Square Enix Vs. Capcom
Square Enix and Capcom are two rival Japanese Video game developers and publishers. Both companies are highly regarded for their advancements in the video game industry and have multiple websites to cater for different languages and regions in the world (Square Enix, 2012. About us.)(Capcom. 2012. Profile.). The main focus for this semiotic and visual communication strategy analysis will be the European websites for both companies.
The Square Enix website is set out in a simple manor. The eye is drawn to the main banner which automatically cycles through the company’s products at regular intervals. The eye is then able to travel down the page without many distractions. The main source of colour on the website is the images of the products and the social networking buttons located at the end of the page above the footer. The bright colours compared to the grey/black background are there to attract your attention. The images are there to intrigue the user into clicking the image, or the related story, which is the main point of this website, to entice the user to buy or research their product.
The Square Enix Website as shown on the 29th of October 2012. (Square Enix, 2012. Home Page.)
The header and footer of the website are well spaced and clean. The header is well balanced with the company logo on one side and the login and registration on the other. The menu bar of the website does not interfere with the header. The footer is not as well balanced as the header. The links to the company’s information, job offerings and other information is mainly on the left hand side. However the reasoning behind the placement of these links could be because naturally the eye automatically starts at the left side of the page when reading, since this is how western society has learnt how to read.
The fonts used on the website are san serif; this also includes the company’s logo. San serif fonts are generally used due to being easily read. The Square Enix websites uses this font for this reason; it also keeps the page clean and easy to read through (Trinity Collage Dublin. 2012). It also allows for skim reading due to the uncomplicated nature of the font.
Compared to the Square Enix website the Capcom website is very complicated. The background of the websites consists of a video game character which draws in your attention first. The characters eyes are directed towards a box that has a list of all the company’s latest video games. This directs your eyes towards the box which in turn directs you too read what’s inside the box. In the background image there is also a mistake. When you move or close one of the informational boxes you can see three social media website logos. These logos are not intractable and provide no use to the website.
The Capcom Website as shown on the 29th of October 2012. Note: this is not the default layout. (Capcom, 2012. Home Page.)
The Capcom website is also customisable. This can provide the user with the feeling that the company’s video games are user friendly; however by doing this the company has sacrificed their ability to direct the user to certain products or objects of interest (Cypher. 2012). You are also able to change the website’s colour scheme, however some of the colours you are given make the website difficult to look at, since the colours are either too bright or draw too much attention which causes your eyes to become confused at what it should look at. The default page layout has little order. There is a lot of dead space in the middle of the page. However without this dead space the website would look off balance.
The menu bar of the website is at the bottom and top of page, which is convenient for a user since they would not have to scroll back to the top of the webpage. However the Capcom home page is quite small so this feature is not entirely needed, unless the user has a smaller computer screen. The menu bar is also cramped and unbalanced. The bar does not stretch across the page and leaves a space. This space could have been utilised by the menu bar, which would have given more room to space the menu options. Or the login/register button could have been moved to this space instead of having it in the website’s header. The fonts used in the Capcom website are similar to Square Enix due to being also a Sans-Serif font. This font type however is not used in in the company’s logo; Capcom is written in a Serif font (Trinity Collage Dublin. 2012.).
Compared to my own website I tried to use the same website design techniques as the Square Enix website. I wanted a plain background because I do not want that to be the focus of the user nor do I want the background to direct the user to where they should look. My websites is not customizable due to the fact it’s for an art gallery and art galleries don’t need to tell its website users that it’s ‘user friendly’ since art galleries do not encourage their visitors to ‘interact physically’ with the artwork on display.
The banner image is the main focus of the homepage this was achieved by making the banner the largest image on the page. The eye is then able to move down the page without any distractions. Dead space is also kept to a minimum.
With the gallery page I used the same grouping technique as the Capcom website. The Gallery categories are grouped together in boxes. It was the most effective way to display the artworks without having complicated layout with dead spaces due to some categories having less art works then others. However compared to the Capcom website I have my boxes neatly set out and as a whole they make a neat rectangle, giving the page some order, suggesting that the art gallery is also very orderly.
References
- Capcom. 2012. Home Page. http://www.capcom-europe.com/
- Capcom. 2012. Profile. http://www.capcom-europe.com/capcomprofile
- Cyther, Dr Mark. 2012. Emotional Design. Lecture. In Visual Communications (MCC118). Murdoch, WA: Murdoch University, October 22.
- Square Enix. 2012. Home Page. http://eu.square-enix.com/en/
- Square Enix. 2012. About us. http://eu.square-enix.com/en/aboutus
- Trinity Collage Dublin. 2012. Font style. https://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/TIC/accessible-info/word/font-styles.php