P2 - C - Production Process

Grand Theft Auto V

Unlike most games Rockstar Grand Theft Auto Games take years to create rather than just one or two years. Development for the game started in 2009 and wasn’t released until fall of 2013 which means it had taken 4 years to create with a team of more than 1000 people which mainly consisted of Rockstar Norths team but had input from other Rockstar development studios. Grand Theft Auto V is known for many things but when it comes to production it has been given the title of the most expensive video game ever produced as Its developing and marketing cost tolled up to £170 million. On release within the first 24 hours the company sold 11.21 million units which totalled up to a total 511.8 million in just one day which made them have a massive profit in just a single day. Sales totalled £1 billion within the first 3 days. Within one year at September 2014 33 million copies had been sold which meant £1.6 billion had been made which is a £1.4 billion profit overall. The game also broke many Guinness World Records as listed below via the Guinness World Records website:

“Full list of Grand Theft Auto V record-breaking achievements:

1. Best-selling action-adventure videogame in 24 hours

2. Best-selling videogame in 24 hours

3. Fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion

4. Fastest videogame to gross $1 billion

5. Highest grossing videogame in 24 hours

6. Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours

7. Most viewed trailer for an action-adventure videogame”

Link for text above:

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2013/10/confirmed-grand-theft-auto-breaks-six-sales-world-records-51900/

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The production for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was different to many other games as it had a different approach to a marketing strategy. To gather an audience, the production company Konami created a small prologue game called Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. It was released March 2014 using the same graphics engine and physics so that users had an insight to what the game was like. This prologue game was available on PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4. It was released for £6 originally for download but then was made free to play eventually which allowed thousands of people to try out the game and test out all the mechanics. After this game had been released for two months another trailer for the full game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had been released which created more hype. Overall it had cost Konami $80 million on production overall. On the release date in September the game gathered $179 million worldwide and gained much media attention. As a result, the game received 5 “Game of The Year” awards which is an award given to the best games of that year with all aspects of the game taken into account.

Minecraft

Minecraft is an extremely popular game popular with ages ranging from three and over due to it appealing to all ages. It is the brainchild of Markkus Pearson also known as Notch to the community and gaming world. It originally started as a small project in his spare time but he realized the potential and there were not many games of this type so he wanted to show his game design skills to the public. It was first released in 2009 known as the classic edition, which was a pre alpha release. The production company it was released by was Mojang, which was the developing company who helped Notch release his game and implement all the features he wanted. The first major build, which was the alpha build, was released on 28 June 2010, which resulted in many people who make YouTube videos start to review it and begin series of the game. Below is a list of when Minecraft was released to other platforms and what date.

“Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux
WW: 18 November 2011

Android
WW: 7 October 2011

iOS
WW: 17 November 2011

Xbox 360
WW: 9 May 2012

Raspberry Pi
WW: 11 February 2013

PlayStation 3
EU: 18 December 2013

PlayStation 4

WW: 4 September 2014

Xbox One
WW: 5 September 2014

PlayStation Vita

EU: 15 October 2014

Windows Phone

WW: 10 December 2014

Windows 10 Edition

WW: 29 July 2015

Wii U

WW: 17 December 2015”

Source of list above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Development

Call Of Duty Black Ops 2

Throughout the production of this game, so many leaks of the games name and story dissolved much of the hype due to developer’s secretly leaking information and mistakes of activision telling retailers about the game before it was announced. However, it did become a worldwide success in the end, due to its use of using the same production team as the team who created the prequel Black Ops 1. On November 8^th 2011 Activision CEO’s announced in a conference that the newest Call Of Duty game was now in development for a release one year from the date. On release, Black Ops II sold 7.5 million copies in the USA grossing over $500 million in that country alone. It resulted in the game being the biggest gaming launch of all time which it held for a year until GTA V took the title.