HA6 - Task 3 - Skills Audit Guidance File

HA6 - Task 2 - CV

HA1 Task 1 - The Value Chain

Console Manufacturers

They tell the press and media, developers, publishers, social networking sites, and distribution and retail, that they are bringing out a new console so when it is out, the public can easily buy it from several locations, online or in store, depending on your preference. Companies such as Valve and Apple are now getting involved with the console war, with Apple making the ‘IPlay’ and Valve the ‘SteamBox’. Each year it gets more and more competitive.

Developers

If they need some extra help they are able to get additional employees from outsourcing from other companies. They also go to publishers so the product that they have made/making will be funded for when it is available. Also they will have to give a certain percentage of the profits to them. If it were not for the publishers then there wouldn't be any profits to begin with. Sometimes developers may get into contact with console manufacturers so when the console is out the product is available, a user is able to purchase the product on the console and use it.

Social Networking

Many businesses use social networking to give offers or to tell the public about something they have done or are planning. Publishers and developers will use this as well as distribution and retail. This is free advertising as well as they can see how many people ‘like’ or ‘follow’ them to help their profits become greater.

Outsourcing Companies

Companies may be hired when others need more help, when they do not have enough time. These companies may solely relay on this to happen otherwise they may not be hired. These companies may also tell press and media about the work they are doing.

Publishers

Publishers may use the press and media and/or social networking sites to market this product. Also publishers use distribution and retail to be able to sell and transport there product, especially if it is a console, but if it is a game then it may be purchased online, or on a mobile platform.

Distribution and Retail

Distribution and retail businesses will get games/consoles/products of many different people/places such as publishers and developers. Then will sell on to the public, they may also advertise this on social networking sites or marketing via press and media.

Press and Media

Press and media play a big part in the games industry as they are the main source of information to the public. But some developers do not use big advertising campaigns such as Overkill’s Payday 2, as the developers and publishers believe that they should spend money on the game. Not money on telling people about it.

Mobile Platforms

 Mobile platforms are very big today, as most people own a phone and most of those phones are smart/android phones that con hold and play many games. Even though these games are cheap, that is why they are very big since most people will think that the odd pound is nothing but with massive amounts of people owning and paying for these games it all adds up and becomes a great amount of profit. These games can be made by small teams too, maximizing the profits further. Such as Doodle Jump which was made by a programmer and a designer, and that turned out to be one of the most popular apps ever made.

http://www.skillset.org/games/careers/article_3739_1.asp

HA1 Task 6 - Contractual, Legal, Ethical and Professional

Task 6 - Contractual, Legal, Ethical & Professional

Legal

What is and what isn't permitted by law.

Copyright – Artistic or Literally Expression

Copyright normally protects the work created by, or 'originated' with, their author. There must have been some skill, labour or judgment in the creation of the work.

The first owner will normally be the author. In most cases, the author is the person who created the work: the composer of the text or the music, the artist, the photographer.

Copyright is different to other forms of IP. It is an automatic right you cannot register with the IPO (Intellectual Property Office); therefore there are no forms to complete and no fees to pay. Once created the copyright belongs to you.

You would then need to create a record of your work in order to prove the date of creation and ownership. One way of doing this is posting your idea to yourself, the post office will then stamp and date on the letter/parcel and when you receive it does not open it. Then you have your idea copyrighted with proof of date and that it is yours.

Trademark – What You Call It

Trademarks are badges of origin. They distinguish the goods or services of one trader from another and can take many forms; for example words, slogans, logos, shapes, colours and sounds.

Trade Marks are registered for specific goods or services within individual subjects, known as classes. It is possible for others to register identical or similar marks as long as it is in a different, unconnected class.

Patent – How Something Works

A patent for an invention is granted by government to the inventor, giving the inventor the right to stop others, for a limited period, from making, using or selling the invention without their permission. When a patent is granted the invention becomes the property of the inventor, which like any other form of property or business asset can be bought, sold, rented or hired. Patents are territorial rights: a UK patent will only give the holder rights in the UK and rights to stop others from importing the patented products into and out of the UK.

Registered Designs – What It Looks Like

Registered Designs are for the eye appeal of an object. They are applied for at The Intellectual Property Office.

Britain also has a ‘Design Right’ providing automatic protection for 15 years from the date of creation, even when a registered design is not applied for.

From August 1989, registered designs have a maximum of 25 years protection subject to renewal fees.

One item could use all four of these such as game cover, a Copyright for the actual game, a Trademark for the company who made it and their logo, a registered design for what it looks like, and finally a trademark from the game.

Ethical

The science of moral in human beings.

Violence
Violence is naturally seen as unethical and it shouldn't occur in daily life, but in video games in occurs as if it were natural and as a norm...

Rating
A rating of the video game is given by PEGI, ESRB, and CERO. this will judged upon the use of adult themes such as drugs, sex and alcohol and the use of illegal themes such as robbery, murder and drug use. different countries use different rating systems, USA use ESRB while China uses CERO which have similar yet different ratings due to law and culture references...

Education
...

Stereotyping
...

Addiction
It is very well known that video games can be very addictive. And the games industry does know this and uses it to their advantage, as they should. but many (online F2P games mainly) have a timer that comes up after 6 hours to tell the player to take a break. but it is unknown for that to happen in any console or PC games...

Legal and Ethical Obligations

Explain and illustrate the legal and ethical obligations within the games industry. Produce a profile for each of the following:

Legal	Ethical
Copyright Trademark Patent Registered Designs	Violence Rating Education Stereotyping Addiction

You are aiming to comprehensively explain legal and ethical obligations in the games industry with reference to elucidated examples. You should be using subject terminology consistently and correctly.

HA1 Task 5 - Trends

Task 5 – Trends

One of the most dominant trends in the gaming industry in the last decade is apps. There are now as many apps as games in just 3 years (excluding flash and java). Most developers look for publishers that are able to support them and their ideas, and still continue. A financial plan will help here a lot.

Franchised IP

A franchised IP (intellectual property) is a creation of the mind, or more known as imagination.  You can do lots of things such as a novel and with a simple © and the year you made it E.G. 2013, then your name. It’s yours and always will be unless sold, or already taken by someone else. Under this copy right law nobody else is allowed to use this item unless asked, if not the law permits that you are allowed to sue. Copy right law is there so no one is able to take your idea since it is you head, and not theirs.

Serialised Original IP

A serialised IP is something that is something made from nothing, or something made from another idea, hence Max Payne is made from, Mickey Spillane. Max Payne has turned into a multi-million organization, from games to movies; this is an easier way to make something instead of starting from your own imagination, even though it will require some thinking.

HA1 Task 4 - Financial Planning

Task 4 Financial Planning

Variable Costs

A variable cost is where you can increase or decrease the cost on a certain object, like if you sold printer Ink black and coloured, you would only need to buy a certain amount of each colour, buying too much coloured and not enough black ink when you need black and not coloured. Otherwise you would spend too much and you would never sell enough and therefore not making profit.

A rule you are able to use for variable costs is very simple; Black ink is £10 in a pack and coloured £10 too. And you buy £100 worth of coloured and only £50 worth of black (10 coloured and 5 black packs). You are able to work out how much profit, you sell each pack at £20 pound therefore you gain £10 profit or 50% of total cost, (100% profit).

Sales - Variable Costs = Gross Profit

Gross Profit ÷ Sales = Gross Profit Percentage

Fixed Costs

Fixed costs are costs you, yourself are unable to change such as; rent, labour and utilities. They are fixed and cannot be broken, sales or not these will not change. Therefore the greater your sales the less the fixed costs will have an effect on your net and gross profits.

Gross Profit - Fixed Costs = Net Profit

Break-Even Point

The break-even point is where you no longer lose money, but neither makes money. This is the point where you are able to make money after hitting this point, before reaching this point you are/will lose money.

This point is very important, it lets you know where you need to reach (minimum) to be able to gain money, and with a small amount of modification this lets you know when you are able to make a certain amount of net profit.

Monitoring

Monitoring is where you look at the financial plan and see where you can compare it to actual figures, look for differences and help overcome them. Adjust expenditure or sales efforts as you go along, to bring the next group of numbers in line with the budget.

This is to make sure that you are on task, on time and not over budget. If you go over the original budget then you will have to add that to the variable costs and therefore making the break-even point harder to reach. If you don’t monitor than you have a very high chance of breaking the budget and losing a lot more money than planned. That is if you planned.

Sources; jeffsailor.com/jcpa/resource/budget.html

book-keeping.org.uk/blog/show,www-mark-gwilliam.com/

HA1 Task 3 - Buisness Models

Task 3 Business Models

Arcade/Coin

The arcade or coin era of gaming usually consists of children and adults going to their local bar, arcade or anyway where there was an arcade game to play. The would deposit their hard earned pocket money into machines bigger than them and then there would’ve been two lines and a little square that would bounce of them, side to side, making little noises when one line hit the square or when the square would make it past the lines and the a number would show making it a game.

Pong the ‘first’ game. It may not be the very first game but it sure was the very first arcade game that existed. It took 6 months to make. Al Acorn the greater, designer and programmer. When shown to Nolan Bushnell he would make tweaks to the game such as the score and the bouncing angels of the ball and most famously the noise it made, naming the game ‘Pong’.

When they finally perfected this and slotted it into a little box and put it in a bar it actually made quite a bit of attention, the coin box jammed as it would not take any more coins. They then saw this as an opportunity to make it to the big times. They made thousands of more and placed them in bars, restaurants and fun fairs all around America. This started the Arcade era of gaming.

It lasted from the 60’s all the way to the 80’s; Atari started a whole new generation. But then someone wanted in Warner Bros. they bought Atari for $30 million while keeping Nolan and all the staff from the original Atari they changed too much that made it worse. One of the reasons why Atari and the Arcade era took a downfall, team by team Atari started to leave Warner creating EA and Activision. Atari’s time was coming to an end, just like the arcade era.

Console/Box Ship, Done

Nowadays we go to the shop, buy our console and maybe a game or two, then that relationship between the manufacturers is over. We may have gone back but never for long as we were always in and out. There were actually 8 generations of this though, (2 set before the 21^st century);

Starting with Magna Vox’s Odyssey, and ending with Fairchilds’ Video Entertainment System. This was the start of the home gaming era and end of the arcade era, but still arcades are up and running quite successfully and there is always the bar which will have a fruit machine or two in it. But not like home gaming systems that era is now dead and not coming back. At least not for a long time, since we are but a search engine away from playing these simple and not fun (not anymore) games

But now even this is coming to an end everyone seems to be downloading games and DLC (downloadable content) and now with broadband getting faster so is gaming. There is smaller and big games coming out every day with 7 generations of consoles (8 coming soon) soon everything will be done online, including buying games, playing, and new software. Most of this is already easily done in minutes.