"How are the media industries of Gaming and the Internet interlinked with not only themselves, media industry as a whole"

"How are the media industries of Gaming and the Internet interlinked with not only themselves, media industry as a whole"

Gaming: Shot to popularity in the late 80's early 90's with consoles such as the Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo Entertainment System , at its routes it was a simplistic medium and the games produced were minor endeavours with simple graphics and sounds achieved by a few individuals with a knowledge of basic coding. It was sneered as an industry by the already established business's i.e. film/music world. But is now earning more annualy then both combined.

Although this picture to the untrained eye seems quite complete they miss out any console that is PC based.
See the full picture here!

 The 2000 period pushed gaming forward leaps and bounds by the invention of bigger and better hardware allowing for more complex games, bigger productions and therefore budgets. The teams responsible for creating these games grew from small crews of a few people to full production teams, bringing in a whole manner of different sectors for pre and post production, from artists and designers, programmers, voice actors and motion capture teams, audio teams and composers sometimes utilizing full orchestras, to things like marketing and publicity.

Zelda II: The adventure of Link (NES, 1987)

Mass Effect 3 (PS3, Xbox, PC 2012)

Internet: Started off as a pipe dream way back in the year 1969 of having computers communicating with each other over great distances, networks both big and small connecting to create a web of computers and their data. The internet itself went from its early days as a purely data based information tool with simplistic sending of data, to something we can better recognize today.

A digital image showing the data sent around the world via the wonderful medium of the internet.

 As the technology of web browsers advanced we started to see more and more information and entertainment based websites (of which I will be focusing on) using an integrated program, Flash which brought around the Flash format for animated vector graphics, to make videos animations and create simple games. As demand for this grew flash became the standard for most websites and an industry of entertainment was born.

Many new things were available for the first time, free bite-size entertainment in the form of digital shorts and youtube video's, free journalism in things such as user review sites, reviews from 3rd party sources and most of all SOCIAL NETWORKING  which gave us a platform from which to socialise online with friends and made the task of communicating and sharing with your peers simplistic and addictive.

(check out my 5 websites post for an example of some of the websites you can access on the ever expanding web) 



Twitter, Its facebook status's for celebrities



You know what this website is.

HOW THE INTERNET & GAMING CROSSED OVER FOR THE FIRST TIME:

The start of the gaming boom from 1995-2000 introduced the first real pairing of computer games and the internet. With games becoming better produced and slowly more engaging, the internet was implemented to create an online multiplayer function, this took the rather solo single player or local multiplayer (which was  that many games had and gave the player new contenders or helpful allies to play with at any hour of the day.

DOOM being the first popular game to implement workable online functions (or online multiplayer) to any kind of acclaim.  (although this was perfected later in the classic ID software game QUAKE 1997).

MULTIPLAYER UP IN HERE!!! (Doom 2)

With this websites were created to form the competitive side of the gaming industry, these spawned competitions and leagues and even "clans" where communties of any single game could find like minded players to adventure with or pit their wits against in larger numbers and more organized groups and use websites and forums to discuss strategies or just forge friendships. see here for a typical guild web forum.

This spawned a concept for a new type of game, one that would be the definition of these two industries crossing over, the MMORPG, for those of your nodding along and seeming confused this is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Games that exist consistently online while the player is away a first and a major leap forward, This allowed game developers to basically manage thier own world, and have players create avatars that grow as the timeline of the game does. It is run by the players paying usually a monthly subscription fee or paying for smaller transactions in game on the fly.

 An example of this all encompasing game type is the widely popular World of Warcraft a game that at its peaked boasted 15million subscribers to its online world.

What is "World of Warcraft"? -- powered by ehow

Internet and Journalism:

One of the internets biggest authorities on the Gaming industry

 With the emergance of online gaming review sites, these would review games but keep most of the content completely free. This created alot of "hits" which left many magazine companies in dire trouble and left them scrambling to keep up.  The websites had become media outlets themselves and their popularity thrived, due to fan demand for trailers news on a daily rather than monthly basis. Their sudden spring to dominance brought around expos like E3 and PAX as a way to garner hype and show off latest titles and is a major media date in the calendar.

Outlying how much money you will spend on games Since '95

Internet reviewing took on its own form of Journalism and offshoots from that allowed people who wanted talk about subjects that would have a potential target audience but perhaps the publication of a magazine would be too much of a financial challenge. An example would be the website Thatguywiththeglasses, A website that spawned for the reviewing of a small market of people who would want to look back on nostalgic movies from their past. Previously a publication of this would have been nigh on impossible, but has spiralled off into its own albeit small but successful sub-section of journalism.

http://www.spoonyexperiment.com/

http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/

Films, Gaming and the Internet:


Gaming and Film

To further illustrate how far the gaming has reached into the other businesses' was the film industries capitalisation on the successful franchises of the gaming market, Although now most people know to avoid these game to movie titles they were an easy way for the film industry to cash in on the popularity of certain titles and lure the fans into often lacklustre films.

      "I WAS RELEVANT ONCE"

But to accuse the film industry of this cashing in alone would be unfair so, ever so briefly I will explain that the capitalising of popular franchises works both ways with the gaming conglomerate insistence to churn out movie title based games that except in the very RAREST cases have been underproduced and widely criticized, blatant cash-cows.
And without trying to influence your decision do you honestly think that in the gaming community the general concenus of one of the worst games ever made is the movie tie-in game of E.T the Extra terrestrial, the game that nearly singlehandedly sunk the gaming industry before it had started. Coincidence? I think not.


GO HOME E.T, NOONE LIKES YOU.



Internet and Film             

The Internet has tangled with the film industry in a far more positive way, as most films using it for viral advertising campaigns (I guess this counts as showing how the advertising companies are inter-linked too, aren't I clever) The example I can think of would be the great advertising for the films:

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

Blair witches use of forged documents and spreading of rumours online  regarding the legend of  the "witch" created a cult following as film go-ers tried to unlock the mystery of Black hills forest.

DISTRICT 9

The movie District 9 went for a combination of real world and online advertising of the HUMANS ONLY picture becoming widely talked about after popping up on many websites and billboards world wide.

So to conclude,                                            

Although I have not mentioned all the iterations of how The Gaming and Internet Industries have quite rightfully taken their place among the Creative Media Industries this more then illustrates their impact in a few of the Digital media industries big hitters.