All Game Trailers Are Not Created Equal

[Music] so thank you very much for coming um uh welcome to all game trailers are not created equal um this talk is a publisher perspective on the game trailer creation it's a dive into different trailers formulas and what they have to offer it's a reflection on how to adapt your trailer depending on its canvas and it's not about how to produce your trailer you already have lot of great resources on that end so hi uh I'm Adrian Mari and I've been working as brand manager at dmu for three years now um dmu is a French publishing company based in Paris that specialized in neor retro experiences like Street of R 4 and TMNT shredders Revenge um before theu I worked as a part of the French publishing team at Rockstar Games and I have a background in the film industry working on releases

strategies and marketing material like posters trailers for various release from P do to Minion or the fast and foruse franchise uh work on the marketing strategies for both dmu and the Arad crew game releases um with dmu we work on titles that are based on renowned IP while uh the ARA crew is our publishing label dedicated to original games concepts and properties there are uh lead asset is not the IP we are basing the title on and we have to start everything from scratch like everybody else um with the same publishing team behind all project we do learn through each one together and it's important to keep in mind how game trailers are so different and why it matters too quick first they have uh different production pipelines for video games you have an infinite time to create shot it's easy to cheat or to do

retakes and Game Trailers can look Ling like the final product as CGI or animated trailer can help build a mood or Direction and for triaa games we know that this can create a gap between the intended vision and the way the game will be available for player day one I don't need to Showcase any example here and if you compare the way you announce films and games um you will see that film project that are signed or entering production are mostly already announced through specialized Outlets like variety or The Hollywood Reporter you may have official or leaked videos or photos from the set but that's mainly it and finally the video game culture and the game trailer culture are built on surprises and the world premiere I can do it effect is pretty much unique in the entertainment industry with showcases fully dedicated to trailers announcement and gameplay

so what do I mean by all game trailers are not created equal first um triaa game trailers have their own set of goals and tools announcing a AAA game especially first party one is announcing a showcase for game consoles in terms of graphics and more it's a way to project into the future of a consoles lineup with games that pushes the the medium forward and this trailer can go around rules learn Rhythm and buildup with structure that are closer to film or television and on the Indie side most trailer are built with gameplay footage out of necessity and buil and focuses on the gameplay Loop the art Direction and The World building immedia is so important this with such a competitive field this is where you must answer to the questions how will you play this game and how does this game stand out from previous title very quickly

always keep in mind the goals of your trailers before you build it um your trailer will help the player understand the game as you dive into game playay and the gamees universe but it's also what welcome players to the store Page it's key to build a trailer as a visual support to an announcement too as a trailer untied to additional um untied to additional information can create frustration and impatience from the audience that you are trying to build the main takeaway here is the timing ask yourself why is this trailer relevant to this marketing bits and what key information are included in this trailer that's why you must build your trailer for each one of your marketing bits this is what a regular trailer campaign look like for a game release

from announcement to launch and Beyond uh one marketing bit can obviously merge with another but we'll take the time to analyze each one for for this talk announcement trailers they're the most important one set the hook as fast as possible dive into the gameplay and the universe quickly unless you're relying on a well-known IP I'll come back to that bit later you must take into account that this may be the LA the only video asset you'll be publishing for quite some time especially if you happen to encounter delays into Productions which we kind of always all do and finally even if it's for a couple of shots always have game play you need to help the player know how your game will be played and as you'll be launching your steam page at the same time you'll need to have screenshots anyway

I wanted to Showcase an example of one of our reveal trailer here for Metal Slug tactics the opening seconds serves as a tease we're announcing a collaboration between us and a new partner being SNK this also helps to celebrate and emphasize our Global publishing global positioning as a go-to publisher for retro licenses but the trailer features a short animated sequence and a quick switch to the game play this was needed in order to present the Tactical twist we are working on on a metal slug license early to avoid any confusion this is not a Mainline title it's a new original spin-off but the metal slug IP is in the right hands this was done as a glitter extent with Shredder's revenge as we created a new version of the 87 TV show opening with a full minute of Animation but we couldn't leave it with that as we needed it we needed gaml to emphasize on the

legacy of the Arad titles we are basing the game on another another example I wanted to Showcase is venge W Guardian Moon Rider we use the first second of the trailer for World building and to introduce the studio through its previous and successful release which was Blazing Chrome that was also published by the Arad crew we saw later that it may have been a mistake as we saw that the most repl play moment of the trailer on YouTube was this the switch from the opening cinematic to the game playay the interest for our Co audience wasn't really in the Cinematic or the World building but gameplay gameplay gameplay speaking of gameplay um your next step is to create a Gameplay trailer to offer a deep dive into what your game has to offer these can be lengthy videos take your time to explain your gameplay Loop and work especially on the structure

create sections chapters everything is welcome here the best way to be precise and guide the audience to where you want to lead them is through voice over this is especially efficient on systemic games when you're working on this always have a first cut of your trailer with your own voice before you move forward with a voiceover artist this is where you'll see all of the Flows In Your footage or in your script even if you cannot hear your own voice it's for the best fix this before you move forward with a pricey and time consuming recording session with a voice over artist and finally the camplay trailers are especially efficient post launch um as we see a great long trend for those especially with Early Access titles such as the last spell our gameplay overview trailer for The Last SP doubled his number of views since we published it before our Early Access launch in

2021 and we observe Spike views for each of our major update launch we knew that the video worked so with almost two years between the launch of the Early Access and the launch of the V1 we needed to update the video for steam um we need to make sure that every game mechanics and updated art are included as for the V1 launch the Gameplay trailer must be one for the V1 game launch trailers you're getting there yes this is the time where you reintroduce your game for the general audiences as this will be the main trailer attached to your star page if this is the only trailer the audience will see what must they see what can be put can be put aside and what cannot if the player doesn't go down to the descriptions or the feature list what will they see and don't assume that everybody saw all of your previous trailer this is where you

can recycle and re reuse all of the best bits of your previous trailer if your games manage to have post launch updates it's very important to keep asking yourself could this be a trailer if you have a community sees it and sees the opportunity to Hype up um what can be seen as minor content here we learn that through our experience with sh's Revenge uh as we were working on on the main DLC uh the team at tribute games worked on a minor contain update in December of 2022 we announced the update uh through a press release and screenshot but not with a trailer and we gathered major press coverage following the game's main success a couple of months before and we saw that we missed a big opportunity here early 2023 we learn from our mistake and created a dedicated trailer for Street of r updates bringing General

Improvement and balancing this ended up one of our most popular trailer for the title through our uploads on the IGN YouTube page multiple trailer that I showcased here include animation and I would like to take some time uh to talk about this aspect of Game trailer specifically going for animation in your trailers makes sense in a lot of ways uh this helps setting the scene and intentions from the project clearly like we did for TMNT or wi Jammer 2 here this format works better um with major bits like announcement or launch um but it might make sense editorially for the game having 2D animation for a 3D game or vice versa doesn't work the pros are quite obvious it's an outstanding way to raise significantly the production value of your title and a great way to offer something different than game playay if

your title doesn't include in game Cuts scenes keep in mind that the main obstacle for those is the price tag creating an animated trailer is pricey and can be very time consuming Um this can cost between 1 to$ 4,000 per second depending on the animation complexity and count month of work we've also experience deception regarding animated trailers as player may end up upset about the disparity between animation style and the games are Direction This example here features part of the animated sequence for the last pel launch trailer with the most like comment we saw through an upload on the PlayStation YouTube page praising the game OST but pointing out the difference between the trailer and the gameplay art direction as misleading overall we see how internally this animated trailer impact

performances in our trailer these numbers are based on performances in our own YouTube channel for title we publish foru and our animated announcement trailer performances are almost three times better than the average trailer views we have for the rest of the campaign one of the an animated trailer that didn't follow this trend was the announcement trailer for Pharaoh a new era this trailer for the remake of the 1999 game doesn't feature any gameplay until the final fate to Black at the end of a 1 minute and 40c video this trailer did less than half of the average uh trailer organic views we had for the rest of the campaign at 24K views and average at 53 um the IGN upload was way more successful and showed us that this right here was the most replayed moment of the trailer the last seconds where we reveal one rendering of the remake so if this trailer um if we were making this

trailer today we definitely would have gone with an approach similar to metal so tactics which is mixing animation and gameplay another example I wanted to Showcase is the Fantastic reveal trailer for dead cells from Evil ire introducing their collaboration with Castlevania the collaboration isn't revealed until the second part of the trailer but that's okay uh dead cell is a very popular franchise by itself and their team have a tradition of creating animated trailer to introduce the themes of their DLC and it's perfectly buil for the way it premiered which was at the game awards pre-show of 2022 and this is why trailer canvas can change absolutely everything premiering your trailer as a showcase remains one of the best ways to do it showcases are the best format you can imagine it's a show about trailers uh people tuning in are here for the

whole show so you don't want to miss the one more thing and on the audience side you get a combination of the live audience plus the next the post show upload when with this format you can bu your lead as the trailer you be creating will be shown in full too bear in mind that showcases May obey to different rules as well such as ratings you may have to adapt your game footage for General audiences but if Doom did it you can too either way it's important to flag this early into game production so you are able to create safe gameplay early and finally showcases offer a lot of live reaction broadcast from press and content creators and they're a fantastic way to see if your trailer works I discussed that with the evil ire team and we did exactly the same thing uh I think which is um log in the next morning and see all of the content creators that you like reacting to the

trailer that you showcased the night before and see the the joy in their faces it's Harding stuff for the for the all the the whole company for release date trailer on traders's Revenge we needed to include three key elements a new playable character the six player mode and the release date with the latter being the most important one our campaign was ramping up and we had very high expectation about finally delivering a release date after a year long campaign after looking a slot at the summer gamefest of 2022 we worked around expectation and buried the date as a one more thing at the end of our trailer this was not an issue for the rest of the campaign outside the Showcase as the release date was our leading information uh and in know wording on social media and on press release having the release date this slate in the trailer was clearly beat for creating a genuine reaction for the Live premiere of the

trailer from the audience but also from content creators live streaming the event given that the date was just one week after the Showcase itself and while we worked on the announcement for the games DLC the next year we built the trailer as a TBC participant of a Showcase with the reveal of one of the new playable character usagi buried in the second half of the trailer the trailer was ultimately not picked up for a showcase slot and so instructor was not as effective with an organic reveal through our social media the Hui reveal here scene was to reboarded as a surprise on the second half of the trailer but with your social copy and your press leading with the character the W effect doesn't work uh as effectively as intended if this trailer was created without a Showcase in mind from the get-go um I would have opened it with usagi differently and storyboarded the whole thing completely differently and to wrap up on showcases

maybe a trailer is not the best thing you can provide especially on non- first-party showcases where the audience is more likely to switch off Boll or unedited gameplay can be efficient if your hook is easier to understand in game and especially if you're limited on time and adding de commentary on top of this is extremely efficient too regarding steam it Remains the best platform for your trailer today is the quick just to so to show your trailer as first party store require way more input from the player to access videos this is where you must think about your first second the most what are you able to hook the player with your trailer opening seconds and without sound and don't waste any precious time and secondary information pisher and Studio logos are not a hook here especially and if the OSB SRB logo can be overlaid on the the lower side of the screen for 4 seconds instead of taking

two full uh seconds full screen do it and don't hesitate to update your steam trailers to optimize these two now uh one of my favorite steam trailers in recent memories is the one for pizza Tower the buildup is great even without sound sure you see the studio logo but you have immediate gam playay in the background you are hooked no matter what and it's impossible to resist a title card that says to the pizza present Pizza Tower the latest launch trailer from Vampire survivors is incredible too uh they open with the huge number of positive reviews the game got it's a great way to emphasize on the worldwide Sensation that the game is with a stats that player understand while hiding the B bullet hell tagline you get to see within seconds the gaml loop with medium and Powerful build a game over screen and character selection screen it's immediate it translates the game

The Game's energy quickly incredible stuff finally I wanted to finish the talk with additional tips create a a documentation process it's important to document everything that you find in your game that could be useful later it is a time consuming process but it's much easier to create assets with it documenting works for every games whether they are IP b or not from design document working progress art or animation to final work through we can use everything with this base it's much easier to list everything that you have included so far in your trailer campaign character level actions and ask yourself what have you already included how can we avoid repeating too many things this document is useful for everyone and can be exploited later by the pr communication and social media

team this is an exerpt of the documentation we made for Moon Riders release campaign it features list of levels weapon items enemy secrets and more um we worked with this document with our Mighty QA team as the game was often updated and this document helped both our editional proc process on the marketing side and then later all of the reviewers of the game so they won't miss a single thing I'm not proud of how this one looks but um for the shreders Leng DLC we built a four trailer campaign with different elements scattered among the announcement like new characters and color palettes based on the rich history of TMNT to leave room with suspense while we sprinkle as many e egg as possible in our material it was important to document um uh to document who and which version of the characters

were showcased in which trailer the same document was created for levels and powerups from the DLC so we would be editorially pitch perfect but believe me this is the good-looking one these documents were kept up to date for everyone each marketing bit got new content to enjoy while we made sure that in the end we didn't spoil everything that was included in the DLC I cannot overstate how important it is for developers to share your game their game captures to publishing teams um even non-final footage is useful it helps us uh and your team understand the goals and the in gameplay flow of the projects as soon as possible and if you identify great elements from the game during Productions share the goods plus sharing helps making sure that your team won't have to do the same game capture twice or more I talk from experience on that

end to finally present your gameplay to the world wait until it's great you know you only get one chance to make great first impressions so make sure you're only using exactly what's on par with your intention and your vision keep in mind that if the gameplay Loop is unclear to the person doing the editing it will be most certainly be for the person watching the trailer after you may have to wait until underc gameplay gets better to expose it but it's always for the best showcasing a killer shot in a trailer and reusing in your marketing material is very common in films with the mission impossible franchise being the best Ed in my opinion uh making this a part of your game identity through screenshot GI Clips or any social media asset is a very efficient way to make it a part of a game identity make it memorable and an example that I can give on the video

game side is how influential the first paraglider shot from the first trailer of Zelda bre of the wild wise and how it build the visual strategy for all of the rest of the campaign I love trailers for VR games um they are usually my favorite part of showcases because their ability to go on point is so so quick and because the way they are built they focus the energy on gameplay and how the player will interact with the world around them they need to open quickly on gameplay too as they need to be identified as VR titles immediately to avoid any confusion we have a lot of things to learn from VR games and finally never underestimate the keyart as a part of your trailer it Remains the final shot of your trailer if your keyart happens to be too crowded to include dates and platform information add a dedicated second shots so everything can be seen

clearly key Arts must be must feel like the extension of the trailer storytelling and don't forget that this Remain the F the first visual asset that players will be see in in stores please find through this QR code a document a document that compiles all of the resources and trailers that I use for this talk I want to give a big thank you to all of the studios and external Developers for letting me showcase their wonderful talk here and we have 5 minutes for questions thank you very [Applause] much um do you uh do alternates for do socials have you talked a bit about like Steam not having sound at the start

obviously people in scrolling their social media don't have sound on do you guys do anything alternate do you how do you kind of handle that aspect of it um if we do Al turn sorry yeah um if we do do we do uh alternative cuts of trailers for social media to make sure that we respect all of the rules yes basically that's the most important thing is um especially on social social media that that works best with shorter shorter versions and yeah that's pretty common in what we do hey uh thanks for the talk you mentioned like always Show gameplay in the announcement trailer right and and there's another Gameplay trailer right do you guys ever show like the same gameplay feature like multiple times in different trailers yeah um we we tend to do it because um that's mostly about we want to make

sure we need to be remembered that um as a marketing campaign we've been working on on this game for month or years but the people that will be watching the trailers this this will maybe be the first time ever that they see the trailer for this game so for the announcement trailer um we do have uh the now after we announce it we see which part of the trailer performed well and so we reuse these kind of things to make sure that this is efficient an example that I can give is the announcement trailer of TMNT one of the highlights for the core Community was to see that the four different Turtles had four different running animations which is different from the the Konami arcad games so we knew that this was something that works extremely well and so we made sure that for every next trailers we had the turtels running because this is a part of their identity and the core audience wanted to make

sure that we felt the uh personality of each character while we played so this is one of the biggest uh element that we make sure that we includeed for each trailer yeah thanks of course okay well um I'll be at the wrap-up area uh right next door and thank you once again everybody for listening [Applause] [Music]