HA11 - Task 1

FNAF is a survival horror game which is a genre of games and as the name implies involves you the player keeping the protagonist safe and alive as the game tries to scare you. These games try to scare you with either horrific graphics such as gore and blood making you think that these horrible things will happen to you or it'll use the ambiance to give the player an ominous feeling making you jump at everything because you don't know when it comes. these games can have some sort of combat but FNAF does not which is also a classic because all you can do is sit there and feel helpless.

Survival horror games are a sub-genre of horror games, where normally you can’t fully arm your character making you not want to fight against the horrible or grotesque enemies, they do this by making ammo or weapons in general very limited, the enemies too powerful to kill but making it so you can keep them at bay. The protagonist that you play as far more vulnerable or weak because you usually play as a normal person such as in FNAF you play as an average guy or in the survival horror game SOMA you play as a random guy who lives as normal life and then you just randomly wake up in the middle of nowhere. in games like these you sometimes have to lead the opponent around the environment and use that to stall or attack them, these games can also have an emphasis on time and how quick you can do something. The enemies and environments of this sub-genre of game are usually dark and horrifying yet slightly realistic and the enemies are also the same an example of games that are like this is Outlast where you go to an asylum which are in real life and is thought to holy crazy psychopaths. The games play on your anxieties while playing and lure you into the enemies which are hidden away in the darkness because of the camera angles that they use. The audience of these games includes a lot of different people since it plays on people’s fears and gives people adrenaline so these games are usually played by young adults of both genders. the genre hasn't massively changed over the years since people fears haven't changed themselves but when something starts to become popular e.g. zombie’s survival horrors use them as a theme. 

The enemies show below are quite terrifying and are also based in a dark place to increase the atmosphere. these horror games also use dark murky colours such as black, dark green and a dark orange.

the narrative of survival-horror games usually tells the narrative of a game where the odds are against you in a fight and you are an underdog against truly monstrous foes. these games usually start with an average guy or girl investigating a situation which escalates such as when in Outlast you're a journalist going to investigate an abandoned asylum but encounters mutated maniacs including a bulky one who is impossible to kill. Silent Hill which was released in 1999 was praised for using almost new tactics and non-conventional elements that were used in horror games and instead started using psychological style which was primarily used in Japanese horror such as Yokai and other monsters which are used, a good example of Japanese horror is the movie "Ring".

the characters in horror games vary quite a bit depending on who you’re looking at such as the protagonist which is usually represented as weak or at best average, they’re almost treated as a damsel in distress with no one coming to save them. In the pics below show the game Outlast where the main character is hiding and praying that the enemies will not find him.

gender in survival horror is pretty much the same since no matter which gender you are you're treated as defenceless and in the few where you do fight you're using weapons so i don't thing that genders matter in these games and i believe that to be because the writers preferred message was to let you become that helpless character and know that an average human can’t help themselves as show below in both the Dead Space game where the protagonist is a man and the game is Alien Isolation where the protagonist is a female..

when asking who is present and who is absent in survival horror games it is quite difficult because nobody is really left out. those who are usually left out in these games are those who are quite capable and aren’t as helpless or they are usually killed off in a manner that is almost a message to the player saying 'if they can’t do it then you can’t'.

http://www.gamespot.com/resident-evil/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LKMiLs4r7Y
http://ireofpurgatory.com/defining-horror/
http://www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/the-ring-3d-attaches-oscar-winning-screenwriter-akiva-goldman-899
http://outlast.wikia.com/wiki/Eddie_Gluskin
http://game-wisdom.com/analysis/outlast
http://www.codecmoments.com/game-review/outlast/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/01/29/13-horror-games-not-to-turn-your-back-on-in-2014
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/468022586253365619/

HA10 - Task 3

The preferred message of the gameplay of the FNAF series would be those who find the game fun and scary to play earlier on but find it to be more strategic later on while still enjoying themselves. While the negotiated message on the gameplay would be that you would be a bit jumpy earlier on and then just find the game too tedious to play for more than 15 minutes because of how hard it is and the oppositional message is the opposite of how the game is wanted to be seen from the creator this would be the people who think the jump scares are boring, the story is horrible and the game is tedious from the get go.

from what I can conclude most people are on the negotiated message thinking that the game is quite tedious to complete while it’s still fun and they want to see what happens with the game and with the lore and that's why Markipliers FNAF part 1 video is his most popular with 54,298,689 views and The game theorists FNAF theory has 15,093,602 views.

i myself am a part of the negotiated message since i believe the game is fun but i did not play all the way through because of the difficulty so i watched other people play the game.

The preferred message of the story is that you constantly follow the lore by looking at the posters
follows the story which is found by listening to the phone guy and reading the newspaper articles throughout the game. you learn that Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was once a popular restaurant but because of five incidents including the kidnapping and implied murder of five children by a man wearing an empty animatronic suit and now the souls of the children control the suits. The negotiated message of the game is if you were to just listen to the person on the phone whop tells you that the machines walk around because the company doesn't want their servos locking up and when they kill you it’s because you look like a naked endoskeleton which would be wrong. The oppositional message is that the game has no story and no point to it.

originally when i played the game i fell under the negotiated message when i didn't know about the lore and everything else but i eventually became a part of the preferred message when i watched videos on the theories behind the game.






The Reception Theory
The reception theory is generally meant that the media product is created by the audience and not the producer. the media product itself has a meaning but it is up to the audience to actually give the product the true meaning and this can be split up into three different things: The preferred reading which is that the audience understands and accepts the ideology offered, the negotiated reading which is that the audience doesn't completely accept what was given to them but only takes certain aspects and then negotiates on other parts and finally the oppositional reading where the audience takes the media in a completely different or a opposite way

HA10 - Task 2

After watching the BBC Horizon programme, Are Video Games Really That Bad? I thought about putting what I learnt into a summary to get rid of the idea that video games are bad and instead to emphasise the point Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) and that video games in general have a lot of positive effects on people.

Brad Bushman from Iowa State University says that video games are bad and enforces what he’s talking about saying that you get rewards for killing and other violent actions in games and in video games especially first person games you have to pay attention and can’t zone out because you are immersing yourself into the game and becoming the killer. Next Dr. Doug Gentile who is also from Iowa State University did a test where they pickled out a set off young adults and made half played violent videogames and half play calmer games such as simple balancing games, they were then showed real violent situations to see their reactions to which the ones who played the violent game had less of a reaction and those who played the other games had far less of a reaction. Dr. Doug Gentile concluded that playing violent video games increases aggression from anywhere between 4% and 9% he also concluded that they’re not copying what’s happened in the game and instead they are themselves changing for the worst. In my own opinion this is not because of the game but because of the person themselves which will be talked about later on.

Chris Ferguson from Stetson University had a completely opposite opinion to Brad Bushman and Dr. Doug Gentile while giving much greater facts. He went onto say that in the two decades leading up to 2003 and since violent video games have come out youth violence has decreased by 83% but the actual reason behind this is unknown whether this is because of games or other reason is unknown but when violent games come out youth violence drops because people become preoccupied. He then talked about the “Routine activity theory” which says that even if the games don’t stop people from being violent it would still occupy their time to actually act violent. He and others concluded that violent videogames have little effect but other factors such as anti-social behaviour, poverty and a lot of other things do have a major effect.

Dr. Andy Przybylski from the University of Oxford made a test where they made one group of people put their hand in ice water and then to play Tetris and others do the same but play Bastet a version of Tetris that tries to make you lose by picking the worst piece. Then that person had to choose how long the next person had to put their hand in the ice water. Those who played Bastet wanted to put the next person’s hand in water for roughly 7 more seconds than those who played Tetris, this aggression has nothing to do with violence but frustration which is the something the FNAF games play on because the game can become quite frustrating.

Professor Rene Weber from University of California Santa Barbara scanned peoples brain while playing violent games and he found out that a certain part of the brain lit up, that certain part of the brain supresses another part of the brain that makes us emotional, an example of the emotions that gets suppressed is what makes us feel fear. He concludes that his study does not show that people are desensitised after playing video games. Simone Kuhn from Max Planck Institute for Human Development added on that that part of the brain can also be used to supress your emotions when you see something sad but you don’t want to let it get to you, in the FNAF games this can explain why you become less sensitive to jump scares the longer you play the game.

Professor Mark Griffiths from Nottingham Trent University starts to talk about video game addiction and that being rewarded in games can lead to addiction which FNAF goes against since the only reward you get in the game is a mediocre pay check at the end and the satisfaction of completing the game, the game is more off putting because of difficulty which makes it a game that wouldn’t cause addiction.

Dr. Valerie Voon of the University of Cambridge adds on that people usually prefer immediate reward such as playing games rather than rewards that are longer and harder to obtain such as getting a degree. She then goes on to say that games could be used to teach things to kids such as Minecraft to teach creativity or in my game FNAF could definitely teach time management and multitasking.
Professor Daphne Bavelier from University of Geneva believed that the visual abilities of gamers are better being able to follow multiple items at a time. This was checked by a test where they have to remember whether a smiling face was blue or yellow similar to the card game Concentration, also known as Match Match, Memory, Pelmanism, Shinkei-suijaku, Pexeso or simply Pairs where you have flip cards over and get two of the same. This is because you have to be very precise and continually monitor everything which is the exact same as FNAF because you have to follow multiple cameras, multiple animatronics, two doors and battery life all at the same time.

Next Simone Kuhn of Max Planck Institute for Human Development returned and talked about a test she did where she monitored two groups, one group played Mario 64 and the other did nothing and she found those who played games had more active brains with a brain increase in the brain where it controls strategic planning and the part which controls special navigation. FNAF would increase both of these parts of the brain because the game is very strategic where you have to look at where you are.

Then Professor Adam Gazzaley of the University of California San Francisco talked about that by playing games you can increase multi-tasking abilities, he checked this by making adults play this game over a couple of weeks and over time their multitasking abilities did increase as well as attention span and working memory a game that could do this would be FNAF since in this game you’d need to use your multitasking, attention span and memory abilities.

So to conclude there’s no evidence that video games and violence goes hand in hand but there is evidence that video games could have a lot of positive effects on people who play them. FNAF could have a lot of positive effects and no actual negative effects.

HA10 - Task 1

I have to analyse the FNAF games by applying The Uses & Gratifications Theory, Uses and gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why and how people find media to satisfy certain needs e.g. Information, how to do something, personal identity, entertainment, relaxation and integration and social interaction. Information that you get from the games is the story, there's not much else that you could learnt from such a simple point and click survival horror game. The story of FNAF follows a murder who used a spring locked suit to lure and kill kids and then stuff their bodies into the other animatronics to which they started to haunt them and now they roam the halls at night trying to kill you. You don't really play the FNAF games to learn something, it isn't a chuck e cheese simulator. You don't learn anything except maybe ways to increase your multi-tasking abilities but apart from that I can’t see anything else that these games could teach you. The way you could learn how to do something is by watching youtubers and learning how to complete the game and get a feeling of self-accomplishment. Since the FNAF games became a smash hit on the gaming world and pretty much all hard-core gamers know about the theory and the lore behind them so you would want to stay in the loop. Staying in the loop is very important for gamers whether it be for multiplayer action or in this case just to see what becomes the next big game such as Undertale or FNAF. You can start to relate to a game or just start to be inspired by a game such as I thought the game Undertale was really well done and it inspires me to take things from that game to use in games that I make later on in my life. As for all games that are sold commercially they are meant to be entertaining. which the game is at first but it eventually becomes more tedious to play when you start expecting everything that is coming, the game also becomes incredibly hard with little reward for completing the game, the only reason the game became as big as it did was because of how cheap the game is combined with the fact that a lot of youtubers who are highly influential on the gaming world showed themselves playing it. Games can also be for relaxation but I don't think this game does this that well because it is a real time strategy horror game where you need to be tense and quick to be able to play the game. Without being tense you won’t be able to take the game seriously enough to beat it so for that reason I don't believe this game is a game that you can just sit down and relax with. The game can be good for social interaction but not at the way most games use social interaction, most games use multiplayer as for of being social with others but this game allows you to talk to other people about the lore of the game or watching someone else play the game to see them get scared an example of the former is when me and my friend Sam talks about the newest game and why everything is happening as well as the real ending and an example of the latter is when I had my friend Steven around and had him try the game and he eventually threw the headset across the room after being jumped.

The Uses & Gratifications Theory
Uses and gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why and how people find media to satisfy certain needs such as: information e.g. to stay informed on matters as if reading the newspaper, how to do something and trying to expand your knowledge in general, personal identity such as trying to stay in the loop with things such as buying the newest games so you can talk to your friends about it, entertainment is the easiest being used for escapism, relaxation as well as just passing the time and integration and social interaction which is simply just the need to for interaction with other people so that you have a sense of belonging and connecting with others.

HA9 - Task 3

Task 1
in task 1 i did a bunch of research on not just the game but the genre as well and what the game was made up of such as what category of game it is?, the way it looks and why it looks that way such as its style, the words they use as well as images, sound, colours and fonts. i also had to look at how the game was structured, story and gameplay as well how the game speaks and interacts with the audience. I used Prezi to show what i had learnt in a more appealing and professional standard, i also found out a lot about the genre, content, construction, conventions, codes and the modes of address used in not just FNAF but any horror game in general.

Task 2
After I had deconstructed the game I decided to interview Raychel I did this was to see if I could find similarities between my own dissection from task 1 and hers from this task. The conclusion i came to from using task 2 is that the information that i already had was enforced which was the fact that the game was good but just got too tedious to play later on because of how repetitive the game actually was and how stale the jump scares became because its the same thing every time. in managed to find all of this out by interviewing people and watching youtubers because they said their opinions and i could see how they reacted from beginning to end.

Conclusion
The conclusion to this game is that the FNAF game is a good one but for a limed amount of time and that the first game is only good because of how cheap it is but only the game series as a whole is worth how much a actual game is worth. the game is cheap along with the weak yet interesting gameplay but the lore that surrounds the game is incredibly rich making this game a must buy. Also when comparitng the deconstruction of myself, Raychel, Markiplier and Jackscepticeye i understood that we all felt the same way about the game.

HA9 - Task 2

Underneath i asked a few questions to someone who has played the game i have chosen, which is FNAF and is a fan of survival games in general. from what she told me she said what she believed made a good game and she said it was the things such as how helpless the game made you feel which i agreed with, the sound which game the game ambiance which added to the tension. she said what was really good was the jump scares. I also asked what she thought of the point and click aspects of these games and she said she enjoyed them and found the battery life enjoyable but very annoying. Next i asked her what she thought of the appearance of the anamatrronics, she believed they were very creepy and had strange eyes, she then went on to say how the machines looked old. i then asked if she thought that the childish anamatronics played of the childish fears she had in her such as a fears of clowns to which she agreed

Questions
What do you think makes a good survival horror
What do you think of the point and click aspects
what do you think of the appearance of the animatronics
what would you improve about the type of game



Underneath i have put two youtubers who are both males in their 20s so that you can see what in this game works on players such as what they found scary in the game so that you would be able to dissect what works in the game and what would be more tedious.

Mark

Markiplier is the self proclaimed as the kind of the five nights at freddys games. he is incredibly enthusiastic at the beginning of these games being loud and wanting to play more and then becoming less enthusiastic and more strategic so that he could get all the way through the hard that became way too hard to just sit back and enjoy like you should be able to do with a horror game.

Jack

The youtuber Jackscepticeye played through the game and in episode 1 he was very tense and jumpy and was really into it but by episode 5 he said he found it very tedious to complete and was just getting annoyed playing the game and just by showing this you learn that you need to add more things into the game each time to not let the game become too stale.

HA9 - Task 1

Genre description
Genre – what type or category of game is it?
FNAF is a survival horror game which is a genre of games that have been inspired horror fiction and as the name implies involves you the player keeping the protagonist safe and alive as the game tries to scare you. these games try to scare you with either horrific graphics such as gore and blood making you think that these horrible things will happen to you or it'll use the ambiance to give the player a ominous feeling making you jump at everything because you don't know when it comes. these games can have some sort of combat but FNAF does not which is also a classic because all you can do is sit there and feel helpless

Selection of content
Content - the way it looks and why. Its styling – words, images, sound, colours, fonts.
The only voice you hear is through a phone they probably did this to show that you are alone and that no one is coming to save you. this gives you the feeling of imminent death and makes every thing you do feel tense. You are only surrounded by a bunch of anamatronics that want to kill you. every little thing adds to the tension including the battery that goes down way too quick, the meter that says what amount you are using and having to look at all the monitors and listen to the sound. when you die the death screen shows that your body has been killed after being stuffed into a metal suit which shows that the danger is very real. the game also has posters on the wall that tells a story about children that have gone missing and they change constantly. the sound they make is something else that you have to look out for whether you are looking at the cameras such as the kitchen where you have to use your ears or listen to foxy rush down the halls and you have to close the door. the anamatronics are also very dark and scary looking which give a much darker feeling.

construction of content
Construction - the way in which it is structured and how the interaction is constructed.
you only ever hear one voice at the beginning of every night this is the only interaction with a actual person you will have throughout the game apart from the pay check at the end also whenever you see someone you know you'll die, because everyone you know is after you and wants to stuff you into a suit.

codes and conventions
conventions
Narrative conventions – the type of story / gameplay you’d expect.
the conventions that you would normally expect and the ones that you get are jump scares, death and
gruesome back story. the jump scares are a major part of the series being that all the deaths that you do experience are jumps scares and a i just said you do die with you dead body shown on the death screen, you learn this early on from the phone voice which lets you know how you will die and how painful and gruesome it is which makes you think that it has happened before.

Codes
Common Codes – the ingredients and special features they have in common.
a common code  of the earlier FNAF games is that you cant move which gives you the dreadful feeling that you are helpless, you're a helpless guy who cant protect himself. these enemies also play on childhood fears like how you can be scared of clowns because a lot of people don't like the anamatronics because of how they look. There are two types of common codes in games or any media in general the first is: Technical codes which are ways that equipment is used to tell story in media such as how the camera is in the game such as the fact that in FNAF is a first person game which is a common code used in horrors to put yourself in the seat of the character so that you feel more fear and that you cant see behind you so that you cant tell when something is coming. The other is symbolic codes which shows what the character is feeling by the characters actions such as when the the player is starting to breath heavily but not because of moving but out of fear or the fact that you are in a secluded location just sat there on your own or another code is when the power gets cut which happens to make you anxious which is followed by a strange noise symbolising impending doom which in this case is Freddy. other codes of FNAF or horror games in general is when warnings aren't heeded and are ignored which happens on night 1 of the game. Codes that are used in Horror games in general but aren't present in FNAF are codes like investigating a strange noise, someone randomly falling over when being chased, the vehicle wont start while someone gets closer and closer, the fake scare which is usually a friend instead of an actual danger or something happening and then a time skip happens when they send you to a certain amount of time later or before and that's when the game will actually happen.

modes of address
Modes of address – how the game talk to the audience.
the Phone guy is the only one who talks to you throughout the game every night he gives you new information and makes you scared to do anything. on the first night he says "Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovering that damage or death has occurred, a missing person report will be filed within 90 days, or as soon property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached, and the carpets have been replaced." in just a single sentence this simple game has already given you a very disturbing picture and makes you question why they would have to go through all the trouble of bleaching everything unless it was a very gruesome and bloody murder. he them on night two congratulates you on surviving and explains how it will progressively get harder throughout the nights. on night 3 he then makes it sound like there's nothing you can do to help yourself if they appear and then describes a even more brutal way of dying by saying "Hey, listen, I had an idea: if you happen to get caught and want to avoid getting stuffed into a Freddy suit, uhh, try playing dead! You know, go limp. Then there's a chance that, uh, maybe they’ll think that you're an empty costume instead. Then again if they think you're an empty costume, they might try to... stuff a metal skeleton into you. I wonder how that would work. Yeah, never mind, scratch that. It's best just not to get caught.". then finally on the 4th night you hear bad things happening to the phone guy and he says he probably wont call you tomorrow (which he doesn't) and then he seems to die. Throughout the nights you will randomly see the words "its me" along with a limp golden Freddy that just sits there empty. The game also talks to the audience by giving them lore to follow, you find this by looking posters and playing all of the other games, you cant find all the hidden lore and what its based off of by paying attention and looking things up or by watching the game theorists. The game is also a first person game so you can put yourself into the dhoes of 5the pomne that mad ethe game and the speaker/phone guy speaks in a very informal way

http://freddy-fazbears-pizza.wikia.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_Wiki
http://hyperninja03.weebly.com/fnaf-all-jumpscares.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIGpWwH-54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84TAM1nA0vI
http://freddy-fazbears-pizza.wikia.com/wiki/File:Office_Normal.png
http://5nightsatfreddysworld.com/tag/fnaf-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJMfvdT1leQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws-yd9YPfdE
http://www.gameskinny.com/vc9ky/13-rare-five-nights-at-freddys-screens-you-may-not-have-seen
http://www.gamehackstudios.com/five-nights-at-freddys-free-download-full-version-pc-game-torrent-crack/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdZOBXNagQ
http://www.darkhorrorgames.com/play/five-nights-at-freddys-1-(pc-game)/

http://freddy-fazbears-pizza.wikia.com/wiki/Night_6