Ethnic stereotypes within tv drama

Downton Abbey

The character of 'Tom' is a very typical Irish republican, who is very political, and believes that Ireland should be an independant republic. He is very prepared to use violence to fight for his cause, and was even involved in a violent incident in Ireland. He was affectionately named a 'tame revolutionary' by Lord Robert Crawley. He represents the steroetypical hatred for the British aristocracy and establishment, in some episodes, even towards the Crawley family.

Eastenders

In Eastenders, the 'Masood' family are also quite stereotypical of a Pakistani family within Britain. They own the Indian 'Argee Bhajee' restaurant, speak with stereotypical accents and are over religious. The representation of the family was even criticised by actor Deepak Verma (who played Sanjay Kapoor between 1993 and 1998). He said that EastEnders had 'failed to portray Asian families in a realistic manner, branding the family "two-dimensional and ill-conceived"'.
Dr Who
However, some tv dramas have managed to get the portrayal of ethnic characters right, such as the character of Martha Jones in Dr Who. She was an aspiring doctor who lived in London, and she did not fall under any stereotypes throughout the sereis that her characrter was in.

The issues raised in the targeting of national and local audience, specifically British, by international or global institutions

In the games industry today, most games target a national audience, but localise their games, depending on what country it is being sold in. Due to the popularity of gaming increasing throughout the world, localisation has become much more important in the production of games and more sales can now be made from a product that has been altered to suit a particular country. This means that people from certain countries who may be offended by the games original content can now play the games without concern.

 

Nationally, there are some issues with gaming products, which means that they have to be changed, in order for them to sell in other countries. One of the most well known examples of this is due to the games console ban in China, that has been in place since the year 2000. The Chinese government deemed games consoles bad for the young people of China (claiming they 'corrupted the minds of the teenage generation,') meaning that no games consoles were sold. However, recently, the 'China Quality Certification Centre' website showed two models of the PlayStation 3, labelled 'computer entertainment system' received approval from the government this July. This shows how the console itself had to be modified in production to be sold in another country.

However, many games do not have to be completely changed to be sold, but just 'localised' to suit certain nationalities' cultures. Localisation is the alteration of games, to suit countries' linguistic, cultural, hardware/software, legal differences, their consoles' graphic capability and even musical differences. Even though this allows more games to be sold world wide, there are some issues surrounding this. An example of this can be seen with the release of the localised versions of 'Final Fantasy VII'. After its Japanese release in 1997, it took 7 months for it to be released in the US, and another 2 months for it to be released in the UK and Europe. This was due to the fact that the game had to be fully translated and loacalised before it could be sold in other countries.

As I mentioned before, not just languages need to be changed for games to be sold internationally, some game content is considered unfit for certain national audiences. For example, in Germany, no swastika references are allowed at all in games, (obviously due to the events of ww2), which meant that the zombies in 'Call of Duty - Black Ops', which displayed swastikas had to be removed from the game in the German localised versions. Also, in the SNES game 'Wolfenstein 3D', the character  Hitler was changed to 'the Staatmeister', and the dogs replaced with giant rats. An example of a cultural change that had to be made can be seen in the Chinese version of 'Wizard 101', in which all skeletal characters in the game had to be removed as it is inappropriate to depict bones in Chinese culture.

In conclusion, due to the fact that most countries now have access to the internet, (where people are exposed to the tabooed subjects that had been removed from games anyway) I believe that the localisation of games according to culture etc, is not as important as it used to be in most countries. Obviously, in places like China, where censorship is still in place, the localisation would still be a major thing to consider, but maybe in many European countries, it's not as bad. However, liguistic localising is still very important, even today, as people still need to be able to understand the game to play it!

Just Dance Regional TV adverts

For most game advertisements on television, they have to be altered slightly according to which country they are promoting the game in. An example of this can be seen in the 'Just Dance 4' game adverts, which are broadcast in countries such as the UK, the US, Australia, China etc. In the US advert, we are taken through a house to the song 'Good Feeling' by the American artist Flo Rida, who also appears at the end of the advert. Another American celebrity, Shane Dawson, (a famous Youtube vlogger) also leads the camera for a couple of seconds of the advert - it is those American celebrity appearances differentiate this advert from the British one. In the UK version, the advert features more actual gameplay, and also shows some implications of a British audience, for example, the Union Jack print leggings on the game character, and an promotion for the Sainsburies supermarket at the end.

The UK Retail Market: Today and the Future

Today, the retail market for games in the UK is still going strong, with many shops such as GAME, HMV and even supermarkets like Asda selling video games across the country. However, over the past year, it is clear that the gaming retailers are having some issues.

On the 14th of September 2012, it was announced that the 122 Gamestation's across the UK would be closing down and being renamed under the Game brand. This could illustrate the decreasing demand in hard copies of video games due to the increase in sales of downloadable versions of the games (on online stores such as the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live).

Mike Jervis, joint administrator at PwC (powerhouse of a commercial enterprise) said "The group has faced serious cashflow and profit issues over the recent past. It also has suffered from high fixed costs, an ambitious international roll-out and fluctuating working capital requirements. Despite these challenges, we believe that there is room for a specialist game retailer in the territories in which it operates, including its biggest one - the UK. As a result we are hopeful that a going-concern sale of the business is achievable."

From this major event, we can see  that the UK game retailers are having a slight struggle with selling their games, and this trend may continue in the future. It is a worrying thought for the retailers, however, it is conceivable - could all games become digital, therefore putting the UK Retail market out of business?...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/277-of-game-and-gamestation-stores-to-close-772654
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamestation

Advantage Distribution

Advantage Distribution distributes games from many of the world’s leading publishers such as Nintendo, Bethesda, easy interactive etc. Advantage was established in February 2003 and delivers to both retailers and publishers within the interactive entertainment industry. They provide stocks for retailers including supermarkets and has allowed them to build partnerships with well known distributors such as Littlewoods, Very, Argos & Express Gifts. Advantage distributes games to such well known retailers as they can deliver stocks to stores in bulk.

Distributors for our case study games...

The ditributor for GTA V is Take Two Interactive, for Skylanders Giants, the distributor is XPEC Entertainment and for the original iphone Angry Birds app, the distributor was Chillingo. Take Two interactive being the distributor for GTA V shows how, because it is such a successful franchise, vertical integration takes place in order to sell the game. Take Two and Rockstar own the distributors for GTA, so they can use their own company to distribute their game. Whereas Chllingo was an outside distributor for Angry Birds. This was because when the game was first introduced, it was not as successful as it was today and they did not have the money to use a company distributor. Chillingo had to be sourced in order for them to sell the game.

The difference between COD and GTA...

The GTA and COD franchises are very different in the fact that they are released at different times - COD has an annual release, whereas GTA is released when ever the next game has been created and perfected. This means that many people consider the GTA games to be more 'special', because each game is anticipated, whereas COD always has a release each year, and so it is not as anticipated. Zelnik (the head of Take Two interactive - the parent company of Rockstar), stated that the most recent game in the COD series, 'Black Ops II' looks likely to fall short of the sales numbers that the previous game had reached. He then added: "That's never been the case with one of ours. Ours do better each time. Our view is it's hard to make permanent intellectual properties if you annualize it, with the exception of sports titles. So far that's proven to be the case. IP that is annualised eventually seems to hit the wall and we don't want our IP to hit the wall." This suggests that because the games are not released annually, it gives the game creators time to perfect the game, and make it better for the consumer. This means that the consumers feel that the GTA series is more of a rarity, and so the wait for the release of the game makes it much better than if they were released each year like the game in the COD franchise.