Case Study for Media Artefact

Various types of entertainment play a crucial role in the modern life. The main goal of entertainment is to engage people in different activities, including sport, dance, and games. The activities have a positive effect on the people’s mood and health. The current paper examines the impact and importance of one of the widely popular activities – the games.

One of the famous games that positively influence the people’s well-being is Angry Birds game. Rovio Entertainment in Helsinki, Finland created a video game that attracts attention of millions of games’ fans. The company released the project for Apple OIS in 2009 (“Angry Birds Facts”, 2013). A game became popular because of the possibility to download it into Windows Phone and touchscreen operating systems of smartphones, including Symbian and Android. Since its introduction, the comical style of the game attracts the attention of many users. Moreover, the main characters take a leading role in the upcoming feature films and television cartoons for children. Currently, Angry Birds has a low price, which contributed to the phenomenon of the game being the mainstream entertainment and having the greatest hits in the mobile gaming industry. Despite the game’s initial slow development due to the lack of funds, the game gained popularity and a huge success with the help of interesting characters, amazing plot, and analogy to the religion. The Birds and Pigs apply various concepts of yoga, which do not allow the fans to be bored. The task has different levels that define the skills of the player. The gamer, who overcomes all levels of complexity and complete different tasks, wins (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson, 2008).

The sleek design and the interesting elements of the game contribute to its popularity and influence on the society. Its uniqueness consists of a fundamental design of the game with various puzzles and demolition of challenging physics-based castle (“Angry Birds Facts”, 2013). The gamers struggle with different levels of complexity; thus, they develop concentration of attention, logic, and a strong desire to win. The tricks made by the characters of the games have the goal to challenge the player; therefore, his main aim is to learn the tricks and overcome obstacles (Chuang & Chen, 2009). The fans continue the game to the fortieth level. The goal of the game is elimination the pigs, and destroying their structures and buildings with the help of the birds. The higher is the level, the bigger is the number of birds.  Each bird has different ability that allows the players to build a strategy before finding appropriate solution. The birds’ skills include exploding, boomeranging back, and splitting into three (Angry Birds, n.d.). Different actions of the pigs improve learning experience of the players. Moreover, the game develops the player’s attention. In fact, he/she should be concentrated on two actions, and at the same time finding various solutions to the given challenge. The game strengthens intrinsic motivation and intellectual intensity. It positively affects engagement of the student in the homework (Schie & Wiegman, 1997). As the player progresses through the levels, he/she increases self-confidence in everyday life situations.

Social and cultural features play a leading role in the game design that is divided into “episodes”. The general framework of the game helps to understand social interaction. It gives a great opportunity to see the obtained skills and evaluate the previous level based on various complexities (Anderson et al., 2003). The game allows to experiment with various options to choose the best variant. Thus, it improves prosocial behavior, and provides educational opportunities that reflect the attitude between the players.

Eventually, the players become more active, purposeful, and goal-oriented (Schie & Wiegman, 1997). The players confidently achieve the desired goals in their playing (Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, & Gee, 2005). The real skills that a player can acquire in the game are imagination, concentration on a sequence of different events, and persistence. The player can apply them in life. In order to become the winner, the player should be self-confident in his actions.

Moreover, positive cultural importance of the game is identified as modern art. The plot of the game provides the viewer with the meaning of the contemporary mixed culture. The player can understand the culture of the game by decoding the signs of the characters. Children can also benefit from the game by learning that a bird of red color flies into the target area, while the bird of blue color splits into smaller birds.

The beneficial game elements are distinguishing shapes and colors of different birds, variation of pigs wearing hats in size, and scoring graphic design of Angry Birds. The aforementioned elements engage attention of the players, require different types of decisions and help to control every character’s aspect. The plot of the game has interesting structure, while the task attracts attention of the gamers.

The games are the integral part of the everyday activities. Amazing design, appealing graphic, social and cultural references attract attention of the gamers. Different levels of complexity provide an opportunity to improve self-confidence, self-monitoring and organizational skills. People, who play the interactive games, easily recognize the difficulties, solve problems of different complexities, improve social relations with the others, and faster achieve the desired aims and goals.