WHAT DO AUDIENCES ENJOY IN THE LEGO VIDEO GAME?
Today we watch the Lego Movie Video Game walk through.
• As we know, media practices are widely connected
to Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory, in
terms of the audience’s sense of identity. The sense of
actual identity and aspirational identity can be seen
in the use of a first-person protagonist (to associate
directly with the gamer) and the ‘quest’ to explore
new worlds in The Lego Movie Video game. The theme
of good versus evil is often a key social value in video
games and is at the heart of this game too.
• Arguably the target audience for the video game is
younger than the film. This can be seen through its
level of difficulty, which provides a younger audience
with an entry point to the franchise, without needing
to watch the film. Criticism was mixed for the game
and its narrative as it takes elements of the film’s
narrative but lacks the cohesion and humour of the
film. Critics recommended seeing the actual movie
and seeing the gameplay as a stand-alone.
• The Lego Movie Video Game is a cross-media
promotional product as it advertises a range of
Lego characters and icons, like the superheroes
and ‘Benny the Spaceman’. Both the movie and
the video game are part of a larger Lego video
game franchise that existed before The Lego Movie
resulting in intertextuality for the audience and
a deeper relationship with the Lego brand. The
superheroes featured (Batman, Superman, Wonder
Woman) are also part of the larger Warner Bros./DC
superhero franchise so the video game also acts as
an introduction point to those characters and helps
to cross-promote this superhero franchise in terms of
other Lego video game products (e.g. Lego Batman)
and films (e.g. Justice League). Purchasing the game provided childhood nostalgia
for parents (a brand they might have played with
when young themselves) and allowed them to
play with their children. This also illustrates how
the audience for video games might interpret the
same product differently, e.g. young and old getting
different pleasures from the product.
• The Lego Movie Video game was number 1 in the All
Formats Chart, the sixth Lego video game to do this. It
was released available across a wide range of popular
console, PC and Mac platforms.
• The Lego Movie Game for mobile devices included
in-app purchases but required a larger memory (over
a Gigabyte of space) which met to further mixed
responses.
• In the same week (Feb 17th 2014) there were five
Lego video games in the top 40 All Formats Chart
meaning that Lego games made up one eighth of the
total chart.
• The game was released onto mobile devices due
to the market being worth around $21 billion in
revenues. As the game appealed to families and
children alike the hope was they would attract a
mixed-age audience.
PREP
The Uses and Gratifications audience framework offered by Blumler and Katz suggests that audiences use media to gratify needs for:
- escapism, entertainment, diversion
- surveillance (finding out what's going on in the world)
- forming relationships (both with on-screen figures and in real life through sharing pleasures with friends & family)
- shared values and beliefs (we identify with certain people as heroes, hope that villains will be defeated, want a particular set of values to be restored and so on)
