Grace’s Blog post: https://gamecultures.blog/2020/09/06/bcm215-pitch-mindfulness-and-gaming/
In Grace’s blog, I aimed to provide relevant and helpful news and scholarly articles on her topic of mindfulness within Game Media. Grace mentioned in her post that she aimed to look at the positive impacts of using mindfulness to improve the gaming experience. I suggested she delve into what makes a game stressful and the impact that has on the brain to create a solidified reasoning behind her DA. I also mentioned Grace should focus on what makes a game stressful/calming. Creating a game overview by combining her own experience and scholarly articles will help readers understand how and what characteristics of these games support mindfulness. Breaking down games that make participators feel relaxed will help them understand what has gone into the development/ design to create this nostalgic feeling (Ernkvist, 2008). These characteristics of using development and design are called ‘Formal Elements’, this is the successful application of constraints until only a unique product is left (Fernández, 2019). In terms of Grace’s DA, she would be looking out for what formal elements enhance mindfulness. I linked Grace to an engaging article which provided relevant data on how games affect the mind positively and negatively. Also provided several games for her to try out and review as they’re considered to have formal elements that classify a mindful game. From this experience, I have gained a deeper understanding of why people play peaceful games and the positive distraction it has on one’s brain. The benefit is that not only can they help to take your mind off of what is stressing you, but they can also help you to build executive function abilities that can help you to stay more organised and solve problems.
References:
Ernkvist, M., 2008. Down many times, but still playing the game: Creative destruction and industry crashes in the early video game industry 1971-1986.
Fernández-Vara, C., 2019. Introduction to game analysis. Routledge
Ashlan’s Blog Post: https://ashlanrose.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/bcm215-digital-marketing-in-the-gaming-industry/
Ashlans concept is based around successful marketing techniques within gaming. In my comment, I provided Ashlan with research articles that show studies that explain why and what marketing techniques are successful when correctly applied. is a variety of research on what goes into the marketing behind games. Creating, developing and launching your game is only the beginning of one’s quest. If one doesn’t have a good video game marketing strategy in place, the game will get lost in the void and all that time, money, and effort will go to waste (McCabe, 2017). The difficulty lies in making your game stand out from the rest and trying to persuade people to download your game to their device. I provided Ashlan with a website that breaks down thirty successful video game marketing campaigns to ensure she could see relevant examples and why they succeeded. As said in the lecture, media and gaming is constantly changing, this goes the same for marketing techniques. Ashlan is going to name and examine what works within marketing however I suggested she dedicates a section towards naming what doesn’t work to ensure people are conscious of what they shouldn’t be do or be doing. After reading several gaming marketing papers, I have learnt that game marketing strategies are extremely successful and digital marketers should follow the same formulas and elements to match this success.
Reference:
McCabe, M.B., 2017. Social media marketing strategies for career advancement: An analysis of LinkedIn. Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences, 29(1), p.85
Casey’s Blog post: https://caseyscreativepursuits.wordpress.com/2020/09/04/joystick/
The structure of Casey’s project is very clear and well organised! I believe Casey has a lot of knowledge around her topic and is keen to start her regular YouTube essays. I truly believe Casey should incorporate scholarly literature into these essays as it will support her videos factually and empirically. Casey’s analytical framework is set up by reviewing her audiences’ responses and engagement to the videos. I feel she should set up weekly questionnaires or ask her audience what they are interested in or would like to see within an educational video within the concept of gaming. I recommended a neurological study for Casey to review as I believe it would be beneficial towards her argument within the cognitive relationship between gaming and brain development. I was going to recommend using Reddit to generate conversations and topics for her audience however I feel Casey has taken onboard quite a significant amount of work and will need to solidify those platforms first.
Conclusion:
Overall, I have critically engaged in my partners’ DA concept. I am quite happy with my comments however, I want to improve my writing skills and focus on specific content. On the whole, the comment-writing ‘experience’ helped me to think more critically about not only other people’s work but my work as well. I also spent a lot of time researching sources and their topics as I expect my references will be useful and supportive to my partners in the next steps. I hope that my comments have provided new knowledge and insight as I look forward to reviewing these DA’s in the coming weeks.
Game Cultures 