KHA Flashcards
Kardashian Hollywood context
The Kardashian Hollywood app is free to download to smartphones and tablets. Users can spend money on virtual goods like private planes and on dressing and styling their avatars with virtual clothing and accessories made by designers like Balmain Oliver Rousteing.
In Feb 2017 the game had brought in 100 mill since its launch in 2014.
What is the aim of the game
To work your way up the celeb scale from Z-list to A-list. As you play you will interact with a range of real and fictional characters in the US and around the world.
Narrative
Characters are NOCS that appear in goals or locations and the storyline as you progress in Kim K Hollywood.
Key representations
Holywood contains quite controversial representations of women, celebrity and race/ethnicity. It has been criticised for offering a representation of women focus on appearance, modelling and dating as a way to be successful. Similarly celebrities celebrity is represented as something to aspire to even without an obvious talent or ability. On a more positive note the game has been praised for its representation of race, ethnicity and sexuality - with the game offering a diverse range of characters
Why is Kim K game so successful
Acquisitions:
There are multiple business factors that make Hollywood a successful game in terms of user acquisition
Branding: Kim is a major brand name. Her star power gives the game a significant advantage. Most games are launched without much awareness or discovery and must fight to rise above the noise of the internet. In this case Kim has a curated and sustained following which allows this game to have a significant advantage in visibility
Publishing: Glu Mobile is a publishing titan in the mobile world. They have a very large network of quality users that play their games. With today’s metrics and user tracking tools, they can easily migrate users between games and give themselves a strong download burst without heavy UA costs from banner ads or incentivized downloads
Placement: Both Kim and Glu are powerful and trusted names. This gives them a significant advantage when approaching various store fronts like Apple or Google. Strong brands will give Apple more confidence that the game won’t do anything that will negatively affect their iDevice use base
Industry
Developed by Glu mobile a highly successful mobile game developer and publisher. Released in June 2014 and was marketed heavily using the Kim Kardashian brand.
Media convergence:
The game design means that there is a great deal of media convergence. Media convergence is the merging of different media texts
Game: Tv shows and social media channels are referenced in the game. Players are encouraged to engage online and gain bonus items for sharing on Facebook etc.
Social media: The game appears on Kim’s actual social media platforms. Also need to tweet in game
Tv show: The game appears on Keeping up with the Kardashian episodes. Tv show is also referenced in game
