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David Barnes
The Art of the Trailer -- 8 Top Tips for Creating a Great Game Trailer
Facebook devs aren't much into creating game trailers, but iPhone developers love em. And I love iPhone game trailers. Here's what you should do to make your game trailer work:
- Tell the story of the game. If your game takes place in a fictional world or situation, be sure to set that up early in the trailer. Get the viewer into your game's world.
- Establish the main conflict or objective. This leads on naturally from the trailer. What is the players place in the story? What will they be trying to do?
- Show the game's core mechanic. The trailer should give the player a clear idea of what playing the game will be like. What physical and mental actions will be required to play it? Show segments of game play in such a way that this is obvious. (Show it, don't tell it.)
- Express the game's emotional tone and atmosphere. What will your game make the player feel? Excited? Curious? Peaceful? Competitive? Aggressive? Friendly? Will it make them laugh or cry? The emotions of the game should come through clearly in the trailer. If your game is humorous, the trailer had better be funny. If your game is sad, the trailer should be too. If it's an action game have a fast trailer. If it's a peaceful game, keep the trailer peaceful.
- Work for muted viewers. People watching your trailer at work or in a room with others might have the volume muted. Make sure that the trailer can work without any sound at all. Include your key messages as text captions.
- Work for alt-tab compulsives. Another thing people furtively watching YouTube at work do -- they start the video, the "alt-tab" away in case anybody notices. They can still hear, but not see. So make sure your trailer sounds good. Have music and sound effects. Use effects to draw attention back to your key points. If you must have voice, get somebody cool to do the voice over. Alt-tabbers will typically come back when they think the video is over, so cut out the sound a few seconds before the end of the trailer -- so they'll look back and see your closing call to action.
- Hammer the title and URL in the player's head. Hard. Include it near the beginning, and make sure it's the last thing the player sees at the end of the video. Make sure the final "push" is a clear call to action: "download now from..." or "coming soon. sign up for updates at...."
- Last between 40 and 90 seconds. Much shorter and you'll struggle to fit everything in. Much longer and people will start to wonder if the game is as boring as the trailer.
Look at how the Knife Toss trailer does a great job of using music and visuals to do all that. And in spot on 60 seconds!
Here are a few other, mainly indie, game trailers that caught my fancy:
This one is a bit longer, and mentions loads of features. It does a great job of establishing the games pace and excitement, and the core mechanic.
Untold Entertainment does a great job of establishing the story and tone, but the game mechanic remains a mystery:
(although to game insiders they might guess it's a match three puzzler update: and if they did, they'd be wrong. According to @untoldend who told me (angrily) that it's a Set clone, not a match three. Sorry Ryan.)
And the biggest selling iPhone game in the world also has a trailer that delivers on every one of these points. In spades:
Do you plan to build a trailer for your next game? What else do you think a good game trailer should include? And what are your favorite trailers? Post them in the comments.
Posted
by David Barnes
