Animal Crossing Assessment

Animal Crossing Assessment

The question is 15 marks, and takes 20 minutes. It is about audience and industry, and requires no evaluation.

Model Answer

Although the videogame industry is relatively young compared to television and film, the games industry has also faces distribution problems due to digital convergence. Since consoles have become increasingly convergent, able to share videos and images with the click of a designated 'share button', gaming media has become incredibly shareable and thus spreadable. On the one hand, such share-ability leads to word-of-mouth marketing, such as through memes and online content, aiding distribution. It can even lead to dedicated communities on platforms such as reddit, dedicated to sharing news and content about a game or franchise. Henry Jenkins' fandom theory is applicable here, who embraces the potential of what he calls 'spreadable' media. On the other hand, digital convergence has led to many leaps and games being released before the official date. Typically early footage is shred illegally through platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Reddit. While producers can take legal action against such leaks, it is both impossible to control the spread of media and can potentially create a PR issue creating conflicts with the community. The Last of Us 2, for instance, leaked huge plot points early in the game which lead to a troubled distribution and some gamers even boycotting purchasing the product.

How do media organizations, including through marketing, maintain a variety of audience nationally and globally?

The media industry is rapidly evolving, with new features being made available to consumers across the globe day by day. These features are made intentionally to better these media organizations, so they minimize risk and maximize profit, by attracting as large of an audience as possible. One way media organizations attract a variety of audience nationally and globally is by showing diversity in their advertisements and products, in which people or characters of different heritage and background are presented. By adding this representation, different people from across the globe are more likely to relate to these media organizations and consume their content. Another way media producers maintain a variety of audiences is to make content different for certain regions of the world. For example in China, certain aspects of content are not accepted as they are in different countries, one feature being blood or violence. A way media producers can make both audiences happy and consuming content is by altering content for China so that none of these banned aspects are involved, and by keeping the content the same for everywhere else; by doing this, a larger audience is retained. Media organizations can market products and content in such a way that they appeal to all age groups, and not just one specifically. By making products and content accessible to everyone of all ages, they are creating the possibility of having a large national and global audience due to the fact that nobody is being left out; much better than targeting a specific age group, which will not harvest as much revenue and audience. A final way in which media organizations maintain audiences is by keeping their content and products fresh, so that the consumers do not get bored and go to another organization; in some cases, repetition works to follow popular trends, but not always. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released for the Nintendo Switch in March 2020, a device which had recently come out, and was Nintendo's newest product that came to be thanks to the rapid advancement of technology in the media industry. The Switch was very convergent, being able to be both a console and a handheld, something which was very popular in Japan thanks to the large handheld industry. Animal Crossing had huge success thanks to the fact that it was released in the pandemic, a time in which the world was in lockdown, and everyone had to stay inside, leading to a huge increase in 'gamers'. Nintendo was able to maintain a variety of audiences across the globe thanks to the fact that everyone was in the same situation, and were having very problems; that they were bored, had nothing to do and wanted to socialize. Nintendo was able to target these people and market Animal Crossing as an outlet to escape reality, in which people could escape their problems and be who they wanted to be. Animal Crossing also promoted diversity in the form of gender, race and sexuality as seen in the characters of the game, which made people that are diverse feel represented and more willing to play the game. The ability to screenshot content inside Animal Crossing and share it to other platforms and people made the game even more popular and helped retain audiences, largely because this made the game digitally convergent.