Videogames: The Sims FreePlay part 1 - Language & Audience

Videogames: The Sims FreePlay part 1 - Language & Audience

Our final videogames CSP is The Sims FreePlay (2011).

This is another in-depth CSP so will require significant work and research across three blogposts to complete your case study.

Background: mobile gaming

• The videogames industry has changed massively since the emergence of the smart phone and app store distribution model.
• Mobile gaming has changed the audience demographics for gaming and brought the industry into the mainstream.
• The app store model means tech giants such as Apple and Google are making significant sums from mobile gaming but mobile hits can still earn developers millions.
• Angry Birds made developer Rovio $200m in 2012 and broke 2 billion downloads in 2014.

The Sims FreePlay

• The Sims FreePlay is a spin-off from the hugely successful Sims franchise first published by Electronic Arts (EA) in 2000.
• The game is a strategic life simulation game (also known as the sandbox genre). 
• The Sims FreePlay takes the game on to phones and tablets and uses the ‘freemium’ model that makes money via in-app purchases.
• The game has seen 200 million downloads since 2011 – remarkable success.

The Sims FreePlay: Audience

• The Sims franchise has demonstrated there is a strong and lucrative market in female gamers.
• When The Sims was first pitched by creator Will Wright he described it as a ‘doll house’. 
• The development company Maxis weren’t keen because ‘doll houses were for girls, and girls didn’t play videogames’. EA then bought Maxis, saw potential in the idea and one of the most successful ever videogame franchises was born.
• Expansion packs available for The Sims FreePlay reinforce the view that the target audience is predominantly female.

Participatory culture

• The Sims franchise is one of the best examples of Henry Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture.
• Since the very first game in the franchise, online communities have created, suggested and shared content for the game.
• ‘Modding’ – short for modifications – is a huge part of the appeal of the game. Modding changes aspects of the gameplay – anything from the strength of coffee to incorporating ghosts or even sexual content.

The Sims FreePlay - Language & Audience blog tasks

Create a new blogpost called 'The Sims FreePlay case study part 1 - Language & Audience' and complete the following in-depth tasks.

Language / Gameplay analysis

Watch The Sims: FreePlay trailer and answer the following questions:

1) What elements of gameplay are shown?

The ongoing interaction comprises of various shots of making your character (your own doll), you can make your own home and make your own connections and do exercises, for example, celebrating, playing with pets and associating with others 

2) What audience is the trailer targeting?

The crowd of the trailer is very cleary one of those of a more youthful crowd, as the goal of the game is experience regular day to day existence which incorporates going to work and having a family, so the target group they are focusing on could that of the more youthful age. 

3) What audience pleasures are suggested by the trailer?

Diversion - can be applied as players of the game can understanding and perform exercises that they're not ready to, all things considered. 


Individual personality - individuals can consider themselves to be the game as they make their characters and their companions.

Now watch this walk-through of the beginning of The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions:

1) How is the game constructed?

Heaps of little assignments - consistent scaled down remunerations 
The time it takes to do assignments is continuous (you can pay to accelerate the game) 
Adverts as a byproduct of free gems/in-game money 
Item arrangement - an income generator 

2) What audience is this game targeting

The brilliant hues and the manner in which the content is built aides in focusing on a more youthful crowd, particularly with the instructional exercise in the game-play. The game-play shows components of more youthful life, for example, beginning a family and thinking loads about what you resemble. 

3) What audience pleasures does the game provide?

Buyer culture - industrialist belief system - work, going through cash 
rewards 
Customisation (can likewise make yourself) 
SimChef = MasterChef (intertextuality) 

4) How does the game encourage in-app purchases?

The game acquaints players with absolutely free play understanding and afterwards endowments a couple "pearls" to the player for nothing however then presents a trouble spike, which at that point makes the player need to spend genuine cash on the game, the game additionally acquaints players with a great deal of things from the outset which they can buy with the in-game money making it likewise appear the game won't have a need to pay, yet the hour of building these articles is the thing that individuals are charged upon.

Audience

Read this App Store description and the customer reviews for The Sims FreePlay and answer the following questions:  

1) What critics reviews are included in the game information section?

This is one of my preferred games that I have on my ipad. I love the way it looks like genuine life and you can develop the infants. I love the entirety of the occupations and spots that you can jump on the guide since they are on the whole remarkable in their own uncommon manner and they all hold an amazing movement like going to work or purchasing something. I particularly love structuring the houses since its such a great amount of amusing to make cool life like territories where your sims can live. 

2) What do the reviews suggest regarding the audience pleasures of The Sims FreePlay?

The surveys indication that the crowd are vouching for the game to be as reasonable as could be allowed, in this manner backing Baudrillard's concept of living in a hyper-reality.

3) How do the reviews reflect the strong element of participatory culture in The Sims?

The surveys made by players remember proposals for how EA ought to improve the game. The players appear to be energetic about the game and give proposals that they accept would make the game increasingly a good time for everybody. For instance, one audit proposed that the engineers should expand the greatest measure of sims that can be in a house or working without a moment's delay to more than 10. 

Participatory culture

Read this academic journal article - The Sims: A Participatory Culture 14 Years On. Answer the following questions:

1) What did The Sims designer Will Wright describe the game as?

The planner depicted the game to be a sandbox doll house kind of game that would pull in a more youthful crowd which is progressively adjusted to an increasingly innovative attitude. They would reenact the parts of making your own city and character where you can do a huge number of errands. 

2) Why was development company Maxis initially not interested in The Sims?

The organization Maxis was at first not inspired by The Sims on the grounds that, at that point, it was just guys who played computer games. The Sims was portrayed as a 'dollhouse' and this would not be appropriate for a male crowd since "dollhouses are for young ladies and young ladies don't play videogames" 

3) What is ‘modding’?

At the point when alterations are offered for the games with the goal that individuals can shape the game considerably further past the standard game play advertised. Scope of changes were accessible, from expanding espresso quality, enableing sexual substance to Teen Pregnancy Mods and phantoms. 

4) How does ‘modding’ link to Henry Jenkins’ idea of ‘textual poaching’?

Much the same as in literary poaching, crowds can take a media message that as of now exists and make it into their own by adjusting it. Modding has brought fan networks nearer. 

5) Look specifically at p136. Note down key quotes from Jenkins, Pearce and Wright on this page.

Participatory culture makes networks that are 'held together through the shared creation and equal trade of information'  
'The first Sims arrangement has the most energetic rising fan culture of a solitary player game ever'

Indeed, even before the first game was out, Jenkins notes, 'there were at that point in excess of fifty fan Websites committed to The Sims. Today, there are thousands' 

6) What examples of intertextuality are discussed in relation to The Sims? (Look for “replicating works from popular culture”

Layers appeared to show a happy want to reproduce the universes of their preferred fandoms inside The Sims. In this manner, The Sims has constantly included skins portraying characters from religion media, for example, 


Star Trek, Star Wars, The X-Files and even Japanese anime and manga were very well known. Indeed, even hybrids were a chance, permitting one parcel to house Marvel Universe characters and another to house DC Universe characters – the two arrangements of characters could cooperate and even form connections and their own biographies.

7) What is ‘transmedia storytelling’ and how does The Sims allow players to create it?

Transmedia narrating is "a procedure wherein the essential content encoded in an official business the item could be scattered over numerous media, both advanced and simple."

8) How have Sims online communities developed over the last 20 years?

In the course of the most recent 20 years, the Sims online networks have become further developed and increasingly like a family. They have become to such an extent. New individuals from the modding network can contact specialists for counsel and the master demonstrations like an educator who aides, supports and causes them. 

9) Why have conflicts sometimes developed within The Sims online communities?

There has been a contention among bunches on whether individuals ought to decide to monetise of the mods that are made as they are an option in contrast to what EA offers straightforwardly as development packs.

10) What does the writer suggest The Sims will be remembered for?

The cooperative network and being a fan that it created and the way of life of computerized creation that it assisted with spearheading.

Read this Henry Jenkins interview with James Paul Gee, writer of Woman as Gamers: The Sims and 21st Century Learning (2010).

1) How is ‘modding’ used in The Sims?

Modding is utilized in The Sims to make new difficulties and ongoing interaction that "is at the same time in the game world, in reality, and recorded as a hard copy things like realistic books." 

2) Why does James Paul Gee see The Sims as an important game?

He sees it as a significant game since it takes individuals past gaming, and how ladies commonly mess around and structure things isn't standard however it "bleeding edge." 

3) What does the designer of The Sims, Will Wright, want players to do with the game?

He needs to "engage individuals to figure like architects, to arrange themselves around the game to become learn new aptitudes that reach out past the game, and to communicate their own innovativeness." 

4) Do you agree with the view that The Sims is not a game – but something else entirely?

I don't really agree with the way that The Sims is certifiably not a game. Notwithstanding, I accept that The Sims is an extraordinary case of post-innovation and the obscuring among the real world and the media. This is the thing that Baudrillard states, he accepts crowds won't have the option to recognise reality and the media due to being tempted with the game, satisfying the post present day society we live in today, in which society is media immersed. 

5) How do you see the future of gaming? Do you agree with James Paul Gee that all games in the future will have the flexibility and interactivity of The Sims?

I don't think along these lines, on the grounds that not all games will take into account as a lot of adaptability to mod games. Not all games will take off like The Sims and have this mammoth participatory culture, it once in a while occurs.