Stardate 2508. I have received a distress signal from the plantcracker starship USG Ishimura.

The Concordance Extraction Corporation (CEC) has been using the Ishimura to conduct a mining operation on the planet Aegis VII. With Earths resources almost completely diminished, mankind has been mining the most distant parts of the universe to survive. The CEC has dispatched my ship, the USG Kellion, to investigate the Ishimuras distress signal. As the Kellions systems engineer, I will be doing most of the heavy lifting refitting the Ishimura to working order. This will be a tough job, but it will all be worth it once I get to see my love, Nichole. Nichole has been serving on the Ishimuras medical deck for the past six month. I wish I could contact her to tell her I am on my way, but its strange. There is a complete communications blackout with the Ishimira. A plantcracker starship with ten thousand people on board and no one is answering our hails. Something is not right. What awaits us on the USG Ishimura. This is the tale of Isaac Clarke, from the video game Dead Space (Visceral Games). People ask me, Why waste your time playing some silly game? But to me its not just a silly game. I have been playing video games since I was 5 years old. My parents joke that I learned to read by playing Pokemon. I love videogames and consider playing them as my hobby. Video games provide me with a chance to leave behind the mundane world that I live in and enter one full of fantasy and adventure. In the real world, I will never get the chance to travel to the far sides of the universe to a derelict spaceship. I will never get the chance to fight my way through alien monsters to save my true love. However, in Dead Space I get the chance to do just that. In 2012 video game market revenue, excluding mobile games on smartphones and tablets was $57.2 billion dollars. If you include mobile games the revenue for 2012 was over $63 billion. In 2013 it is projected that the video game market revenue will top out at $78 billion dollars in worldwide sales (Nayak). The video game industry is a juggernaut of the global economy. Yet, when buying a new game I do what you are never suppose to do. I judge the game by its cover art. All across the world people look at game box art and will spend up to $60 on a new game. The goal of game box cover art is to argue why one should buy a particular game. Bioshock Infinite is a game released this past year. This games is a heavily story driven, role playing game (RPG). The game takes place in the year 1912. The player takes on the role of Booker DeWitt, an alcoholic private investigator with a gambling problem. Booker is hired to

rescue a girl named Elizabeth from the fictional city of Columbia, a floating utopia in the sky, and bring her back to New York City to settle an unspecified debt. Elizabeth travels alongside Booker for the majority of the game and is the games female lead. Another heavily story driven RPG, The Last of Us, was also released this year. The Last of Us takes place 20 years in the future where a fungal virus has destroyed society, turning mankind into zombies-like Clicker monsters. The player takes on the role of Joel, a smuggler who lost his daughter on the night of the virus outbreak. Joel is tasked to travel across the country to bring Ellie, a fourteen year old girl and the games female lead, to a science lab believing that in her DNA might be a cure to the virus. Joel and Ellie must travel and work together to survive the perils of the fungal outbreak. Ellie is with Joel for the majority of the game and she is essential to the story. However, looking at the box art of Bioshock Infinite, the role of Elizabeth is marginalized and based on the art alone it gives the player the sense that she is not a character of importance. Bioshock Infinites cover art instead focuses on Booker and creating an atmosphere of intensity and action. Yet, looking at the box cover art of The Last of Us, the central focus is not placed on Joel. Instead, Ellie appears in the front and is the centrally lighted character. The Last of Us attempts to make a statement of desperation and the idea of moving through a world destroyed by disease in its cover art. These games are both two of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful games to have been released this year. Each takes different view on their cover art, yet both have proven to be prosperous. Looking at Bioshock Infinite, there are several features of the cover art that work in the games favor. The first is that the Bioshock franchise is very successful. Bioshock Infinite is the third installment in the franchise and was very highly anticipated. Bioshock has a logo that is recognized in the gaming community for quality games. The game was designed by Irrational Games and developed by 2K Games which are two of the industry's major studios. Not wanting to waste money on a potentially bad game, gamers look to studios and developers to provide quality games and new installments to their franchises. The game was released on all platforms

giving the player a preference choice to play the games on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and more. Multi-platform releases suggest that the studio expected the game to be successful and paid to have the game programmed across platforms. To emotionally captivate the player, the cover art uses burning American flags and explosions to add intensity. Gamers want action and intensity in games to make for a more immersive experience. The rugged, determined looking man on the cover allows the player to feel as though the role they will be playing is that of a man with an important, dangerous mission. The American flags and early 1900s fashions give the idea of an untold side of history for the player to experience. Bioshock Infinite will be explosive and action packed as you fight to honor what is American and save the day. By placing a rugged masculine hero in the front of the box art the developers are targeting the male gamer audience. A single male cover figure may have lost some of a potential female audience. Gamers like to play characters they can relate to or idolize. If a character is used on box art it is to provide the player with a reference to the role the individual will be playing. This may have been acted as a disadvantage because female players may have a more difficult time feeling immersed into a character they cannot relate to. Considering the fact that Elizabeth is the first major female character in any of the Bioshock games, it is also possible that the designers felt by centralizing Elizabeth they may lose some of the games already existing fan base. Whether or not, the choice to exclude Elizabeth from the cover art was a way of targeting only a male audience or a way to appease the games fans, Bioshock Infinite is one of this years best selling games (Irrational Games). Arguably speaking, The Last of Us was successful in spite of its credibility. The Last of Us was released on one platform the PlayStation 3 (PS3). This suggests that the games designers may have had a difficult time pitching the game to developers and couldnt find investors to fund a multi-platform release. The game was designed by Naughty Dog. Naughty Dog is a studio that has released successful games prior to The Last of Us, but not to the extent of Irrational Games, Bioshock Infinites design team. A rift excises in the gaming community

between individual gamers who prefer the Xbox 360 and those who prefer the PS3. For that reason, a game with a single platform release may sometimes sell to an audience not necessary of the game but the game console it was released on. However, The Xbox 360 is the top selling U.S. home gaming council as of 2013 (Bishop). Due to being only released on the PS3, The Last of Us was brought to a smaller domestic audience, when compared to Bioshock Infinite. However, it is an emotional argument that sold The Last of Us. The first thing the eye is draw too is Ellie a young anxious girl. Further behind her stands Joel, much older and fatherly. The Last of Us is not a game of explosions and mass conflict; it is a game of survival. To create a high-quality survival game, the designers need to captive the player by immersing them into a world of disparity and urgency. The concerned look on Ellies face and the hastened look on Joels face give the impression they are running from something. Joel and Ellie are positioned looking over their shoulders, at the player. With a long row of deserted, overgrown buildings it gives the impression of moving forward. Joel and Ellie are beckoning a potential player to come with them. The Last of Us provides a player an apocalyptic world to immerse themselves into. The use of both a male and a female character on the cover art implies the developers took into consideration both a male and female audience. When paired with the games great critical reception and a strong emotion appeal to a more diverse audience The Last of Us was successful regardless of its credibility (Naughty Dog). Bioshock Infinite has the perfect formula for a successful cover art. Popular franchise name, male hero, explosions, burning flags, shotguns, everything a man would want in a game. As of July 2013, Bioshock Infinite has sold over 4 million in sales worldwide across all platforms. Cross platform sales suggests that Bioshock Infinites appeal to the gamer audience was successful, even if the game was not directly market to females (Jackson). Certain aspects of the cover art for The Last of Us work against the game and suggest that the game may not sell well. Yet as of November 2013, The Last of Us has sold 3.4 Million in sales worldwide despite being released on a single platform (PS3). Such high sales figures for an individual platform

show the game was very successful, beyond what the studio may have projected its success to be. The central figure on the cover art being the female protagonist suggests that marketing at least attempted to target a female audience which may have helped contribute to the high sales (VGChartz). If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why not judge a book by its cover, a movie by its poster, a video game by its cover art. When art is made to represent a story, it should be able to accurately do so. The cover art of The Last of Us tells a story of survival, also one of a father looking for a daughter and the little girl who found her dad. The cover art of Bioshock Infinite tells a story of action, of a man with a troubled past and a debt to save some girl for some unknown reason. To discover the ending to these stories, all one needs to do is play. Work Cited Visceral Games. Dead Space. Electronic Arts. 2008. Xbox 360. Irrational Games. Bioshock Infinite. 2K Games. 2013. Xbox 360. Naughty Dog. The Last of Us. Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation 3. Jackson, Mike. BioShock Infinite Reaches 4 million sales milestone. Computer and Video Games. Future Publishing Limited. 30 July 2013. 22 November 2013. <http://www.computerandvideogames.com/421632/bioshock-infinite-reaches-4-millionsales-milestone/> The Last of Us. VGChartz. VGChartz Ltd. 9 November 2013. 22 November 2013. <http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70350/the-last-of-us/> Nayak. Malathi. FACTBOX - A look at the $66 billion video-games industry. Reuters. Thomson Reuters. 10 June 2013. 22 November 2013. <http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/gameshow-e-idINDEE9590DW20130610> Bishop. Todd. Xbox 360 vs. Wii vs. PS3: Who won the console wars? Geek Wire. Geek Wire. 2 August 2013. 22 November 2013. < http://www.geekwire.com/2013/xbox-360-wii-ps3won-console-generation/>