Assassins creed franchise and assassins creed 4

Summary of the Franchise  

The Assassins Creed franchise is a series of games running over a decade. The franchise is owned and produced by French gaming publisher Ubisoft. Inspired by their classic prince of Persia IP the first game titled simply Assassins Creed released in 2007 to critical acclaim, however fans and critics alike recognised there were many flaws. The next game came out in 2009 and is considered one of the best in the franchise building on the first game and ironing out many flaws, from there there was at least one main line game has released every year until 2016 where there was a break due to controversy and negative reception. Assassins creed games are open world action-adventure story driven games and are set across many significant points in history. The gameplay and themes often tie together in places such as the major focus on stealth and the open world parkour mechanics. The games have run over the last 3 console generations and PC. The USP of the games are the over branching narratives, gameplay and themes of the game as well as lots of iconography. Things such as the robes and weapons of the assassin order have become fan favourite imagery in gaming. The interesting clash of philosophies between the two main groups blurring the lines between right and wrong is one of the main themes in the game other themes including order vs chaos, peace and freedom, family, growth, power and religion. The series is also well known for the worlds it creates, priding itself on accurate representations of places in history. The series is also known and loved for the characters it portrays being a narrative and character driven game, legends such as Ezio and Edward are fan favourite characters across all of gaming, There are 12 main games in the franchise with some spin of games for other consoles. The franchise has always released to a global market and has released over many formats. As its beginnings were as early as 2007 the early games were only released as physical copies over disk but as gaming has progressed over the years they also widely release on digital in console stores on marketplaces like the Microsoft store, ps store and steam.

Monetising the game.

 As the franchise has spanned so long the way Ubisoft have monetised assassins creed has changed drastically over the years. With beginnings like ultimate editions featuring small extra missions and cosmetics to full paid story expansions in the early days of the game to small micro-transaction packs for cosmetics at this stage in the franchise the developers have gone through a majority of ways to increase monetization over the games lifetime. Ubisoft have found other ways to increase monetization from the franchise too, including making extra games for different generations of consoles as seen in Assassins Creed Rogue in 2014 and branching into the handheld market with Assassins Creed liberation for the PS Vita. The franchise has also branched into other media, on January 1st 2017 a film adaptation was released and in late 2020 a string of Netflix TV show adaptations have been announced to be released in the future. They also monetised the games further by releasing different editions of the game, with things such as figure stands and steel cases for the games. At the time of blag flags release micro-transactions were relatively new to the industry but still involved. Black flag featured small micro transactions for things such as time saver progression packs giving the player access to in game boosts of things such as currency and materials however there was also a season pass including a 10 hour story expansion, 

Marketing

Each game in the franchise have long running marketing campaigns they always feature releases of the posters and art. They would also release many trailers in the marketing campaign including cinematic, gameplay and live action. There are also month long heavy marketing campaigns run in the run up to launch. Posters, billboards, short adverts shown usually over social media. There are also more obscure marketing techniques too things such as promotional work with content creators, giving popular creators access to the game early to do playthroughs. On top of this there are traditional trailers, for each game there is usually a gameplay, cinematic, launch and even sometimes live action trailer. The marketing usually focuses on the unique setting of the game as this is one of the biggest sellers of each individual game, as well as the new main character, the graphics and the iconography of the series in an attempt to draw eyes to it. 

Maintaining and developing audience

The assassins creed franchise is one of the most mainstream gaming franchises of all time, a large majority of the games audience come to the games from being long time fans of the series. The games have also implemented many interactive features over the years. Some of these include; a multiplayer mode spanning 4 games, a photo mode where popular photos can be shared on players maps, dynamic and rare events which once found can have their location shared with friends, customisable outfits homesteads and ships and even a co-op mode in one game. There is also a huge fan community for the franchise with things like music videos, cosplays and fan films all common place for the games.

Regulation

The games are rated by the GRA (game regulating authority) who use the PEGI system. It is their job to review upcoming games and decide what age band the game is appropriate for ranging from ages 3+ to 18+. The assassins creed games are all 18+ due to excessive violence and other mature themes. 

Key text: Black flag

T\he key text from the franchise, assassins creed 4: Black flag takes place in the golden age of pirates. It is set in the Caribbean in the year 1715 at a time where both England and Spain are trying to occupy the region causing frequent conflicts and also at a time where England is cracking down on piracy. Similarly to the rest of the franchise it is an open world action-adventure game focused heavily on adventure and the narrative of the game. 

 You take control of Edward Kenway, a witty privateer who left his poor life and wife behind in search of riches who gets entangled in an ancient conflict of two orders and gradually becomes more wise and selfless. The game controls from a third person perspective looking down on Edward from behind, you can control the camera, his movements and other actions. You also spend a large portion of the game controlling his ship "the jackdaw", it has a similar camera angle and you can control where it goes, how fast it moves, the cannons and other weapons and you can pull it along side other ships to initiate boarding sections. 

The games goals or gameplay loop included adventuring the open word to explore islands and pirate ships to gain wealth and materials to upgrade yourself and your ship "the jackdaw" and progress through the main story missions. The rules of the game are limited, you are playing as a normal person so you must move as a normal person would, you cannot kill domestic animals and civilians or your pirate crew. There is also a limited map, there are only certain ways to enter the main cities and there is an invisible wall at the world border.

 The game has largely positive representations of gender and race especially for the time. The supporting cast of the game is relatively diverse. You assign your quartermaster position to an ex slave who has deep character progression eventually joins the assassin order and getting his own dlc. The portrayal of women is mostly positive too, the game having its own version of the legendary pirate James Kidd actually be a woman in disguise, there are some negative representations of women too in things such as prostitutes. Another negative representation in the game is that of Christianity as that is the main religion of the Templars the main antagonists.

Key sequence 

This sequence in the game features almost all gameplay control in 1. The sequence starts with a small parkour segment highlighting the unrestricted movement controls the game features. It also showcases the naval combat as you control your ship and player combat as you board a ship at the end. The whole sequence is in third person. The sequence also showcases relatively impressive technical feats, being the first game out for a new generation of consoles. The sequence is heavy with demanding action, the sound of the ship battle and explosions as well as people shouting. The visual display of the explosions and naval battle and the scale of the unrestricted open world. The 3d rendering of multiple demanding assets is an excellent display of the progression of video games. The cutscenese are also a staple of this , the exelent redering of the charecters and animations is a good example of the technology. Narratively the sequence is very important too as it displays the death of one of the main supporting charavters.