Games Master: ‘Nintendo developers somehow manage to pour buckets of curdled shame on their competitors’.
Edge: ‘Everyone was waiting for Nintendo’s guiding light, and it arrives, and it’s far above its imitators, but someway below its inspiration’.
Apart from biased implications, the differences are obvious. Games Master’s metaphoric language suits its audience well by producing a more reader friendly image. The relative formality of Edge can also be seen in this example.
Graphology
The graphological features of Games Master are important in distinguishing its intended audience. The amount of images (information extracted from Pie Chart Analyses Section) is particularly useful. Their number causes them to dominate the page, patronising the text, but their placements are also important. Instead of the harmonic order found in Edge, Games Master’s screenshots are littered about on tilted angles with a relative lack of structure. Of course, this makes the page more appealing, especially to the younger eye.
Another important feature lacked by both Edge and FHM is the appearance of the games character, twice on the first two pages. The character, Mario, dominates the first page in the form of a blown up screenshot extract. This signifies the intended audience and lays the foundation of the reviews style (basic with a low specialised lexis count).
However, the most important feature is the award that is given to the game, situated on the first page – ‘Gaming Masterpiece’. In my opinion, this is an indicator of the magazines relatively informal format as it is an encouragement for the audience to read the review, and which particularly draws younger readers into it – something which formal articles, broadsheet newspapers as an example, do not use. In reinforcement, this ‘award system’ is also used by FHM who use ‘Game of the Month’. In relation to these two, Edge expectantly does not use such a system, and the games review score even takes a subsidiary role.
In relation to this feature, the use of ‘fact’ boxes suggests similar things. An example of this in Games Master can be found on the second page in the top right. The contents are not even particularly relevant and even quite abstract, but it is this kind of item which attracts a young audience. The review is completed with a ‘review box’ situated at the bottom right of the final page. It is divided into the three key parts of games review, which is a feature confirming tabloid similarity in terms of subtitles. They are used for easy reference which suggests the audience of Games Master is of lower education than Edge, which strictly structures all of its points within the main review, and lacks a ‘review box’. The subtitle structure is also used in the main review, and gives very general ideas upon what the following section is about, exactly like a tabloid newspaper.
Phonology
Onomatopoeia is the key phonological feature of the Games Master review. This is directly linked to the lexical use of a magazine with a young audience. The following are examples of onomatopoeia in Games Master. ‘Zipping’, ‘gloop’, ‘thwack’, ‘zip’ and ‘swoosh’. All of these words are informal and resultantly make phonology another feature which suggests the youth or education of the audience.
The Games Master whole text also appears to portray a much more ‘spoken’ tone than that of Edge which contributes to its high readability. An example of this is the instructive, but humorous sentence, ‘Don’t get Yoshi wet! Use his regurgitastic spit. But don’t even think of chucking on a constable, like us’. Helpfully, this sentence also contains further implications which would fall into sections of lexis and grammar, but have been mentioned here due to their relevance to the section of phonology. Firstly, the type and level of humour is that which would amuse readers of an early age (8 –14 years). The humour is based around one of the games characters ‘spitting’ ability and the magazine focuses upon using this upon a policeman, which is something a young person might feel rebellious doing, thus producing an element of humour. Secondly, the non-dictionary lexical item of ‘regurgitastic’ is used. The ‘word’ itself shares the suffix of the adverb ‘fantastic’ and thus exaggerates the dictionary word, ‘regurgitate’. The suffix ‘tastic’ replaces the previous one of ‘tate’. The word now appears much more interesting and appealing to the younger audience. Thirdly, the use of the exclamation mark, ‘!’, adds a degree of humorous instruction to the sentence and contributes to it’s ‘spoken’ tone. A final point on this sentence is its ending, ‘like us’, which serves the purpose of encouraging the reader to do what has previously been said. Although they jokingly warn against it, the rebellious implications of the sentence will make the reader do it (spitting on the policeman) and the ‘like us’ ending will simply cause the reader to want to follow the magazines example.
Discourse
The audience of Games Master is significantly confirmed by the magazines lexical use and phonological features. The tone is generally ‘spoken’ in order to involve the audience more and particularly to appeal to their youth. Elements such as pronouns, exclamation marks and humour echo this theory. Games Master’s purpose is to inform in a humorous way. However, it differs from Edge because it strongly bases its informing upon the games storyline rather than Edge’s tendency to cover how good the game is – which is the point of a review.
WORD COUNT: 1,339
