Videogames 8 - Assassin's Creed and reception theory

Reception Theory - Stuart Hall
Otherwise known as the encoding and decoding model

The ideological perspective of the producer is encoded in every media product, through media language.
Every media product therefore demonstrates a mediated perspective - Bias

According to Stuart Hall audience's don't just stop at encoding a media product, it goes a lot further because audiences can decode the media messages.

-Preferred Reading/Dominant reading
The audience agrees with the dominant ideological perspectives encoded by the producer

- Oppositional reading
The audience disagrees with the ideological pperpectives encoded by the producer

- Negotiated reading
The audience agrees with certain ideological aspects of the media product, while dismissing and disagreeing with others. This is by far the most common reading.


Assassin's Creed 
One of the biggest dominant ideological perspectives of Assassins creed is that violence can be justified if it is used to further a political or ideological cause violence is acceptable and enjoyable activity to stimulate in a videogame.

(Aberant reading is when an audience completely misunderstands or does not get the point)


Issues with Reception theory - some other theorists believes that audiences don't really care what the dominant ideological perspectives are and can interpret media products in any way we wish.

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