CASE STUDY: VIDEO GAMES

SHANICE C. AND ALEXA P.

PERIOD 4 (AICE MEDIA SKILLS)

History

Technology Evolution
and Impacts

Distribution
Practices

Marketing Strategies

Steam is a digital
Steam was originally Valve Corporation
Offering packages of
distribution platform
a place where games
LLC created Steam
games for low prices
online. When a game
from Valve
as a way to sell there
on Steam
is bought, it can
Corporation could be
games online.
Letting people use
transfer to any
played online.
Valve Corporation
there site as a way
Through its Open use
computer/laptop/PC
LLC is owned by
for there game to be
device one
and lots of players
former Microsoft
produced
connected to Steam.
using it, it bought
Employees Gabe
Play throughs of
It was developed by
another company to
Newell and Mike
certain games can
Valve Corporation
expand there gaming
Harrington.
be found by popular
and first released to
involvement
YouTube people.
It started allowing
windows in 2003
They were refused
third party games be
help and partnership
available on steam
with Yahoo!,
RealNetworks, and
Microsoft

Diversification and
Convergence
It was created in 2002 but
not officially released until
2003
Steam replaced the World
Opponent Network in
2004 after it shut down.
Companies such as id
Software, Eidos
Interactive, and Capcom
started using steam to
distribute there games
starting in 2007
Its most current release of
Steam is in 2015

Productions

Undertale is a game where you play as a

child who falls down from the human
world above to the monster world below.
Trapped beneath the world, you can choose
three routes (pacifist, neutral, or genocide)
to escape the underworld and return to the
human world above. This game is based on
the players choice to spare or attack and
kill characters in the game. These choice
affect the story and the final outcome.
Even when reset, the game will never truly
forget the outcomes chosen before the reset
and can affect the players outcome. For
instance, if a player played a genocide
route and then reset the game and played
pacifist, the outcome would not be the
same if the first run thorough of the game
was pacifist.
In Portal, it is about a girl named Chell
who is used to test the portal gun. She must
go through puzzles while using her portal
gun to teleport between situations. She
then wants to escape her tests, being kept
down there by a robot who was formally
human named Gladis. Eventually, through
solving the puzzles on each level, she
escapes the lab and gets to go outside,
accompanied with a companion cube.
In Portal 2, it is the same premise except
instead of the human or another human,
the player is replaced with two robots that
can be easily re assembled so that Gladiss
testing can still continue if a robot was to
be damaged during a level . This was
created to play as a multiplayer game.

Case Study Example 1

Undertale (2015)
Undertale is an Indie RPG
game available on Steam
Undertale was funded
through kick starter with a
goal $5,000 in February
2013.
It was released September
2015
It has since been
nominated for three
awards:
- Best Independent Game
- Best Role-Playing Game
- Games for Change
Undertale has a total of 3
endings.

Case Study Example 2

Portal (2007), Portal 2
(2011)
Portal was released in
2007 and sold over 4
million copies of the
game.
It was talked about in 2013
that Portal may have a film
adaption and is currently
being worked on.
It has won several awards
such as:
- Game Developers Choice
Awards (2008)
- Game of the year for PC
(2007)
- Best Original Game
Mechanic (2007)
- Funniest Game (2007)

REFERENCES
"Steam (software)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Dec. 2015. Web. 15
Dec. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)>.

"Welcome to Steam." Welcome to Steam. Valve Corporations, 2015. Web. 15

Dec. 2015. <http://store.steampowered.com/>.

Whelan, David. "'Undertale' Is One of the Most Remarkable Video Games Ever
Made | VICE | United States." VICE. VICE Media LLC, 1 Oct. 2015. Web. 15
Dec. 2015. <https://www.vice.com/read/by-asking-you-to-understand-itsenemies-undertale-is-one-of-the-most-remarkable-video-games-ever-made925>.

"Undertale -." SteamSpy. 2015. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.

<http://steamspy.com/app/391540>.

"Portal (video Game)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2015. Web.

16 Dec. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game)#Awards>.