How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

The video game that I tried to base my production on was Cyberpunk 2020, the game is a science fiction role playing game, which is based in the future, it has a science fiction overtone, but has its roots in the cyberpunk sub-genre.

My trailer and my ancillaries worked together quite well in my opinion. I kept a very clear branding approach to all of my work. Images of Fran were the same across all my work, she is dressed the same in my production as she is in my game cover and in my advertisement, to help keep consistency, she is also consistently seen to hold her weapon in each of these different media, this helps make it more iconic and easy to associate with the brand and genre because the weapon that she uses is so signature. Throughout all of my work I made sure to keep clear and consistent use of my titling, I made sure that all my titles on each of the different media were all the same, I made sure that it was always the same colour and in the same style, I also made sure that it was the biggest piece of text on the media. Throughout all of my media there was a tint of red throughout all of the media, in my production I overlaid a red tint over the video, in my advert and game cover I also used the lighting effects in my editing software to add shades of red into the backgrounds and over characters to make sure that they all shared aesthetic features, this is similar to Deus Ex that adds yellow and gold tones to its trailers and advertising as it fits with the games colour scheme of black and gold, I think it is successful as it makes all the media seem more coherent but it also adds a degree of aggression and dominance to my products, with the colour being red it is rather impactful and bold, meaning that across all my different media pieces they all stand out together. Furthermore I think that this was effective because it associated that colour with my branding and made it more recognisable to audience but also made it stand out more because it all looked rather un-worldly being shaded red.

Across each of my different media pieces I wanted them all to share a certain aspect of my character, I chose to mirror two different frames of Fran in my physical media, so in my game cover the image of her can be seen to be mirrored in my production and this is the same for my advertisement, I did this because it creates a very clear connection between all of my work and makes it seem more like it is all one cohesive work rather than separate decided products made from different teams. I wanted to make sure that it looked as though a lot of thought and consideration had been taken in each of the different works to make sure that it was all recognisable and people could transition from one part of the campaign to another easily and without abruptly being introduced to a new feature of aspect of the media. Therefore in my mind I had the plan that someone would see the tester production because that would be the most heavily promoted part of the advertising, conforming to conventions of video game advertising, this would introduce them to the concept, the characters, the aesthetic and acclimatise them to the world in which I have created and then my campaign would extent to the advertisement, which would create suspicion and not reveal any information to the audiences, but make them interested and build hype, then the full length trailer would drop, introducing them to more and more different elements of the universe in a video format and then finally my game would be released with the cover, matching their expectations and being identifiable to the people effected by my campaign. The text that featured between all my media was the same, I chose to use the same font AZO in different styles to again help create a better degree of consistency and to make sure that people associated that type face with my product.

Something I think that I could have improved on was keeping the themes from my trailer and integrating them more into my game cover and advert. Late into production I decided to add a comic book effect to my trailers, I did this to help connotations of the genre, better connect with my audience and to make my trailer different to others, but non of the comic book styles fit into my game cover to advert due to the change coming so late in production. If I were to change this I would add more of the comic book elements such as the dialogue boxes and comic book cover stylings to my game cover and advert. Colour schemes and fonts flow well between all the media but styles fail to transits across them all which could jeopardise the integration between products and branding.

I think overall the combination of all of my media is very effective, they all fit collectively into an ecosystem, they all work together to create a similar effect and feel and overall make it easy for the audience to transition between each piece of media and understand they are from the same franchise and are all a collective. Furthermore my initial idea to break conventions by having a female protagonist is upheld as Fran features on each of my media and she is always a prominent feature in all of them, this makes it easy for her to become somewhat symbolic and therefore make it easier for audience to spot her and it become synominous with my game TIME. All of my media works coherently to point audiences towards the www.TIME.com we address and makes sure that audiences are aware where they can go to find out more information about the game. All my media makes the audience aware that the game has an 18 certificate as it features on each. I think that all my media works together towards one clear goal, to let the audiences know as much as possible about the upcoming release of my game, it trains them to know where to go in order to find out more information, it effectively promotes red as my brand colour scheme and images of Fran are always prominent to make sure people can create their own connections between my game and Fran helping to create brand imagery. Something that I think I could have done better was social media integration, while I did have social media integration on almost all of my products, I don’t think I did anything new, but all of my products did coherently advertise the same social media hashtag and therefore I would say that they effectively managed to further my campaign in a conventional way.