HFW Audience and Industry

 Audience

Look at this YouGov blog on the console gaming audience and answer the following questions:

1) What statistics can you find for the number of male / female players for the major consoles?

From a demographic perspective, every platform's audience skews towards men. PlayStation 5 (68% male, 29% female) and Xbox Series X|S (68% vs. 32%) have the highest proportion of male compared to female players.

2) What is the difference between 'hardcore' and 'casual' gamers - and which do you think would play Horizon Forbidden West?

Looking at how people play on each system shows that, among American gamers, the “hardcore” – those who say they take video games seriously, or play competitively – are a minority, and one with the highest representation on the PS5 (19%) and Xbox Series X|S (20%).

Casual gamers are most common on the Nintendo Switch (45%), and the PC, where half of players identify as casual (51%). The PC is not always a dedicated gaming platform, and has other functions: while some will play graphically demanding titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Destiny, others may be interested in a more relaxing experience on their commute – or in between work projects or chores – such as Solitaire or Stardew Valley.

3) What are the different reasons YouGov researched for why players play games? Which of these would apply to Horizon Forbidden West?

This is borne out somewhat by the reasons current-gen gamers on each system give for playing video games. When asked, most gamers across every system say relaxing and winding down is a key motivation for playing video games – but especially for PC (77%) and Switch (78%) gamers compared to Xbox (56%) and PS5 (63%). This group are also more likely to say they play games “to pass the time” or “to escape from reality for a while”. Switch gamers are also especially likely to be creatively motivated: three in ten say they play games to “make a world of their own” (29%), next to a quarter of PC gamers (26%) and a fifth of PS5 (21%) and Xbox gamers (22%).

For their part, PS5 and Xbox gamers are more likely to say they play video games for social purposes: around a quarter of the former (24%) and nearly three in ten of the latter (28%) say they play video games “to interact with gamers from around the world”, next to just 16% of both Switch gamers and PC gamers. The greater multiplayer emphases of these consoles next to the Switch may partially account for this.

Look at the PlayStation website page for Horizon Forbidden West. Complete the following tasks: 

1) How is the game promoted to an audience?

Includes an animated graphic of the game when you open up the page, along with facts, wallpapers, character intros and even a soundtrack

2) What are the key features for the game listed on the site?

Explore distant lands, fight bigger and more awe-inspiring machines, and encounter astonishing new tribes as you return to the far-future, post-apocalyptic world of Horizon.

3) What information does the website offer players about the game world and characters? Give a few examples.

The land is dying. Vicious storms and an unstoppable blight ravage the scattered remnants of humanity, while fearsome new machines prowl their borders. Life on Earth is hurtling towards another extinction, and no one knows why.

It's up to Aloy to uncover the secrets behind these threats and restore order and balance to the world. Along the way, she must reunite with old friends, forge alliances with warring new factions and unravel the legacy of the ancient past – all the while trying to stay one step ahead of a seemingly undefeatable new enemy.

4) What spin-offs and additional content are available as part of the Horizon franchise?  

• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Horizon: Forbidden West (Complete and Standard Edition)
• Horizon: Forbidden West - Burning Shores

5) Applying Henry Jenkins's work on fandom, what aspects of the website (you may need to scroll down) encourage fan activity and engagement with online Horizon communities?

"Meet the characters...Meet the machines"

Read this Wired feature on Horizon Forbidden West's open world design. Answer the following questions: 

1) Why did the writer enjoy Horizon Forbidden West?

2) How is Horizon Forbidden West structured for players when they first start the game?

3) Why does the writer feel HFW created a more successful open world game than The Witcher 3?

Industries

Industry research

1) Research Sony PlayStation Studios. 

2) What studios are part of Sony PlayStation Studios?

• TEAM asobi
• BEND STUDiO
• BluepOint
• Firesprite
• FIREWALK
• GUERRILLA
• HaVen
• HOUSEMARQUE
• INSOMNIAC GAMES
• London Studio
• Mm
• NAUGHTY DOG
• nixxes
• POLYPHONY DIGITAL
• SAN DIEGO STUDIO
• Santa Monica Studio
• SUCKER PUNCH
• valkyrie entertainment
• XDEV

3) What notable games have they produced? 

• TEAM asobi - "Astro's Playroom"
• BEND STUDiO - "Syphon Filter" franchise
• BluepOint - "Nathan Drake" franchise and "Demon's Souls"
• Firesprite - support on the "Horizon" franchise along with "The Playroom" and "The Persistence" 
• FIREWALK - "Concord" set to release in 2024 (in collaboration with HaVen) 
• GUERRILLA - "Horizon" franchise
• HaVen - "Concord" set to release in 2024 (in collaboration with FIREWALK) along with "Fairgames" TBA
• HOUSEMARQUE - "Returnal" franchise
• INSOMNIAC GAMES - "Spider-Man", "Spider-Man: Miles Morales", "Spider-Man 2", "Wolverine", "Ratchet and Clank"
• London Studio - multiple games for the PlayStation console, with their most recent being "Blood and Truth" 2019
• Mm - "Dreams"
• NAUGHTY DOG - "UNCHARTED" franchise and "The Last Of Us" franchise
• nixxes - support with the "Spider-Man" franchise, "Tomb Raider" franchise, "Ratchet and Clank" franchise, and "Horizon" franchise
• POLYPHONY DIGITAL - "Grand Turismo" franchise
• SAN DIEGO STUDIO - "MLB The Show" franchise
• Santa Monica Studio - "God of War" franchise
• SUCKER PUNCH - "Ghost of Tsushima" franchise
• valkyrie entertainment - support on the "God of War" franchise
• XDEV

4) Now research Guerrilla Games. Look at the 'Explore' page in particular. Who owns Guerrilla Games and how does it reflect the modern videogames industry? 

5) Choose one of the 'Guerrilla Spotlight' features and write three things you learn about the videogames industry and/or Guerrilla Games from the interview.

Read this USA Today feature on Guerrilla Games. Answer the following questions: 

1) Which three companies merged to become Guerrilla Games?

That collective of developers was formed by Orange Games, Digital Infinity, and Formula Game Development. Orange Games was established in 1993 by Arjan Brussee, co-designer of the aforementioned Jazz Jackrabbit and its sequel. Digital Infinity’s output has been lost in time, but there’s at least the record that it was formed in 1995 by Arnout van de Kamp. Formula Game Development’s portfolio is, similarly, a mystery. It was formed in 1998 by Martin de Ronde and sold to Lost Boys a year later. 

2) What other games and franchises were created by Guerrilla Games?

Then, in 2003, Guerrilla Games as we know it was formed. It came about through a complicated series of parent company rebrandings and takeovers orchestrated by Lost Boys owner Michiel Mol. With the ink still drying on the company’s signs, it began work on its two most ambitious projects yet, a pair of shooters that would change the trajectory of Guerrilla and see Sony come knocking: Killzone and Shellshock: Nam ‘67.

3) How did Guerrilla maximise the Killzone franchise? 

From this point until Horizon in 2017, Guerrilla would be focussed solely on Killzone titles. It faced a now-infamous backlash upon Killzone 2’s release when fans decided the finished game didn’t look like the version they were shown in an E3 gameplay demo. It might therefore hold the dubious honor of being gaming’s first downgrade controversy. Despite some furrowed brows and shaken fists, Killzone 2 went over well with critics and eventually sold over a million copies.

Killzone became the franchise for showing off what PlayStation’s next hardware was all about. PSP spinoff Killzone: Liberation took the shooter into isometric dungeon crawler territory for the sake of portable convenience, Killzone: Mercenary found uses for the touch panels of the PlayStation Vita in a shooter format, and Killzone: Shadow Fall showed us what the PS4 was capable of on a technical level: huge levels filled with high fidelity assets, loading on the fly. 

4) What did Sony sign with Guerrilla in 2004? 

But it didn’t stop it. There’d been a huge amount of what we might now call hype for Killzone before release, and that tide of excitement overcame the bugbears. Over a million copies were sold, and that was enough to get Sony to draw up a first-party contract for Guerrilla, ensuring that from 2004 onwards all the titles it developed would appear only on PlayStation consoles. The deal meant that when Horizon: Zero Dawn released on PC in the summer of 2020, it was the first Guerrilla title to make it to that platform since Shellshock: Nam ‘67 in 2004. 

5) How is Horizon Forbidden West described in the article and what is the next stage for the franchise? 

Horizon, on the other hand, has a different atmosphere entirely. It’s a world bearing the scars of a mysterious lost civilization, a far future that looks like a distant past, and it’s just about hospitable that you can exhale and take in the scenery now and then. This was never the case in Killzone. Nor were the latter’s characters especially memorable, despite some convoluted double-crossings and a series-long penchant for surprise protagonist killings that would have made the Call of Duty writers’ room proud. Aloy’s journey through Horizon showed a different side to Guerrilla – soft-touch storytellers and exceptional world-builders, as well as masters of squeezing the most out of PlayStation hardware and making a headshot feel just right.

Horizon: Forbidden West will be only the studio’s eighth game as Guerrilla Games, and only its third outside the Killzone franchise. Its next announced project, a VR title co-developed with Firesprite called Horizon: Call of the Mountain, is in many ways the perfect example of what the studio’s about: a deepening of a universe it created itself, making fortuitous use of a Sony hardware platform. Meanwhile, anyone waiting for that Shellshock sequel might have to be patient.

Regulation and PEGI

1) What is HFW's PEGI rating and what age rating do you feel would be appropriate? Why?

Rated 16 - I feel that this is justified for the game considering the massive amounts of violence and graphic themes littered throughout

2) Why is regulating videogames difficult in the digital age?

Similar games may be rated differently depending on the contents and game ratings are usually determined by genre as well. Games may be rated unfairly.

3) Are attitudes towards media content and regulation changing as a result of the internet? Explain your answer.

In my opinion, I think so. People's views on game content changes at a rapid pace now due to things happening in real life. People may find older games as quite shocking as back then, society would deem this as "ordinary".