Welcome to my BCM215 Beta Presentation, I have created a video outlining the progress of my Digital Artefact, @Nintendogs_in_reality (on Instagram) and my 1st Blog Post.
How did you draw on subject materials including lectures and reading?
Through out my research I aim to express the notion of play is active, productive and above all beneficial for players. I drew on materials from Week 8, of which examines Joost Raessen’s analysis of computer games – in particularly their participatory media cultures. A participatory culture, to my understanding, is concept where individuals (the public) do not act solely as consumers, but as creators/producers. From this week’s focus on participatory cultures, I was able to reinforce my own belief that gaming is an interactive process of which have significant positive psychological influences on players. In relation to Nintendogs, my main area of concern, the games design is created in a way that players can actively engage with a virtual pet and learn the responsibilities of caring for something/someone, such as feeding, grooming and playing with the pet.
Changes I made to my Project Utility:
Through out the processes of direct and indirect feedback, I decided that I needed to make adjustments to better reach my target audience. Firstly, I decided to significantly change my Instagram aesthetic. Initially, I used a lot of graphics from the Nintendogs game, for example screenshots of the dogs. I also posted large quotes, of which were excerpts from my first blog post. However, I decided that the bold, colourful aesthetic was not sufficient and changed it to posts of the dogs in real life then a second photo of the games animated version (tying in the theme of Nintendogs_In_Reality). I started to post questions in my Instagram Stories and had a moderate success, I received 3 responses from peers outlining their experiance with the game and then decided to post these responses as anonymous aesthetic images. Overall, I this change greatly benefitted my Instagram – as I have recieved a total of 23 Followers (from the previous 4) and an average of 9 likes per post. Subsequently after sharing my Questionnaire on Instagram, I have also had 2 responses.
Thank you for watching/reading and let me know if you have any feedback!
Maddie Johnston 
What a great project! It is sad to hear that other commitments have got in the way of pursuing this topic to the extent that you had originally wanted. Well done drawing on Joost’s analysis of video games, very appropriate and effective use of subject materials. I think it would be interesting to see if the game Nintendogs has influenced how gen Z purchases dogs, most noticeably if the most prevalent dogs in Nintendogs have shifted dog breed popularity. According to http://www.homestolove.com the most popular dog breeds in Australia are;
Cavoodle
Maltese Cross
Labrador
Well done on the project, I am excited to see the finished product!
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