Released on October 29th 2013, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag follows the storyline of an Abstergo Industries (a company used as a front by modern-day Templars) employee who is manipulated into uncovering secrets related to the millenia-old Assassins-Templar conflict and the precursor race known as the first civilisation - the player controls the Abstergo Industries employee! The main story is set in the West Indies during the Golden Age of Piracy (1715 - 1722) and follows a notorious Welsh Pirate: Edward Kenway, who searches for riches and a mythical location deemed 'the Observatory', which is sought after by both sides of the Assassins-Templar conflict.
Unlike previous games in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Black Flag is focused on the ship-exploration on the seamlessly endless map, whilst still including the series beloved third-person land-based exploration, melee combat, and stealth aspects. Player's have the option to harpoon large sea animals and hunt on land, and for the first time in the series, naval exploration is a big aspect of the game. Multiplayer, a common game mode throughout the series, also returns in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, however with only land-based settings.
Henry Jenkins suggested that fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meaning. The Assassin's Creed franchise has an extremely large and well developed community, who would consider themselves to be a dedicated fan-base. Online fan-communities and overall fan culture has been a large part of the succession of video games. Jenkins also suggested that fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully authorised by the media producers ('textual poaching'), which can be seen most prominently in online streamers who use websites like TWITCH to give positive and negative feedback. He also suggested that fans appropriate the text and use it to shape their own cultural and social identities through borrowing aspects of the media text. Many fans dedicate part of themselves to media, with one fan getting an Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag tattoo.
However, some fans enjoy the Assassin's Creed franchise so much they're willing to dedicate a large moment of their lives to the series. A Jersey couple (James and Jasmine McTague) had their wedding theme as 'Assassin's Creed'. In 2016, the couple decided that their theme would be the popular video game franchise after researching their own lineage and realising they were connected to royalty. All of the bridesmaids were dressed as Templars, whilst the Groomsmen dressed as Assassin's, really proving Jenkin's theory that fans use textual poaching socially to connect with others.
Although Ubisoft haven't officially disclosed the budget for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the cost of the game is estimated to be at nearly $100 million. However, that cost is incomparable to the fact Black Flag received critical acclaim and was one of the best selling games of 2013, with over 15 million copies sold as of 2020. Critics praised the open world combat, improved naval combat, side quests, graphics, characters, and pirate theme. On February 28, 2013, Ubisoft posted their first promotional picture and cover for their next Assassin's Creed game, following leaked marketing material days before. It announced the title of the game as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and featured an unnamed character holding a flintlock and a sword with a black flag in the background containing the Assassin's symbol with a skull. However, development for the much anticipated game began in mid-2011 at Ubisoft Montreal by a separate team from the one on Assassin's Creed III, with additional work done by Ubisoft studios in Annecy, Bucharest, Kyiv, Milan, Montpellier, Singapore and Sofia. Overall, eight Ubisoft studios around the world worked on Black Flag, with almost 1000 people working on developing the game.
This conforms to David Hesmondhalgh's Cultural Industries theory and it states that industry companies try to minimise risk and maximise audiences. Ubisoft is clearly attempting to harness previous fans and popularity of the franchise to encourage sales of Black Flag IV: Black Flag. Ubisoft is a large company that not only developed Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag but also published the game too which increased their profits from the sale of the game. By purchasing AC IV: Black Flag, players are given the option to play multiplayer / online mode with friends, boosting the sales of the game once more as players will be encouraged by friends to play.
Ubisoft also creates all their own trailers for the Assassin's Creed franchise, below is the trailer to Black Flag, further proving Ubisoft aims to maximise profit:
To give a sense of accuracy to
Black Flag, Ubisoft financed the exhumation of the remains of the Spanish corsair Amaro Pargo in 2013, with the aim of reconstructing his face for a possible appearance in the game, really proving the lengths Ubisoft is willing to go to in order to provide their fans with a sense of realism. (This exhumation led to important discoveries on the physiognomy of this mythical corsair.)
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag has received Game of the Year nominations from media outlets Cheat Code Central, GameSpot, and the Inside Gaming Awards. It won the Spike VGX 2013 award for Best Action Adventure Game, and the GameSpot awards for PS4 Game of the Year and Xbox One Game of the Year. Unsurprising when considering the franchise it's attached to, alongside all the work effort that went into crafting an open-world game that retained many of the series original aspects. Interestingly enough, not all comments about Black Flag were particularly good, despite the highly complimented gameplay and overall improvements this game had that previous Assassin's Creed games did not. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an animal rights organization, criticized Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the usage of harpoons and "glorification" of whaling. The organization said it was disgraceful that the video game industry didn't condemn the addition. Ubisoft responded to the claims by saying that Assassin's Creed is based on history and is a "work of fiction which depicts real events during the Golden Era of Pirates". Ubisoft claimed they do not condone whaling, along with other mechanics and features in the series.
Stuart Hall's reception theory states the dominant-hegemonic position is that the encoder's intended meaning is fully understood and accepted. An example of the dominant reading in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is that the game is aimed at new fans looking to begin playing Assassin's Creed without needing to know all the lore of the other games. Another preferred reading would be that the game aims to re-attract previous fans by offering up new concepts and gameplay with the Assassin's Creed label on top. Stuart Hall also suggested audiences have a negotiated reading, where the encoders message is acknowledged but generally adapted to better fit the decoder.
Black Flag received a PEGI rating 18, for strong infrequent language and violence - which is typical of an Assassin's Creed game. Fans of the Assassin's Creed franchise praised Black Flag as 'the greatest game yet', praising the open-world aspects. It was no surprise that when Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag released, it was deemed the best of the franchise, however some fans found the beginning of the game to be 'full of trailer missions' whilst others expressed that they enjoyed Black Flag but wished it wasn't apart of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Many long term fans disliked that alongside being a very fun pirate game, Ubisoft was forcing the overarching plot of the Assassin vs Templar storyline that had players had been following in the previous five games. They found Black Flag to be interesting all by itself, and critiqued the addition of the Assassin's vs. Templars story because they found it to be repetitive.
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