Videogames 8 - Assassin's Creed and reception theory

Assassin's Creed - Reception theory 

and the encoding/decoding model

Staurt Hall's Reception theory 

• Producer uses media language to encode messages and meanings within media products.
• Dominant or preferred reading
• Negotiated reading
• Oppositional reading
• The audience may agree or disagree with the ideology of the producer, mostly, audiences will negotiate the ideolgies and agree with some aspects but reject others.
• An active audeince theory.

The ideological perspective of the producer is encoded in every media product through media language, this demonstates a mediated perspective, which is a negotiated perspective, on reality and shows biases and assumptions of the ideological goals of the producer.

Unlike passive theories of audience such as Bandura's effects model, the reception theory argues that the audiences are active and can decode media messages in a variety of different ways, the audience may agree with the ideology (preferred) of the producer or completely disagree (oppositional). Some audiences agree with certain ideological aspects of the media product, while disagreeing with others - common reading (negotiated).

• The dominant ideological perspectives of the Assassin's Creed Franchise - violence is justified used to further a political or ideological cause, violence is an acceptable and enjoyable activity to stimulate in a videogame.
• The negotiated reading would be finding violence acceptable in some cases but the depiction of violence is very upsetting.
• The oppositional reading would be finding the videogame absolutely unacceptable in the depiction of violence.

• Ambient reading - when the audience completely misses the point of the media product. They may not see AC as a videogame and think it's real, or use it as a way to commit violence in the same way the videogame shows.

The issues with reception theory:

• Do all media products have a dominant ideology?
• Gauntlet (identity) and Jenkins (fandom) both suggest that audiences can largely ignore intended dominant ideological perspectives and interpret the media product in any way they want.

Negotiating the Assassin's Creed Franchise

• The ideological perspective of Ubisoft seen in the Assassin's Creed series are seen through the messages encoded, demonstrates to their audience about violence and looting being okay to do and fun in which you can interact with. The ideological perpspective of history being interesting to the audience and being able to interact with this.
• The preferred reading of the game would be someone who thinks that it is fun to kill and fight others on the game and agree with the ideological perspectives of the videogame.
• The oppositional reading of the game would think that the violence is unnecessary and and will completely disagree with the ideological perspectives of the videogame.
• The audiences can negotiate the ideology of the games by agreeing that you may have to commit acts of violence acceptable sometimes but the depiction of how violence is commited can be something they disagree with.
• The audiences may use this game in a way that Ubisoft may have not fully intended by pick and mix ideologies that suit them such as the history aspect of the game or the fighting, fans of the game may interact wth each other through other media.
• In gameplay videos, they are a negotiated reading as the audience can decide whether they want to play the game or not, and what aspects of the game that they like and don't like.