

When you run Dosbox, you’ll need to specify the folder containing the old games as Dosbox’s main drive. Then running the game’s .exe file should start it.

If an older game is running too fast or slowly, the speed of the emulation can be changed using the F11 and F12 control keys, while the frame rate can be altered with F7 and F8.

Gaming timeline


1961 Space War, the first computer game

1971 The Galaxy Game becomes the first coin-operated computer game

1973 Will Crowther creates the first computer adventure game, called Adventure 

1973 Mazewar, the first 3D maze game

1978 Roy Trubshaw writes first multi-user dungeon for a British university network

1979 First transatlantic Mud game held

1980 First networkable PC game

1981 Castle Wolfenstein launched

1982 Utopia is first simulation game

1982 First text and colour graphics game

1983 First real-time strategy game

1984 Compuserve first ISP to host RPG

1985 Tetris invented

1986 Rim Worlds War first play-by-email RPG game hosted on commercial server 

1987 Adlib releases the first soundcard

1987 Midi Maze introduces deathmatches

1988 Pool of Radiance launched

1989 Soundblaster starts business

1989 Sim City launched

1990 Ultima and Wizardry reach PC

1991 Civilisation launched

1992 Wolfenstein 3D, Dune II, Mortal Kombat launched

1992 Alone in the Dark uses actors

1993 Doom launched

1994 Doom II, Command and Conquer launched

1994 ESRB set up

1996 Duke Nukem launched

1996 Quake launched

1996 Syndicate Wars puts advertising in a computer game for the first time

1997 Age of Empires, Ultima Online, Grand Theft Auto launched

1998 Half-Life launched

1999 Billy Mitchell achieves the highest possible score for Pac-Man with 3,333,360 points

1999 Everquest launched

2000 The first game modification to be more popular than the original, Counter-strike, launched. Later to become the world’s best-selling FPS

2001 Microsoft enters console market with the Xbox

2001 World War 2 Online becomes the first massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS)

2002 The Sims Online launched

2002 US Army releases America’s Army, the first time a game has been designed for recruitment.

2002 Grand Theft Auto 3 launched

2003 First MMORPG virtual currency, with real-world value, set up by Project Entropia

BTEC Magazines Project Task 2

BTEC Media

Computer Games Magazines project – preparation for practical work

Task 2: Generate Ideas for Printed Material

In Groups of 4(ish)

[or on your own if you can’t handle group work/don’t like anyone]

1. Brainstorm ideas for the contents of your magazine. Record these ideas on paper: everything you do at this stage will be used for assessment

2. Use the internet to research existing computer games magazines: what do they have inside? How are they laid out? How many pages do they have? How much do they cost? How often do they come out?

3. Who is the audience for your magazine? How have you identified them? How is your magazine going to meet the needs of this audience?

4. How much is your magazine going to cost to produce? How are you going to fund these costs? [**try to find out how much it costs to produce an actual magazine. Then think about the advertising you would carry to fund this – what sort of adverts, and from whom, would you put in?]

5. What are the price, frequency and size of your magazine (in pages) going to be?

6. You should have front covers already designed: choose one of these to work with as your actual front cover. Work on individually designing a few (3+) pages from the magazine [Remember, this is a computer games magazine – while you don’t need the actual content yet, you will need to have an idea of what is going to go where…]

7. Research regulatory bodies covering magazines – what aren’t you allowed to put in?

Coke Zero and Diet Coke print ads

To answer section A on your exam you need to be able to talk about advertising in more than one medium

That means commenting on a couple of print ads alongside the video ones

Coke Zero - Quantum of Solace

This print ad follows the conventions of the TV ad: the predominant colours are the colours of the product (black and red) and the product itself is advertised using a classic male icon: James Bond. Remember how advertisers use celebrity to sell their products – in this case the audience (of men) can feel in some way like James Bond by buying into the marketing and consuming Coke Zero.

Black and Red are nature’s warning colours: they’re strong, bold, powerful and masculine. Using an image of James Bond, half hidden in the shadows directly addressing the audience is challenging you to be a man and drink Coke Zero. James Bond is an icon, the ultimate ‘man’ – sophisticated, good with the ladies, and almost indestructible: three major appeals to an audience who want to stress their manliness!

The product is featured centrally in this advertisement, and it uses graphics from the James Bond films (the gun and the shutter). The white swirls are suggestive of ice, emphasising the coolness and freshness of Coke Zero, and the slogan ‘Zero Zero 7’ combines the name of the drink with the James Bond slogan itself. This advert is a natural extension of the ‘Our Hero’ campaign, using a fictional hero to firmly aim the product at an audience of men.

Diet Coke - 'hello you'

In this print advertisement Diet Coke aim their Product at a female audience by using an image of Duffy (the singer) posed in front of an image of a female superhero. Duffy represents the Diet Coke drinker: female, independent, smart and cool, and someone who is able to define herself by what she drinks. She is in black and white (traditionally representing sophistication and cool) and stands out against the bright colours of the background in the same way as the Diet Coke can’s red stands out against her.

Duffy is there to represent the audience: they should see themselves reflected in her and in the ‘hello you’ of the slogan. This is an advert featuring a woman
aimed at women: there is none of the obvious sexuality or masculinity seen in the Coke Zero ads. She is casually dressed, in jeans and a checked shirt,
and is casually posed – any woman can aspire to be like her, to be this cool, ‘no superwoman’ but just a woman who is that little bit cooler for drinking Diet Coke.

Unlike Coke Zero, which sells its product across the platforms through sex and masculinity, the Diet Coke ads feature women in control of their lives and the situations they find themselves in, drinking Diet Coke as part of the everyday process of being a modern woman. The cross-platform tie-in with this poster is the TV advert which features Duffy taking time out from performing to cycle to her nearest supermarket to get a Diet Coke, singing on the way about life. She’ll do what she wants, with a smile, and diet coke will help her get it.

GCSE Practical Coursework - Evaluation

Media Studies Coursework

Planning and evaluative commentary. 700-800 words

The Production Brief should be clearly stated in the heading on each candidate’s Evaluative Commentary, as should the title of the candidate’s production. The Evaluative Commentary should be split into the following three parts in order to address the following points:

Part 1 Planning

The brief and aims of the production. The genre of the production and the conventions followed. If the candidate worked in a group, he/she must list the names of the other members of the group.

The brief was to make an opening sequence or a trailer for a new horror film. In an opening sequence or a trailer for film in this genre you would expect to find…


I worked in a group of … The members of my group were…

The institution that would produce the production and details on where and/or when the production would be seen/heard/bought/sold.

I would expect this film to be produced by a major studio/small independent studio such as… This is because… The film would be shown in… [major cinemas/small independent cinemas/arthouse cinemas nationwide/locally/in festivals]

The target audience/s for the production (including age, gender, income bracket if relevant, and other interests).

I have identified the target audience for my film as being… They would be interested in…

Details of the background research carried out by the candidate. This should include the titles of TV or radio programmes, films, magazines, advertisements, or websites analysed and which of these were inspirations for the candidate’s production. Details of any audience research carried out can be included.

As part of the research for this production I watched a number of horror films such as… [The Grudge, The Ring, The Strangers, The Blair Witch Project]. I found that the most influential on my project was… because…

A description of the stages of planning the production, including storyboarding, scriptwriting and outlines.

In planning my film I created...

Part 2 Production Process

An account of the working process.

What you actually did during the filming of the project.
The allocation of roles within the group and an account of the candidate’s individual contribution to the production.

Talk about how you divided the roles up within the group and who was responsible for what during the filming process.

Details on the technology used – cameras, publishing programs, audio recording equipment, etc.

Talk about the process – using mini-DV cameras, tripods and Adobe Final Cut Pro, plus any work you did with still cameras taking test shots, etc.

The learning processes involved in using the technology. Problems and how they were overcome.

What difficulties did you encounter in the filming and editing processes? How did you overcome them? What did you learn?

An explanation of choices of mise-en-scène, shot, music, fonts, colour, logo, etc. and how these choices fitted in with generic conventions.

Why did you make the decisions you did in the editing process? How do these fit the horror genre and your choice of product – opening or trailer?

An explanation of how these choices were intended to attract the target audience.

How did you fit your film to the target audience? Be specific about what is there to appeal to them in your film?

Part 3 Evaluation

A close analysis of one or two pages/minutes/sequences/images that the candidate considers to be successful.

Talk about a couple of bits in your film that you are particularly proud of, and why they work so well. What is good about them, and how did you create these particular sequences?

A comparison of the production with actual media texts. An identification and analysis of any weaknesses in the production. Responses from audiences to the production. Proposed improvements and a reflection on what the candidate has learned.

How does your work stand up against actual media texts (trailers/openings.) What didn’t work like you would have wanted it to, and how could you have improved it – what would you have done differently if you could do it again? How have other people (i.e. your audience) responded to your work? What have you learned about the film-making process?

The Appendix
Materials in the Appendix are required as evidence of planning for the external Moderator. Only one copy of the Appendix is required per group, although candidates may include evidence of their own individual research and planning.

Candidates are not expected to provide a detailed diary of the production, or to include every page of planning material produced during the production. Where questionnaires have been produced as part of audience research or response to the finished production, only one copy of the questionnaire is necessary.

The Appendix should demonstrate the stages of research and planning and support the Evaluative Commentary. The contents of the Appendix will vary according to the brief. The details below indicate what must be included in the Appendix in bold and also give suggestions for other additional material that could be usefully included.

The material should comprise documents produced during the planning stages and not retrospectively. These should be working documents, and their lack of finish should reflect this.

Avatar - Year 10 assessment

Avatar Film Poster Analysis

The poster consists of a single image, in this case a face of an ‘avatar’, the central character of the film. The face is twice as big the frame, and is placed on the right hand side of the frame, split down the middle, which increases the idea of ‘alien’ – we are used to seeing a whole face, not half of one, and especially not a blue one – this plays with our expectations of a movie poster, and teases us with the idea that ‘less is more’...the striking visual leads us to expect a striking film, and the fact that the poster does not reveal much about the film, apart from the alien nature of the characters works as a teaser, designed to make the audience want to know more, and to see the film.

We see a blue male face (or half face on a dark background), and the face is lit from the top left, highlighting the cheekbones and the lips. Because the poster is essentially dark, the glowing ‘spots’ on the face (intensifying the character’s ‘alien’ nature) and the single yellow eye are prominent: they are much brighter than the surroundings. The eye holds the key central position in the frame, and looks straight at us, the audience, challenging us to explore the film to find out more.

The idea of ‘halves’ is important here: the avatar is half alien, half human DNA, and to reinforce this we get half a face. One half is presented, the other half is mystery. There is very little text in the poster: the banner across the top says ‘From the Director of Titanic’ – this intertextual reference gives a sense of the size and the scale of the film: it’s very much in the blockbuster mould. The title of the film, at the bottom of the poster, is in a distinctive font, which glows with the same light blue as the spots on the character’s face, standing out against the dark background, and highlighting the key text which anchors the image: in comparison, the text at the top of the poster is much less clear.

Despite the unusual font, the block capitals help this stand out. In the bottom left of the poster is a the address of the film’s homepage, avatarmovie.com, giving the audience the opportunity to seek more information if they need it, and in the bottom right is the production information, letting us know the studio financing and producing the film (20th Century Fox) – again, we know that this is going to be a major film because of major studio involvement.

This Trailer analysis comes from the News of the World website (!) - the language is informal, but there is some good commentary on why things are as they are and the meanings of the trailer: use this to supplement your class notes.

By Robbie Collin, 29/10/2009

WHEN the Avatar teaser trailer was launched back in August, movie fans were split into two camps.

Those who were intrigued and excited by the possibilities of a brand new £120 million movie directed by James Cameron, and whinging idiots.

And now, surely, the naysayers will be silenced. Because this brand new three-and-a-quarter minute trailer sets out Cambo's stall more clearly than ever. There Will Be Robots. There Will Be Aliens. There Will Be Carnage. But most importantly, There Will Be Plot.

Convinced? No? Then read my shot-by-shot analysis - and, more importantly, watch the damn thing yourselves and savour the sweet, sweet blockbuster magic.
* Avatar is in cinemas on December 17.

New full length trailer for James Cameron's Avatar

0.03 "Are you Jake Sully? I'd like to talk to you about making a fresh start..."
The first thing we see is a pair of eyes, opening. James Cameron wants you to OPEN YOUR EYES and appreciate his new VISION. Do you see?!?!

Character

0.16 "I became a marine for the hardship. I told myself I can pass any test a man can pass. All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for..."
Aha! Something about character. One of the few legit criticisms of the first Avatar trailer was there wasn't much more to it other than a means of introducing the film's rough plot and the Na'vi, the ten-foot blue cat people who make up about half the film's cast.

But Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) is the star of the show and now we find out a bit about him. He's a wheelchair-bound marine who wants to get back in the game. And a mining operation on a far-off planet is going to give him that chance. How? Read on...

0.24 "Ladies and gentlemen, you are not in Kansas any more..."
Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) introduces the marines to the planet Pandora, where most (if not all) of Avatar is set. We get amazing shots of big colourful rhino beasts, floating islands and pterodactyl thingies.

"You should see your faces," says Michelle Rodriguez. Cameron will be hoping this applies to the audience too.

By the way, the first film reviewer to describe Pandora as "Jurassic Park on acid" WILL be fired.

0.40 "This is why we're here. Because this little grey rock sells for $20 million a kilo..."
The marines are on Pandora to harvest un-special-looking minerals that cost a fortune back on earth - maybe they create nuclear energy, or are endorsed by 50 Cent, or something.

Marines

0.45 "Their village happens to be resting on the richest deposit and they need to relocate. Those savages are threatening our whole operation..."
Whose village? The Na'vi's village of course.

The marines need to get rid of the pesky Na'vi in order to harvest their loot, so we get some shots of their impressive looking war machines rumbling through the forest, and the Na'vi waving their spears in the air and rolling in a move that's basically film shorthand for Noble Savages Who Will Not Be Oppressed. Ewoks did it. So did the Scots in Braveheart.

But it looks like before declaring all-out war on the Na'vi, the marines are mounting a last-ditch attempt to find a "diplomatic solution". (NB - judging by the end of the trailer, this is not very successful.)

Wait a minute, was that Sigourney Weaver, playing some kind of doctor who probably has a crisis of conscience about the whole operation? It WAS? Excellent.

0.59 "The concept is to drive these remotely-controlled bodies called Avatars..."
And the film's key plot device gets explained in layman's terms. Jake Sully is one of a number of soldiers whose mind will be transplanted into a Na'vi body, so he can infiltrate their ranks. Sneaky.

1.13 "You get me what I need, I'll see to it that you get your legs back. Your real legs."

Colonel Quaritch gives Jake his reason to fight. This guy is going to relish the ability to walk unaided as an Avatar, but to be free of the wheelchair for good? That's his dream.

1.19 "Looks like you...this is your Avatar."

This shot of Sam Worthington's half-smile when he realises he's about to walk again was one of my favourite things about the entire teaser trailer. And it's back here. Because it's great.

1.30 Apparently when your mind goes into the body of an Avatar you get a brief glimpse of an early 90s rave video.

1.34 The first of many new special effects money shots to be previewed, we see Sully's Avatar cross a lake in a helicopter. I have no idea what a ten-foot-tall blue cat person would look like under the rotor blades of an army chopper, but this probably isn't far off.

1.51 "You should not be here..."

Introducing Zoe Saldana's character, Neytiri - a Na'vi who befriends Sully on his infiltration mission. Do you think they'll have some kind of forbidden romance? Probably not, eh.

2.07 "Outstanding..."

Lots of special effects shots that should look fantastic in 3D, most involving people jumping off high things. 3D films normally either go down the thrill-ride path (eg A Christmas Carol) OR the subtler, give-the-shot depth route (eg Up) but it looks as if Cameron's trying to have his cake and eat it.

Dramatic

2.15 "Did you forget what team you're playing for?"

And here's the dramatic bit! Once he's in his Na'vi body, Sully's torn between fulfilling his mission - and his ambitions as a marine - and defending the interests of the mysterious and weirdly sexy natives he's grown to love. It's a bit like Pocahontas! But in space!

2.19 "The strong prey on the weak..."

A lot of very impressive war scenes, as the Na'vi square up against the marines for the Final Showdown.

Clearly Quaritch just wants to wade in and knock the nine lives out of these dumb blue hippies, and it appears he gets his wish. But a small band of marines including Sully, and it looks like Michelle Rodriguez, are going up against him.

2.32 "We're going up against gunships with bows and arrows..."
But which is better? Gunships, or bows and arrows? There's only one way to find out...

2.40 FIIIIGGGHHTT!!!

Interestingly, the trailer namechecks ALL of James Cameron's biggest hits - Terminator, Aliens, T2, True Lies AND Titanic. The implication being, this is a film that will appeal to fans of all the above. So expect bad-ass robots, brilliantly-designed ET beasties, big action and a tender, candlelit scene where Sully draws Neytiri with her boobies out. Possibly.

2.50 The cup of coffee shot.
This is the single best shot in the entire trailer - it tells you everything about Colonel Quaritch that you need to know. Here is a man who will launch a missile strike designed to cause cultural genocide, and then take a delicious sip of piping hot java from the comfort of his deathbot's cockpit. James Cameron gold.

2.55 "We will send them a message...that this...is our land!"

FREEEEEDOMMMM!

3.07 AVATAR.

BICKETY-BAM! Sorry, but this is going to be freaking excellent.

Miss Carden Group - Writing the Proposal

This may also be useful...BTEC Unit 7 Writing the Proposal

Your Proposal…

STEP 1: Research your product.

Know everything there is to know about the product or service as well as its competition. Most importantly, figure out what might be uniquely different about the product. Look for that little "edge" to give you something important to talk about. Is it "better", "cheaper" or "new"?

STEP 2: Pick your medium.

Decide which advertising medium you will run the ad or commercial. Creating a radio commercial is very different from a print ad.

STEP 3: Define your target audience.

Focus here on the person or people most likely to want to consume your product or service. Define the target as descriptively as you can. Start with demographic terms such as young women 18-24 years old living in urban areas in the East and the West. Define their psychographics as well: are they trendy or conservative? Social or solitary?

STEP 4: Decide how the product or service fits into the lives of the target.

Are they current users of the product or not? Do they have a current perception of the product and will your ad complement or modify that perception? How and when will they use it? What will it replace? Are you introducing the product to them for the very first time?
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STEP 5: Be selective; focus the message.

You can't say everything there is to say about a product or service in 30 seconds or on an interactive banner. What is the most important, most powerful statement you can make about your product? No matter if you are creating a simple outdoor poster or a 60 second television spot, your message must be single-minded for people to understand, grasp and associate it with your brand.
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STEP 6: Involve the creative team early and often in the development of the creative brief.

Don't simply draft a creative brief and shove it at the team who is expected to work with it and create a brilliant ad. Get their input and "ownership" of the project during its development so they can have a hand in the direction.

STEP 7: Define the tone.

Is the ad expected to be humorous or straight? Informative or simply a reminder? Steeped in emotion or just the facts?

STEP 8: Give the details.

This is where you lay out the timetable for reviewing work, all necessary approvals and production. You provide the estimated production budget, format for the ad and any other specs for the assignment.

Year 10 BTEC Miss Carden - Creative Advertising Techniques

Creative Advertising Techniques:

Advertising techniques are tools. The tools you use to attract attention, engage minds, trigger emotions, and change what people think. All of which can lead to sales. Or votes. Or clicks.

Make a metaphor

Create a symbolic representation of the key idea you want to communicate by using two images or statements that are completely different, but when placed together create a new idea.
You can use words. Or visuals. Or both. You can create a metaphor to represent a characteristic of the brand. Or a feature of the service. Or a benefit of the product.
To create a metaphor, use one thing - a vivid statement or dramatic visual - to suggest another thing - your company, product or service.

Promise a benefit

Promise readers a compelling benefit that the product or service can deliver.
A benefit is something of value to the target audience. Ask, “What can this product or service do for me?” And the answer is a benefit.
The persuasive energy in a benefit ad comes from two characteristics. First is the importance of the benefit to the reader. Second is the specificity of the benefit.
A good example, the headline, “Introducing a washer so gentle it can actually help your clothes last longer."

Mention a problem

Problems. Everyone has them. And some products solve them.
A TV commercial opens with the kids screaming, “We’re hungry, mom!”
A headline reads, “Do you have enough money for retirement?”
This is a technique to grab attention, to engage people who have the problem. Or people who want to avoid getting the problem.

Get really real

Show what people really think. About the opposite sex, their job, or relatives.
Show how people really feel. About money, their spouse, or financial security in old age.
How people really dress and act at home. What people really think about at work? Like sex and petty insults. Depict the attitudes, jealousies, and insecurities that rattle around inside us all.

Create a character

Create a character that adds interest, story value or recognition to your campaign.
Could be an actor playing a role. Or a cartoon character. Or a dead politician. He, she or they are all "created" characters because you define the role they play in the advertising.
While a brand character must represent a characteristic or the personality of the brand. An invented character does not.

Inject dramatic conflict

Create a campaign that uses drama to focus attention, to heighten interest in your message.
The essence of drama is conflict. And that conflict can be between:
Husband vs. wife.
Molly vs. insanity, a struggle with mental health.
Dog vs. mailman.
Teenager vs. her conscience.
Creative Director vs. client.
Your hero should have a goal, an objective, something she really really really wants to achieve. Or has to accomplish to save the planet.
And you might need bad guys, bad creatures, bad luck, bad weather, bad relatives or bad aliens. Come to think of it, bad relatives can be almost identical to bad aliens. But don't use bad politicians or bad lawyers. There are enough of them already.
It's always nice to have a resolution to the conflict, you know, like a happy ending in the movies. But it's not necessary. Because dramatic conflict is essentially a way to engage viewers in your ad.

Exaggerate

Take the basic idea you want to communicate, your concept, and then exaggerate it. Take it to extremes. Push it beyond reason, beyond reality. In the copy. With visuals. Or both.
Exaggerate the benefit. Exaggerate the problem. Exaggerate size, the physical appearance.
Just make sure to exaggerate your exaggeration. Because a BIG exaggeration is interesting, and a powerful way to get communicate your concept. A small exaggeration is simply a misleading ad.

Eye candy

Create a visual so luscious, unusual and striking that it leaps off the screen to grab attention.
Eye candy ads work the same way a Salvador Dali illustration works. These ads stop and engage readers with the look of "Wow. I've never seen anything like that."
Eye candy is the visual equivalent of "Let me show you something new and interesting."
Frequently, the product is the hero in an eye candy ad. But visually rich advertisements can communicate brand characteristics as well. Including a sense of style, an appreciation for fine design, that readers or viewers can associate with.

But usually the creative and persuasive energy lies in the look, the visual. Bang, it grabs and engages eyeballs.
The challenge here is not only creative, but you must also have a generous budget for photography, special effects or image editing.

Make it human

Give human characteristics to your product,
or to something that represents your service.
This technique - personification - can help you create ads that are more interesting, and relevant to viewers. More human and engaging.
You can literally turn the product into a person. Or give it human abilities, such as speech, thought or emotion.
Or go the other way, and blend something about the product into a real person. For example, to depict someone who is a heavy computer user or text message sender, you could show keypad letters embossed on finger tips - and fingertips in the concave shape of the keys.

Make an offer

Make the audience a compelling offer, and tell them exactly how to get it.
This is the essence of direct response advertising. "Hey, Mr. Viewer, Here's what you can get, and here's how to get it."
There are two characteristics that influence the effectiveness of your offer, strength and relevance.
Strength:
"25% off" is stronger than "10% off." "Win a new Toyota 4 Runner" is stronger than "Win a digital camera."
Relevance:
A free brochure offering "10 Ways to preserve the resale value of your new car" is more relevant to people shopping for automobile financing than, "10 ways to protect your good credit."
Be sure to get your offer up front - in the headline or subhead. Put it at the top of the mailer or email. And support it with photos and visuals.
You could save money

This is free.

Check here on the blog for the assessment task details.