Modern Game Trailers, what do you think?

[Madgamer13]

Greets to all!

This is my first topic! Yay! By the way guys, hey guys listen, guys. Guys, check out this video of a new future badass marine game!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QFL4QB3NE&list=FLybYa8d2i5uEucRILpF29Xg&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Captcha: Be serious now.

Ok Solve Media, I'll be serious.... this time. :|

The link I have given above is for the new planetside 2 game, coming out sometime this millenia. The trailer caught my eye because I've seen some action movies recently in which the so called action was nowhere near as frantic as what can be seen in this trailer.

This brought something that may have discussion value to my mind, if it hasn't already graced these particular series of tubes. The subject I want to bring to discussion to the escapist's group of highly intellectual individuals is the current state of trailers for computer games, some trailers appear to completely outdo larger budget action movies.

To further expand the discussion, I would also draw attention to skills shared between the game developer community and the movie director community, where elements such as camera positioning, sound and music timing as well as storytelling, can affect one another. Have game developers learned something from movies and have movie directors learned anything from the gaming community?

If there is a relationship between the gaming community, from both developers to players and the movie community, all the way from directors to movie watchers, how could a relationship between the communities affect the future of both gaming and movies?

 

[Madgamer13]

Greets!

Odd, I had thought there would be discussion value in this topic. Nevermind.

Apologies for bringing this topic up.

 

[shrekfan246]

Greets!

Odd, I had thought there would be discussion value in this topic. Nevermind.

Apologies for bringing this topic up.

Sometimes people just don't see a topic when it pops up, especially if the forums are bumping quickly and a new topic gets sunk down.

Anyway, my issue with game trailers is that they practically never show us what the game is actually going to look like, and occasionally they're only tangentially related to the actual game that gets released (see: Dead Island).

I loathe CGI trailers with all of my heart, even more-so now in the days when developers/publishers are deciding they can't be arsed releasing demos to the public, so the 'savvy gamer' pretty much has to wait for reviews and gameplay videos to start surfacing before they can decide whether they actually like the look of a game or not.

If I'm going to be dumping $60 US on one piece of entertainment, I want to have a good idea of the product I'm spending my money on, not what the CGI directors could cook up to hype it up.

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

i think we do not need the majority of the trailers , if i watch a trailer the thing i want is gameplay. pre-rendered trailers and trailers with people in it that are not affiliated with the gaming industry have no right to exist (yes you ghostrecon future soldier).
also , and i'm not sure about this , making these kind of trailers take away money that the developers could spend on actual game design

 

[David Bjur]

That trailer reminded me of Halo. Like a lot.

Second, most game developers hire people from the outside to help them with trailers, even though the devs know more about the product the "Commercial guys" know more about how to show off a product in good light. These "Commercial Guys" are probably already involved in the movie industry so it's very likely that their skills might show up in some movie in the future.

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

Second, most game developers hire people from the outside to help them with trailers, even though the devs know more about the product the "Commercial guys" know more about how to show off a product in good light. These "Commercial Guys" are probably already involved in the movie industry so it's very likely that their skills might show up in some movie in the future.

watch the coco trailer for ghostrecon and tell me with a straight face that this was a good way to show off the game
but i don't watch a lot of trailers so maybe that's an exception

 

[Goofguy]

Pretty cool trailer but we all know the gameplay won't be anything like that. I am intrigued by this concept of MMOFPS but until I see some gameplay trailers, I don't subscribe to the hype surrounding cinematic announcement trailers.

 

[teqrevisited]

I always liken them to car adverts. As in they have nothing whatsoever to do with the car/game itself. If you're lucky you might see it drive/being played but it's usually hidden behind explosions or pretentious rambling.

In short: Nice to look at but usually neither informative or representative of the product.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

This is every movie and game trailer summed up:

 

[David Bjur]

Second, most game developers hire people from the outside to help them with trailers, even though the devs know more about the product the "Commercial guys" know more about how to show off a product in good light. These "Commercial Guys" are probably already involved in the movie industry so it's very likely that their skills might show up in some movie in the future.

watch the coco trailer for ghostrecon and tell me with a straight face that this was a good way to show off the game
but i don't watch a lot of trailers so maybe that's an exception

On a more serious note, that trailer is an exception. Not many trailers sucks that much, trust me.

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

Second, most game developers hire people from the outside to help them with trailers, even though the devs know more about the product the "Commercial guys" know more about how to show off a product in good light. These "Commercial Guys" are probably already involved in the movie industry so it's very likely that their skills might show up in some movie in the future.

watch the coco trailer for ghostrecon and tell me with a straight face that this was a good way to show off the game
but i don't watch a lot of trailers so maybe that's an exception

On a more serious note, that trailer is an exception. Not many trailers sucks that much, trust me.

i hope your giant picture was meant sarcasticly because it just shows that people still think games are only for kids (i'm not saying that gaming is without kids , i can attest lol)i mean seriously who is going to take it serious after seeing... that

 

[David Bjur]

Second, most game developers hire people from the outside to help them with trailers, even though the devs know more about the product the "Commercial guys" know more about how to show off a product in good light. These "Commercial Guys" are probably already involved in the movie industry so it's very likely that their skills might show up in some movie in the future.

watch the coco trailer for ghostrecon and tell me with a straight face that this was a good way to show off the game
but i don't watch a lot of trailers so maybe that's an exception

On a more serious note, that trailer is an exception. Not many trailers sucks that much, trust me.

i hope your giant picture was meant sarcasticly because it just shows that people still think games are only for kids (i'm not saying that gaming is without kids , i can attest lol)i mean seriously who is going to take it serious after seeing... that

Of course it was a sarcastic comment, but you literally asked for it!
But to be honest, I got no idea of who is in charge of Ghost Recons ad campaign, and after seeing that, I will never try to find out.

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

Uh, if anybody wins in the trailers department, Borderlands 2 takes the cake.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Pretty cool trailer but we all know the gameplay won't be anything like that. I am intrigued by this concept of MMOFPS but until I see some gameplay trailers, I don't subscribe to the hype surrounding cinematic announcement trailers.

There's been a few gameplay videos out (I know TotalBiscut has one out), and it is fairly impresses. It looks really beautiful game, and while I don't know how balance will play into it, it was nifty looking.

 

[Spitfire]

I'm not sure I'm in a position to properly debate this, as I'm trying real fucking hard to think of a cinematic videogame trailer that I didn't thought was a juvenile or pretentious piece of crap, often made by third parties who failed to understand the game that they were trying to advertise.

Captcha: salad days

That's not a euphemism for anything, is it?

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

Firstly, the trailer linked in the OP was fucking awful, it was so goddamn boring and generic I closed it halfway through. There's literally nothing new in that trailer whatsoever. That's a good example of how not to do it.

I think game trailers are too often thought of as very short films rather than, well, trailers. For example, the Dead Island trailer was a fucking good piece of filmmaking, but was it a good trailer? Did the actual game share anything with that trailer beyond superficial details? No, and thus it was, in my mind, a bad trailer.

 

[Blazing Steel]

I think a set of 3 trailers for each game would work:

1-Announcement) Modern music, breathtaking visuals, pre-rendered razmataz. 6+months out. 30s-60s.

eg.
2-Atract pre-orders) Voice over talking about plot (and or gameplay). Visuals resemble the actutal gameplay. >6 months before release. 90s-180s.

eg.
3-The Game) First mission/level/tutorial, shows core mechanics, example of how the multiplayer would be like if present 120s+. E3 Gameplay normal fills this rule, but I kinda fell like a trailer would show it better.

eg.
First trailer to grab people's attention and annouce the game to the world. The second trailer would then give us more detail on it, such as it's grapics, core elements and what to expect. The third trailer would then be very in dept to show us how the game will actually play, combat, stratergies, multiplayer etc.

At the moment all games have the announcement trailer down, but what most lack is the extra set of trailers the tell/show how the game will function when we get our hands on it.

OP: Games are copying the movie way of making trailers. Show little of what your product is really about, just trying and make it more memorable that the trailers that come before it. However despite this I still live these heavy CGI trailers :3, just wish there were more gameplay oriented trailers to go with the cinematic ones.

 

[Bad Jim]

Something you'll note about movie trailers is that they generally give an indication of what the movie is about. They succeed in this largely because trailers are, in fact, very short movies.

To give an indication of what a game is about, trailers do not succeed because they are short movies, not short games. What they really need, if they want to wet our appetites, is short games, also known as demos.

The fun part is that these useless trailers cost a lot of money to make, while demos can usually be made rather easily, by just using part of. the game you've already made.

 

[getoffmycloud]

I think at most there should be a trailer for announcing the game and maybe one more to set up the story a bit other than that it should just be demo's and gameplay videos.