Make the Trailer Before the Game: A Marketing First Way to Prototype

[Music] all right let's get started thank you everyone for coming it's great turnout um before I start uh turn off your noise making devices and don't forget to fill out your evaluations um hi everyone my name is Derek Lou and this is make the trailer before the game a marketing first way to prototype so my whole goal here is just to help you make more marketable games and for you to be more confident that you have a marketable game before you're just neck deep in production so tell me if this sounds familiar you can just nod you're just about finished with your game you've put in a lot of work and you realize need to make a trailer and you're like oh oh what do I show what what do I put in my trailer which this is a terrible feeling to have

because the less clear your answer in that moment the less marketable your game probably is I mean it's also hard to just work on your own project too but still this is also really bad to discover late in production um you know certainly there's some games where yeah they know what to show it's Untitled Goose game you just got to show the goose being horrible or thirsty suitors like everything about this game looks different because of its characters and its setting the animation um everything stands out or like papers please you have this game it's just so singular this thing that's never existed before and it's all about stamping passports so you kind of can't help but show the thing that makes it look exciting but for a lot of games their defining features are not immediately apparent this is a my sister-in-law's dog she sends these pictures sometimes and says which side is which all right is the head on the right on the left

side or the right side cheer for left cheer for right anyway that's an aside so yeah a lot of games their defining feature is not really apparent and or they're just kind of outside the norm because maybe they combine two things that maybe you're not even sure if they should go together but you've done it anyway um in a lot of cases you're just iterating on a popular genre like Metro advania Legend of Zelda cozy life Sim City Builder Rog likee um so a lot of times the answer isn't really clear and also if your game is iterating on existing genre or genres it's super easy to make a 90-second trailer that just never shows what's unique about your game just like getting to the basics of gameplay it's really easy to do and kind of scary so but wouldn't it be great if you just knew what should go into your trailer in advance and you're confident that your

game is more marketable which also by the way again my name is derck Lou I've worked on a lot of game trailers these are just a few of them I've been doing this for eight plus years and I think a lot about what games need to do to show off their unique selling points okay so you know usually this is like a gross oversimplification of how this goes make the game make the trailer but what if ooh which I know technically it's more like this you you're making the game and then at some point along the way like crap we need to make a trailer and that's more how it works but that's just me being pedantic um anyway I came up with the ideas for this talk because there's interview with Lucas Pope on not clip where he was talking about how when he thinks of game ideas he thinks about the trailer first and he says if he's prototyping and if he can't imagine right now a cool trailer for this it's probably not worth pursuing which this is just the way he works um

and I also interviewed him for this talk as well as bunch of developers from these games because they've either done something similar where they think about the trailer very early or made videos to kind of help them through production or at least just thought of it so why think of it when you're prototyping well because first of all trailer essential marketing asset of course I'd say that um shows what your game looks like quickly shows the experience of your game communicates your game's Vibe shows your g games unique and similar qualities to other games and it gets people interested and or excited at least hopefully and so when you're making a prototype you know you're trying to brainstorm ideas determine the experience SL fantasy of the game whether um I don't know you're a cat rescuer or something like that

uh find the mood and tone establish the themes design the steps in the game's Loop look at the marketability of the idea get Buy in from yourself the team and money people and research genre viability which what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bold all the things that a trailer will help you to do which you probably thought it was going to be all of them but I don't think it helps research liability but everything else it can really help you with um so another thing Lucas said was he's when he's thinking of ideas is can I pitch this game without comparing it to other games or letting someone play it for a couple of hours which gets to this key point that uh game prototypes have some weaknesses a lot of times they can just be like a bunch of mechanics sort of things that don't necessarily cohere uh they can can be very rough and

unpolished and it can take a long time to explain what makes them good you know some things only really work when you combine all the things together and if you need to take that much time that means that it's going to be harder to compress into a trailer and therefore harder to just pitch so as an example um two very good games we have unsighted and Untitled Goose game which I haven't played on cited it's a very very good game one of my favorites from recent years so the things that make this game good are as Metroid Vania Legend of Zelda design nonlinear dungeon order post-apocalyptic world weapon variety um typ controls Parry system Secrets pets and there's a lot more and then ont Goose game of course the pitch is you're horrible Goose you know these are both great games but you can see y one's just

easier to Market overall not saying unsighted shouldn't exist it's a great game it's just um it's it's I could see why it' be hard to Market so trailer forces you to ask what does this game look like when it's being played which is really it seems like a small distinction between just like what does the game look like versus what does it look like when it's being played but like it's also really easy to make a trailer where we have no idea how it plays you just have like a bunch of camera movements through the environment you're like what what's actually the game um it also forces you to ask how quickly can we show this game's unique selling points What audio and visuals will convey the game's story and how will this game look different from its Inspirations and uh eka from adal Loop games said just so much of making a game is trying to sell the idea you're trying to get people to buy in before they play and so as an example not all games can be easily described with words so

here's two exerpts from reviews for viewfinder viewfinder is a first person puzzle game that tasks you with placing photographs over existing geography to modify your terrain allowing you to reach the stage's exit if you play viewfinder that's pretty accurate but not very evocative or this is a world where you can bring photos to life the 2D image becomes becoming a 3D reality when you place it within the puzzle world even still it's a little bit hard to conjure images so like here a screenshot which even then doesn't 100% get it across so like here's a really early video that they released so the viewfinder team they spent six months making a prototype with the idea of making it into a trailer or video montage and they did this because this game has to be seen to be understood and also puzzle games are not super popular so they needed a really strong way to pitch so that's why they really focused on getting this whole thing together because the trailer boils down

the game and explains it visually uh this is the trailer I did for NOA and it's also a good tool to use when prototyping because a trailer concept is a cheap framework to brainstorm ideas this is a screenshot of an animatic I did for an Among Us trailer just in my office filming on my iPhone um and I add this quote from Jeff from mediatonic he says a trailer is a short circuit way to think of the end product instead of getting bogged down in details features and mechanics and it really just forces you to think of the emotion or the holistic experience and another reason it can be good to think about early is because the core themes and premise can be gameplay agnostic I mean it depends on your game but so eka from outter Loop games was saying that the themes and thirst of thirsty suitors were always the same but the gameplay went through a lot of changes so having this sort of core uh

to it helped uh things along the way and also describing a game based off its features not super interesting this is a just a trailer I made for firewatch as an example of just the worst possible way to sell fire watch and it's based off of trailers that I've watched you know I'm a little little bit little bit silly here but there a lot of games that just kind of point out features and it's not the best way to uh sell a game game especially with firewatch but so here's an example so we have songs of glimmer Wick which has a lot of moments which feel the same as other games or superficially you know every game is like this they have parts of their game that look like other games so here we just have like character walking through the environment um or farming and you know this part here doesn't look like super marketable even though the art is nice but this tra actually opens with this

[Music] shot and they did this to to hook the audience they created this moment for the trailer and they added it to the game later on it did not exist before they were like crap we need to make a trailer and find a way to make it hookie so you know if you start off with this and then you show the stuff from before way more interesting because a trailer helps you make standout moments um you know you don't want people to watch your game trailer look at your game and just think like I've kind of seen this before but you know the art style is different you know you want them to have at least a few things that make it memorable and unique and um so yeah Jeff or sorry Daniel from East Shade said I think making trailers is conducive to making memorable quests you guarantee you have at least one great setpiece moment in the game and so here more things that a

trailer can reveal about your game does the art style stand out how visual are the game's hooks how does the game visually tell the story is this interesting enough to hook an audience and how difficult is it to understand when watching but not playing because the worst case scenario is just you know art doesn't Stand Out hooks aren't invisible story isn't told visually it's difficult to understand the gameplay now right now some of you are probably thinking but Derek I want to make my game which is not very visable it has really strong gameplay and I get it but this exercise is still worth doing because if you have one of those games which is not like super trailerable thinking about this early would force you to think of maybe some solutions that might make your job a little bit easier by the time it comes to Market your game instead of just like thinking like huh there's all these things that the player does in the game that when it happens you can't really tell that it

was the player causing it you know that's not a good feeling to have when you have to make visuals for a trailer because when you're watching a trailer or people are watching a trailer they're looking for onscreen feedback which reflects the player's actions and you can build that in while making the game and so this is why lens of a trailer is a great tool because you just have to pick and choose or create the images which will anchor your game in a space that's familiar and show enough of its hooks or unique selling points to make it look worth playing so it's really difference between just like having a bunch of mechanics and a bunch of mechanics which have visuals that correspond to them okay so here are a few ways that a trailer will help development first is that it sells the game to you the team the investors aligns the team around a common goal establish establishes theme story mood and tone makes you think of the game's visuals and readability and I'll go down

each of these one by one so first is sell the game you know it sounds like something you have to do last but actually you have to do it first and Lucas gave me this really good point which was just the games are so terrible for so long that it helps to have a vision of the finished game you know sell it to yourself and then you probably also have to sell it to people who will give you money to let you develop the game but selling it to yourself is really important so then that you can stay sane when it's broken for two or three years or something and so aligning the team around a common goal so the example I have here is for transistor which is super giant games second game so after Bastion they had a lot of trouble working on transistor they was floundering trying to figure out what they were making they liked their basic setting but the other things like the protagonist just weren't clicking the atmosphere of the story in premise all just up in the air and so the problem was that just didn't feel what they had and they weren't really excited excited and Greg told me when I

interviewed him he said just if you're not excited at the start it's not great to assume you're going to get excited later it's a big gamble and so meanwhile Engineers were experimenting with gameplay mechanics of this like mix of turn-based in realtime action but they didn't really have a game to fit it into and so Darren Corb their composer and audio director suggested they make a tone video since they couldn't make a vertical slice so Greg would write it Darren do music jenz did and Logan did voice over and um there's no sound here but just just the picture just imagine some transition music so they worked on it off off and on for like a month and it forced them to get really specific so Jen had to design the transistor red in the antagonist environments and Darren had to nail the musical tone Greg had to land on the speaking voice style and this was the first coherent holistic expression of the world the atmosphere and the story and if you've played transistor and you

watch this it feels really spoton and then the team was excited yay and the designer and Engineers designers and Engineers also had an easier time doing their job because now they had this story to work within where they had this idea of the weapon absorbing powers from people and then that informed the design of the mechanics and Greg just said work just goes slowly if you don't know what you're building When You're Building it um you know people really need to understand what they're making and a trailer can show you where you're going even though you're not there yet and also if you have that trailer or mockup you can just always ask yourself does this serve the goal you know you could be experimenting with different mechanics and ideas um and if you have no particular goal then of course you're probably going to end up in any which way if you're not being like directed and so as far as thinking of visuals and readability I mean there's

so many ways you can uh go with this um but it you know thinking of a trailer just like forces you to think of visuals instead of just mechanics so like really simple example if you're making a horror game you could just look at a whole bunch of other horror games look at their color paletes and see how you might differentiate yours from what else is on the market or by the same tone like say you're making like a thriller game but not a horror game then if you have two visuals you can decide is this more horrific or is this more Thriller like and then make your decisions accordingly but if you don't have that shared Vision then it's harder to decide these between those two sorts of things um just like another simple example of just designing for something to be watched versus played is um the this is for Walking Dead season 1 and and firewatch so uh the same people worked

on the games and the dialogue selection system in firewatch was designed to be watched by other people because you can see when the little highlight thing hovers over you can see what the player is deciding on or they might Linger on like H should I choose this one maybe not whereas Walking Dead when you have the face buttons you have no idea what the player is thinking what they're deciding between so that's like one small example of sort of Designing for the audience not player okay so how do you make a trailer prototype there's a bunch of different ways you can do it and depending you might need an artist writer composer sound designer video editor programmer designer but so we have written description mood boards or rip Matic which I'll explain animatic sketches and music game Prototype clips and vertical slice so the good news is the game

doesn't have to be playable so if you're doing a written description here are the ingredients who is the player what fantasy is this fulfilling what is the mood and tone what is the emotional experience and what are the steps in the gameplay Loop those are the basic ingredients now if you want to get even more specific what are the scenes of the trailer and this is in order this is just a template for making a trailer hookie opening shot and we I'll have another example of this too in different words introduction of the premise and mechanics escalation and complications that arise climactic moments variety and scope and then a fun ending maybe or another way to describe it is I say this call this genre hook content which what I mean by that is beginning of your trailer like first 5 Seconds you need people to know what genre space

you're in then for most of the trailer you're showing why your game is different and at the end maybe if there's time you can say oh 50 boss battles and skins and stuff like that whereas usually a lot of indie game trailers start off with weapons and skins and environments and I'm like no what I don't even know what you're selling yet so establish a genre explain your hook and then get the content if there's time because people can't care that there's a lot of your game until know what the game is so explain Point by point so what is the game genre what opening shot would signal at how is this game unique within that genre why is that interesting and or noteworthy because it could be just different but not interesting uh how does this game challenge me and does this game have depth and Longevity so that's the template just follow that when you're making trailers so what I do I'm as far as I'm concerned I make the exact same trailer over and over and over again

I've been doing it for the last seven or eight years okay so written description this is just my mockup idea for my talk so you know imagine opening shot a cat trap is open a cat takes the bait they get trapped introduction voice over they're over half a million homeless cats in New York City and then you're showing the player trapping cats getting them neutered releasing them posting them on social media escalation more difficult to capture cats full shelters finding Fosters getting donations and TN ring more cats and then the climax you get better shelters and Facilities more cities more traps uh cats and homes Pro very cheap doesn't require specific skill set con no visuals but good for brainstorming okay mood board rip Matic this is just like a collection of visuals that evoke a mood Vibe setting genre um photos movie Stills books illustrations color paletes sound effects music voiceover whatever you want bring it together and then help

people feel the idea of this game so romatic is this like film industry term where you just like take a bunch of stuff from other sources so this is actually a fan trailer from YouTube before the Obi-Wan Kenobi show came out they just took this film where you and McGregor is like in the desert and they intercut it with shots of Star Wars and added some Star Wars music but this is basically what a romatic is um and so the pros here are strong visuals it's evocative communicates the message in many ways but it can require video editing skills it can create unrealistic expectations and it's hard to visualize gameplay because you're cobbling it together from a bunch of stuff but I can easily see like taking some things from other games like a lever being pulled and then a door opening and another one or something like that so next is animatic which this is like the transistor example the pro is that it's bespoke and specific to the idea and the con is that relies on art

skills to make it look good and maybe having a composer or video editor but you could just take the text description that you have and then turn them into scenes and uh make a piece and so next one is game Prototype Clips where you're just making game assets to create the shots in the trailer they don't have to function cohesively they could just be little scenes that on their own it worked just well enough that you could capture it and then put it into your editing software just has to look enough like gameplay to be captured um and so Daniel from East Shade said that when they were making the trailer for songs of glimmer Wick they basically scripted out what they thought would make a good trailer and then they made the requisite content and assets for those shots and like I said some cases they wrote entire new quests around the beats that they thought would make good trailer shots so trailer design is really just designing mechanics which can concisely show in a trailer a shot that will interest

people and then the pro looks a lot more like the game the game only has to work well enough the con is a lot more people required in technical skills and then last one is vertical slice so this is the trailer for Soup pot um they made the Prototype with the trailer in mind they thought okay what are the parts of the gameplay Loop which need to be shown and instead of doing gray box they just used existing assets and spent about two weeks making it this is not displaying like oh no that's fine and actually it was playable and so yeah the pros can be played much closer to final vision of the game but it's time and resource heavy okay so here's some prompts to help you structure your trailer this is from eka when we announc the game how do we want to do it what do we want people to know which I use a slide from their title card because this is this is a really good copy for a trailer um next is if we have this

mechanic what will it look like in the trailer and if that mechanic is not visible to the viewer what changes will make it so next one what emotions should the viewer feel and what does our audience want to see which this doesn't have to be like an existing fan base it could just be a type of game player like someone who likes Rogue likes um what do they want to see in in this this new iteration next is if you showed someone this trailer would they think it's this genre and mood and if not what needs to be changed so this is a screenshot from dredge so hopefully when people see trailer for dredge they feel you know like a forboding presence and very uh Sinister tone and so this one here this is very common prompt in triaa which is just describe three standout moments that would sell the theme and attraction of the game because you know people

can't recite the entirety of a trailer normally uh but they will probably remember a few standout moments so this is from halflife Alex and like when that came out a lot of the comments were like oh my God you see the shotgun shells on the shelf and they they pushed everything aside you know as long as they had like one little thing in there that got them excited that's great so tried to think of a handful of things that would stand out uh what would make someone at a trade show stop to look it's from Lucas Pope how do you express it to people in screenshots and generate interest and similar vein in a lineup of a 100 games could you pick it out from a screenshot or trailer which uh you know make friends with really good art directors okay so how do you check your work just show it to someone show or explain your idea to someone you

don't even have to ask for feedback I get this all the time when I'm editing something I'll just show someone an edit they say nothing but I instantly see like five things I'm like oh crap that's terrible this is too long this is too short this is pasted weird this part's not understandable because your brain will just start seeing it through other people's eyes once you show it to people which I'm sure uh you have experience with with like play testing um are you and your team excited again don't expect to be excited later and there just a few tips just make the trailer 90 seconds or shorter because just defeats the whole purpose if you make it really long the whole point is to force you to think how can I do this quickly and does it communicate quickly and Gwen from s Al Studios Chon Club she said put a time limit on the project because you can just get stuck making things pretty forever so like I said she spent or the team spent two weeks on this one um when I talked to eka they he said that like two weeks to a month was about the

amount of time you'd spend on a like a early trailer concept and Gwen also said just throw away everything you do get your point across and just be done with it so then you don't get too precious about the little tiny little details and work with visual thinkers filmmakers and Game trailer editors people who are just wired to communicate ideas through images and also use what what works for you because so for example thirsty Suitor like I said um it was kind of gameplay agnostic so that could change around whereas super giant games Greg was saying that they very designed first Studio where the story emerges from the gameplay mechanic so that's why Hades came to be because the the whole Rog likee mechanic was conducive to the story that uh they want to tell with Hades and that's my talk thank you for coming you can see more of my terrible firewatch trailer which has everything you should not do in a trailer starting with lots of logos that take

really long time to get through uh I have like 1 minute I don't one question I'll be outside after this because actually you should come to my other talk which is at 4:40 in this exact room it's about making marketing timelines I'm doing that with my friend Dana okay one question mic is off please okay so I'm running a small Indie team like High school kids um how important is it getting a trailer up sooner rather than later rather than just focusing on the mechanics of the game for those that are just upand cominging and learning how is this the game you're selling oh sorry the question was how how uh important is it to get the trailer up rather than like working on mechanics correct for like a new team of developers and and you're selling this game or is this like a side project this is this is an actual game we're selling yes okay um I mean the the sooner you get your store Page up the

better as long as your art style is locked down and it's not going to change a whole lot so uh very important got it uh and yes I'm sorry that's not that's not a very in-depth answer no thank you so much appreciate it okay all right thank you so much uh I'll be outside if you have more questions or anything [Music]