Cover Analysis #2 - Peggle Nights

 

The second cover art I will be analysing is the 2D puzzle game; Peggle Nights, this game was produced in 2008, distributed mainly via Steam (Digital Distribution) and was made as a sequel for 2007’s ‘Peggle’, also for the PC and distributed through Steam.
‘Peggle nights’ features game play similar to that of an arcade game and has become very popular over the years.

The first thing that hits you when you first view the cover is the colours used, unlike the Portal cover that I analysed on the previous blog post, Peggle uses a variety of bright colours to draw your eye to it, rather than using the air of mystery Portal used.

Peggle was developed and published by Popcap games, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts (A publisher/developer I have previously looked at). Their logo, which serves as iconography to players already familiar with their games, is featured on the front, back and the spine of the games package. This is done so that it can be seen whichever way the game is displayed in a shop.

The main game play of Peggle consists of the player using a ball to hit pegs placed around the screen. The game is very fast moving and has many levels to keep the player engaged; the original ‘Peggle’ game became the Action and Arcade game of the year in 2008. The box points out this to draw attention to it and make the audience believe that it would be worth their money to buy it.

The front cover features a very bright graphic, portraying a ball bouncing towards you. It is set in the night time on a city scape, this links to the name of the game, being Peggle ‘Nights’. The cover is colourful to appeal to its main target audience of 8-15 year olds and serves as a way to draw the viewer’s attention.

The Peggle logo is used throughout all the Peggle games, this features on the box to inform players of the original game that this is a sequel. The word ‘Nights’ is written underneath in a bright glowing blue joined up font, similar to neon lights you’d see at night time outside casinos in a city.

As with all commercial video games, the ESRB rating is posted in the bottom left hand corner, this is done to denotate to viewers whether the content is suitable for certain age groups. This on has the rating ‘everyone’ meaning that anyone can play it. Next to this icon is an icon showing that it is a game designed for the Mac and PC platforms. This is used to inform the viewer where this game can be played to avoid confusion.

One interesting feature of this box art is overlay of red on it. Most games, such as the one I have already analysed, will not use overlays and will just show the graphics for the box, however, some, such as this, will not. Overlays are used as a source of iconography, not many game publishers use this, but Pop cap and Sold out software are two notable examples. This is done so that gamers recognise them, often publishers using overlays will be selling the games incredibly cheaply and most gamers will have at least one game from them in their collection. Sold out software is notorious for this.

This game uses Bejewled, another incredibly popular puzzle game that received worldwide success, as a selling point, featuring ‘From the makers of Bejewled’ in the bottom right hand corner. This is intended to encourage Bejewled fans to pick up the game and give it a try.

Similar to Portal, the back of the box features both a screenshot of the game to view potential players in, but also a small summary of what the game is about. This summary goes out of its way to make the game seem exciting and fun to play, the explanation mark is used a lot.

The very bottom back of the box, in small print, shows the system requirements for the game, this is small so it doesn’t detract from the main area of focus, the screenshot, visual and other forms of text on the cover.
Below this is the copyright information, something Valve also had for Portal, this is made small due to its irrelevance to the audience it is focusing on.

The barcode is placed in the bottom right hand corner of the back of the game, this is a common place for PC games to have their bar code, unlike the unusually placed Portal barcode that went against conventions for most video games. 

Next I will be analysing one more video game cover, before going on to summarise the common conventions I have found between all the area’s I have looked at – Posters, Trailers and covers.