LO4 - Editing Example

LO3 - Final Layout

FrontPage

Contents

Editorial

Double page Spread

Article

Back cover

LO3 - Risk Assessment

LO3 - Showing conventions of the Genre

Front Cover -

Comparison images are from The IndieGameMagazine (left) and My own magazine (right) -
The conventions that I have used from this genre of magazine are used for a specific purpose, these allow me to display a lot of information in a clear and well-presented manner so that potential readers will easilly be able to see what the magazine contains without the front cover being cluttered. I have also used specific sizes for each of the elements on the front cover so that the important things are larger and because of this, more eyecatching.

Contents and Editorial -

Comparison images are from The IndieGameMagazine (left) and My own magazine (right) -  
 The magazine that I compared with here did not have an editorial in their magazine probably because this was not their first edition for this magazine. I used a lot of images on these pages as they are quite text heavy and this breaks up the monotony of the page. I also featured the convention of a large segment of the page to preview the featured article on the page, this makes sure that the reader will know about this more than other segments. I also have the brand colour-scheme and title going across the top of all pages so that the brand is reinforced.

Double Page Spread -

The double-page spread is a very text heavy layout as it has a lot of content, it is important to have a lot of colour on the page to encourage people to read and for it to be eye-catching. I have done this with the convention of images throughout the text, I have wrapped the images around the text so that it gives more shape to the article. The large feature image that I have is immediately noticable on the article so that people will notice is easilly.

LO3 - Magazine Article - Editorial

What do you want to tell your readers?
In my first edition of the magazine I will give a brief description of what the magazine includes and also the general style of the magazine.
What is the strongest article in your magazine?
 The strongest article in the magazine will be the indie game review, this is because of how detailed I looked into the game that I reviewed and it will offer the readers an insight into how indie games are produced in an educational style.
What experiences brought you to develop this magazine?
The experiences that have brought me to develop this magazine are that I have grown up playing these types of games and have a passion for them, this has made me have great attention to detail when reviewing these games.


This is the first edition of The Greenlight magazine, so I thought I'd tell you a bit about our magazine.
The Greenlight magazine was first created with a specific goal in mind, this was to deliver top quality insight into up and coming PC games to the reader. While this sounds like a perfectly simple goal it actually took a lot of work to get this magazine together (Who would of thought!). This amazing first edition of our magazine includes a lot of information on games that have recently been released to the public, with exclusive interviews from game developers!  

I'd like to draw your attention to the article on page six, I have been looking at that game from the start of its release and watched it grow into what it is now it has had its official release I thought it would be perfect to be feature in our official release too. I have grown up playing obscure, small games that not many people know about and I truly believe that you can find some amazing experiences when playing indie games, it is because of this that I have decided to share the games that I find with readers. So, if you want to find some gems of games and have a sense of adventure and a willingness to try something new, then please read on.

Our magazine also features something unique to us, we ask for fanart from fans of the games we are writing our articles on and we add this to our magazines giving credit to the people who read our magazines. We do this because we believe that the fans are what make the games, and in the same respect they our the ones that will help drive our magazine to success.

LO3 - Magazine Article - Smite

SMITE is a game that has rapidly grown and made a name for itself, two years ago it had a playerbase 50,000 people…Now it has over a million players and hosts worldwide tournaments with the second highest prize-pool in the history of E-sports. In this article we will speak with the Owner of the company and the tournaments that they host.

SMITE is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and has the typical elements of this genre of game, however as well as appealing to this audience the game has two other key factors that owes its massive success to. As a spin on the classic MOBA game, the camera is brought down behind the head of the character played much like an FPS game, this small change actually changes the game and how it is played greatly, it makes the action and style of gameplay a lot more fast paced and require a lot more focus to be aware of the environment. The characters that the player uses and the maps that are played on are all based off of Ancient mythology’s and pantheons, the characters are designed as lore-friendly as possible and it works greatly in HiRez Studios favour as they wont run out of source material for their character designs anytime soon!

The competitive scene of this game has been non-stop growth since the introduction of a ranking system for their most popular game modes. In 2014 they had their first live tournament that took place in Atlanta, they had teams from both North America and Europe brought to the stadium to play after a series of qualification matches online, this on top of the massive turnout of fans to the actual event and the people that watched online showed this to be a massive success and milestone for HiRez.

So what do they owe their rapid growth and success to? The answer is actually really simple, Twitch. Twitch is a livestreaming service that allows people to stream their gameplay to anybody else watching around the world

LO3 - Magazine Article - Insomnia Gaming Festival

Gaming festivals and conventions started out as very small events that few people would know about, let alone attend. Since then they have spread to every continent on the globe like some sort of disease. The Insomnia series of gaming festivals is the UK's number one gaming festival and it is appropriately named, during the festival attendees will walk around going from booth to booth in hopes of getting free merchandise and exclusive previews of up and coming games that are being showed off for sometimes, the first time the other main day-time event that goes on at the Insomnia festival is the glorified stage events, At these celebrities within the gaming world will play games up on stage and do news panels to the crowd and also the live-streamed audience. The most popular and 'hyped' games by the audience will also recieve stage time in which they will do full length presentations and pitches on the upcomming projects of their company.

That is all the stuff that occours in the day, the night time part of the festival is a whole other atmosphere, at night attendees are able to take part in LAN events in which they are able to bring in their own computers and play games against other people that are at the event, competitions are hosted and winners will be selected by the Insomnia Staff. The festival also holds a nightly event that helps it live up to the festival part of its name, concerts from famous musicians are hosted in which attendees have access to and have the ability to go to.

LO3 - Magazine Article - Game developer interview

Answers by Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios COO

1.       How have your company raised money for tournament prize pools?

We have utilized crowd-sourcing and the sale of in-game virtual items to raise money for tournament prize pools.  So for a set of limited edition virtual game items we allocate a portion of the sale to E-sports prize pools.  Specifically, for the launch of SMITE in March 2014 our company put in $100,000 for a Launch Tournament prize pool.  And additional $100,000 was raised by the community buying in-game items.  For the Season One World Championship our company put in $600,000 for the prize pool.  The player community raised another $2,000,000!   

2.       How have you setup these tournaments and all organisation?

We have a dedicated staff of about 10 people who run the administration and production/broadcast of the tournaments.  E-sports tournaments require the same type of staff you would find for a traditional sporting event - people to draft & enforce/officiate the rules, commentators and analysts, people to produce and broadcast a show for online viewers, people to handle players and teams, and people to give great service to the fans who attend the live event.

3.       Why do you think E-sports and MOBA tournaments are so popular?

MOBA games are now the most popular game genre in the world in terms of player population.  So there are a large number of people who understand the game rules and this large population can appreciate when the game is being played at a very high skill level.  The top eSports events now draw viewership compatible or higher than traditional sporting events.

4.       How have your company become so well known in comparison to other MOBAS?

The gameplay within SMITE is different from other MOBAs because it is more action-based.  The player is directly controlling their character rather than clicking on the game map and aiming and dodging are more important. Beyond the gameplay, SMITE became well known because our first World Championship is already the 3rd largest eSport event in history based upon prize pool. Also SMITE will be the first major MOBA to come to a console when it releases on Xbox One in 2015.

5.       How have E-sports changed in the past few years?​

The biggest positive impact to E-Sports in the past few years is the emergence of live-streaming technology such as Twitch.TV.  This technology allows events to be broadcast over the internet to a worldwide audience with much lower production cost and zero distribution cost.  Twitch.TV now has 50 million unique users watching videogame content

LO3 - Magazine Article - PC Building

Let's face it, no one really builds their own desktop PC anymore, right?
Wrong, actually. DIY may not be all it used to be, but it's still a thriving sector of the PC industry, and one that any serious computer user—we mean the type of person who cares more about what a computer can do than how small an envelope it can slide into—should be aware of. Because, if you want the strongest, most adaptable, most upgradeable, and most personal computer you can possibly get, there's no way around it: You need to build it yourself.
By researching each individual component's capabilities and limitations, you can tailor your purchases to your exact needs now and in the future. And if your requirements or your mood change tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year, you can easily pull out and replace as few as one of the pieces, and your computer is perfect for you yet again. Nothing else gives you this much control or satisfaction. Yes, you'll have to sacrifice some—maybe a lot—of portability, but the result will be something you can totally and deeply call your own as you never will be able to with an unchangeable system designed and manufactured entirely by someone else.
Building your own PC is not necessarily an inexpensive or quick proposition. But if you're willing to devote the time and resources to the project, you will end up with the best possible computer on Earth for you—and that will make everything else worthwhile.

LO2 - Page Assets

• Pages -

Cover page -

• Magazine Logo/Title
• Game artwork for main image.
• Puffs 

Second page -

•  Editorial - article about the magazine.

Third page -

• Contents page with what is in the magazine.
• Blurred background of game consoles.

Fourth/Fifth page -

• Double page spread of Esports
• Interview with a CEO of an Esports game
• brief history of esports
• various tournaments
• Images of gameplay from competitive games

Sixth page -

• Game review of KSP
• Images from game
• artwork of game

Seventh page -

• Don't starve advertisements
• Shows what platform its available on/in-game screenshots.

Eight page -

• Upcomming gaming events - images/logos of them
• Smaller advertisements of indie games.

LO2 - Photoshoot documents

The photos that I will need to take will be varied so that I can select the best ones to put into the magazine, they will be of the outside and interior of the computer as I am installing parts into it, I will take photographs such as -

• Exterior of computer case with side-panel opened.
• Computer parts being installed such as the graphics card and RAM.
• Empty case prior to building.
• A stack of all the parts next to the case.
• Photograph of tools you will need.

I will be taking these photographs against a neutral coloured wall in my house as it will be easier to edit them after doing this.

LO2 - Location research

For the photographs of the computer building article in my magazine I will need to disassemble a computer. I will be using my own to do this and doing it at home where I have a neutral background colour and also the required components for my photograph.

LO2 - InDesign Practice

Today I used InDesign to practice how to layout a magazine and also various tools within the application. The practice task we did was a magazine about cheese. I practiced wrapping text around images and also how to format the text into a magazine style of layout so that the information flow was well presented. I also learnt how to manipulate magazine pages and the various parts of them such as the guttering and bleed.

It has shown me that in order to make my magazine look good and show what I want it to I will need to gather all the sources and media before hand as InDesign is only used for laying out the magazine and not for editing. It has also shown me what will need to be done in terms of page layout for my magazine. As we had no resources before hand it showed me how difficult it would be to make a magazine without gathering the things before hand.

LO2 - Legal and Ethical Issues

LAW
1. Obscene Publications Act 1959 and 1964
This law makes is an offence to publish, whether for gain or not, any content whose effect will tend to 'deprave and corrupt' those likely to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.

In order to avoid breaking the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and 1964, I will not publish any obscene material or extreme viewpoints which may deprave or corrupt the audience.

2. The Defamation Act 2013
This act states that the publisher has broken the law when it publishes content in which:
- A statement is defamatory when its publication has caused or is likley to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.
- For the purposes of this section, harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit when it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss.

I will avoid creating content which will contravene the act by not publishing anything that is untrue or that could damage the reputation of a person, company or object.

3. Copyright Law 
At its heart copyright law covers the publication of content(written or image) without the permission of the author/copyright holder.
- Under the 1995 Regulations the period of author's copyright was extended, to the lifetime of the author and 70 years thereafter.
- The publisher's (seperate) copyright, in the typographical arrangement of a printed work, lasts for 25 years from the end of the year in which publication occured. This protects a publisher's copyright in all printed works: inlcuding books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.

I will avoid breaking the copyright law simply by making sure that all the content of my magazine is my own, and any photographs or media that I do use are from royalty free areas in which I have express permission to publish inside my magazine.

4. Negligent Publication
The author and/or the publisher under certain circumstances, either individually or jointly, could be found liable for 'incitement' or 'neglient publication' if a reader of their publication is seriously injured, dies or suffers from damage to their personal property after acting upon or using the content contained in the publication. (Food & DiY Magazines Especially)

 I will not create negligent publication in my magazine by making sure that my instructions within the recipes will not cause harm to anyone.

ETHICAL
-Ethical issues are those not covered by law, for example if a fashion magazine uses real furs in a shoot, some may say that this is unethical.

-Use of models and their treatment is the likely most common ethical issue to arise from magazine publication.

-Also content can cause ethical issues as well e.g. long term effects of gaming, body shaming, fad diets, fitness regimes etc.

I will avoid raising unethical issues in my magazine as they will cause offense/problems to some members of the audience.

LO1 - Production Plan and Production Schedule

LO1 - Magazine resources

Colour scheme -
The colour scheme that I will be using is blue and white, the backgrounds and layout colours being blue and the white being font choices. This is because gaming magazines are stereotypically darker in colour and this will fit in. The white font will contrast with the dark blue background in a way that is stands out well and is easy to read.

Font choice -
There will be two fonts that I will be using in my magazine,
The top font will be used for titles and headings in the article, while the latter font will be used in the body of text. The style of these fonts fits well with the genre of gaming as they look futuristic and defined, they will also appeal to the target audience.

Graphics -
The graphics that I will be using for my magazine will be screenshots and artwork from the various games that I will be writing about, this will make it stay perfectly relevant to the topics discussed, also they will be visible on the front page and will catch the eye of the desired reader.

LO1 - Draft layout

LO1 - Moodboard

LO1 - Target Audience

The target audience for the magazine that I will be creating will be -

• Predominantly males.
• Aged 15-25.
• PC Gamers.
• ABC1 Demographic, disposable income for leisure.

An ideal audience member for this magazine -
Name: Nathan
Age: 18
Is in college studying game design and also art. In his free time he enjoys playing games and also drawing. The type of games that he does enjoy in particular are indie games that are featured on steam, he is an avid frequenter of Steam Greenlight and enjoys voting for new games to be featured on steam.
He has a part-time job working in a local cafe, he is saving up some of his money for a car but the rest of his money he spends on indie games. This magazine would be ideal for him as it will allow him to learn about new games and also news about this genre.

LO1 - Magazine Idea

 This is the idea of the names that I had for the magazine, I have decided upon the name 'The Greenlight' this is because when indie games wish to be approved and released they have to go on the Greenlight section of Steam in order to become succesful.
For this idea I will not be focusing on one specific game, instead I will be focusing on indie PC games. I will be able to cover a lot of PC gaming related content.
The reason for me doing this is because I will be able to get in contact with professionals that work on certain games and also a large portion of the player base. This means that I will be able to have a lot of content for my magazine articles. Including interviews and also reviews about the game.
The idea for the articles that I will have featured in my magazine are -

• Interviews with Indie game developers.
• Reviews of Indie games.
• History of Indie games.
• Guides/Walkthroughs.
• Photographs of these games/gaming conventions.

I want to have a unique style running through my magazine as Indie games are often 'quirky' with unique artwork in them, so I want to make sure that my magazine fits with the genre that I will be discussing in detail.

LO1 - Magazine Names

Gaming Magazine -

These are the ideas that I have for my magazine name, I wanted it to be directly related to the theme of the magazine so that the target audience are immediately aware of what the magazine brings to them.
The Greenlight is a name that I have, the reason that this is a possible title is because it is a direct reference to how games are approved on the Steam platform, they must go through a stage of voting in order to be sold on steam called The greenlight stage, the only drawback that I see for this is that it people might not be aware of what it is.
Another name idea that I had was Gaming Hipster, this a reference to current culture as 'Hipsters' are often percived as individual, however it can be seen as offensive or not give people knowledge of it.
Another name idea that I had was Iconic Indie as it directly relates to the content of the magazine, however it could be too literal and not very creative. 

LO1 - Three Ideas [Expanded]

Gaming Magazine -
For this idea I will not be focusing on one specific game, instead I will be focusing on indie PC games. I will be able to cover a lot of PC gaming related content.
The reason for me doing this is because I will be able to get in contact with professionals that work on certain games and also a large portion of the player base. This means that I will be able to have a lot of content for my magazine articles. Including interviews and also reviews about the game.

Movie Magazine -
For this idea I would be focusing on a specific genre of film and that would be action films. The content of this magazine would include - Film reviews, top lists and also interviews with actors and directors. I would also include a segment about how people could get into filming and also the techniques that could be used.
The magazine would also include a lot of images from films in high quality in order to add variety to them.

Music Magazine -
The music magazine that I would be able to produce would be from the top charts genre, this is because it would have a wide audience range and also there would be a lot of content that I would be able to talk about. I would be able to talk about the way music style is advancing and also the top song list of the week.
I would also be able to possibly interview music artists and also bands to talk about.

LO1 - Brainstorm of Magazine Ideas.