Cbeebies-20th October 2011

Today Jim Fielding from CBeebies joined us in our lecture and spoke about the website CBeebies offers to the younger generation. 

The question that he set was:

How can we create a safe environment for children online without discouraging participation?

Children should be able to interact on the internet with other children, playing on games. But children need to be safe online at the same time. Parents should feel their child is safe when interacting online.

If my company was given this question i think it would be wise to research in local schools and ask the children if they interact and play games on CBeebies. Also what kind of games they like to play when using the computer/internet.

Rebel Play-13th October 2011

Rebel Play company came into our lecture today, their company offers a space for digital gaming space and game consol. Gaming on social networking sites and mobile games.

The question that the company gave us was:

Do media platforms and genres have specific gender appeal? Why dont more women play console games?

I think it is easy to make assumptions that women do not play console games. I am a female and i do not play console games and neither do my friends. So it is easy to just presume that other females don't play them either. I think females would prefer to spend their money on a new T-shirt, for example rather than the latest 'Fifa' game. I feel most console games out in the media that are most popular are male related games that involve shooting guns and killing people like 'Call of Duty' and i personally don't think most female approve of them kind of actions.

Research methods for this topic could be doing a survey on genders and asking both male and females of all ages if they use game consoles. Maybe filming and interviewing a for and against the idea of two different females and why and why not they use game consoles.

Also research into how many female friendly console games are out in the media today and see what the ratio is compared to 'boy like' games there is on offer.

The appearance of some of the consoles may have an effect on if a female was to use it or not. The Playstation is big black and bulky, i think it will appeal to a boy rather than a girl. Whereas the Nintendo DS is small and petite and comes in more lighter colours like pink, white and light blue. These factors may appeal more to a girl. The DS also offers cooking games and IQ tests. The content of the game may effect whether a female shows interest to purchase and play.

Nintendo Wii could appeal to both males and females as it offers games of Wii sport but also Wii fit which is very popular. Women may use Wii fit because they may feel they are not wasting their time playing a game but they are playing and getting something back as they are working out at the same time.

Males don't seem to mind about wasting hours playing fifa whereas women in my opinion prefer to spend their time more wisely. Not only timewise but i think age has something to do with it. Because when i was growing up playstations weren't half a big as they are now and i would play on the park with my friends. Whereas my 13 year old sister owns a DS and a Xbox Live and she plays inside with her friends. So the 7 years between us shows a difference.

Hurricane Films-6th October 2011

In todays lecture a company called Hurricane films came in and did a talk on their new project called Peoples Stories-Liverpool Lives. The company is run by Solon Papadopoulous and Roy Boulter who created the project that has developed from a film they produce called Of Time an The City.

'Of Time and The city' is a lyrical and visual poem which was selected to be played at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

The visitors spoke about the new project 'Peoples Stories' and explained what the project was about.

It is a website where people of the older generation can sign into and upload pictures from post war years or upload films telling a story of what they remember from Liverpool's post war times and share with other people their memories. Competitions are available to enter for the best stories.They explained how this website would encourage the older generation to use the internet and become comfortable sharing their memories and stories.

Sol Papadopulos set a possible question that as a group we may need to answer. The question was:

How can you engage an online audiene in storytelling?-How do you encourage users, especially those from an older generation to participate?

We was shown a video of a focus group and they were being interviewed. This could be useful research for the people who may get the question above as there assignment. Other research methods could be looking online at statistics and see what percentage of over 50 year olds use the internet.