At a time when hundreds of new games are hitting
the Steam shelves, the Switch eShop, and the PlayStation Store every single month, the
most difficult thing about making games, might actually be just getting people to know that
your game exists. Now, thereâs so much involved in a strong
marketing campaign. But one of the key components is a good trailer. This is about 90-odd seconds of uninterrupted
footage of your game, beamed directly into your potential playerâs eyeballs. So, you better not waste this opportunity
- and itâs a good time to ask the question: what makes a good trailer? So, itâs important to know what a trailer
is actually for. A trailer is not a random montage of gameplay
clips. Itâs not a dry rundown of features. Itâs not your opening cutscene. And itâs definitely not a sales pitch. TRAILER VO: âHey you, looking at the screen. Lemme ask you a question. Do you like awesome things that are awesome? Then you gotta play this game, dude. Itâs frigging cool. And crazy addictive". Yugh. Instead, the primary purpose of a trailer
is to tell players what makes your game unique. You see, every popular indie game has a hook,
which Crypt of the Necrodancer developer Ryan Clark describes as âsome interesting bit
of information about the game that compels people to try it, or to discuss itâ. It could be a clever game mechanic, like a
dungeon crawler where you move to the beat of the music. Or an RPG where you can talk enemies out of
fighting. It could be an exciting mash-up of genres,
like a deck-building roguelike, or a stealth platformer. It could be a unique setting or story that
we havenât seen before. Or a particularly strong art style. The trailer is a chance to explain your hook
to the player, and the press. Both of which will then share that idea in
conversations, tweets, headlines and so on. Derek Lieu is one of the most prolific trailer
makers around, and says âI think it's important to consider how someone will talk about a
game after seeing the trailer; I think the simpler you make an idea to share, the more
it will get sharedâ. Now, a beautiful game like GRIS practically
sells itself. But if your hook is a clever game mechanic,
youâre going to need to explain it. If the idea is particularly complex and canât
be easily communicated through visuals alone - like branching narratives and procedural
generation - then maybe explicit communication is the way to go. That might be through pop-up text-based title
cards. Or, a voice over track. For example, listen to this trailer for Heavenâs
Vault. ALIYA: âIâm an archeologist. I dig stuff up. Every inscription I decipher is a piece of
the puzzle. Every moon I sail to, reveals a new path to
explore. And every new discovery, can change the story,
entirelyâ. These few words neatly describe the core of
this game. Youâre an archeologist. You translate inscriptions. You travel through space. And the story changes based on your actions. Itâs not just random scraps of dialogue,
but a clear description of the gameâs idea. And best of all, the devs got the actress
for the gameâs main character, to read the script - which feels more natural, less like
a sales pitch, and also introduces us to one of the characters in the game. But if the game can speak for itself, itâs best to just let it. I think viewers end up watching the trailer
more actively when theyâre forced to figure out whatâs going on for themselves - which
is more engaging. This can achieved by clearly and simply showing
how the game is played. In this trailer for the bonkers rule-changing
puzzle game Baba is You, we start by seeing the sentence âBaba is Youâ change to âRock
is Youâ, and then the rock starts moving around. That elegantly sums up the way players get
to fiddle with the gameâs most fundamental rules. Hereâs another game: Way of the Passive
Fist, which is about parrying attacks until the enemy is knackered - and then knocking
them out with a single touch. To show this, the trailer begins with the
main character fending off attacks for 10 seconds. Then, the action slows, the music stops, and
the hero pokes an exhausted enemy to send them flying across the screen. And then in the trailer for Return of the
Obra Dinn, we see a corpse, the pocket watch, some death vignettes, and - finally - recording
information about the corpseâs death in the log book. You donât need to turn your trailer into
a full tutorial, but players shouldnât be left confused by what they actually do in
the game. Trailer maker M Joshua says âconsider this
your first major hurdle: players canât imagine themselves inside of a game they donât understandâ. Now, thereâs no point explaining your game
if youâve already lost your viewerâs attention. Pacing is critical, and if you donât get
it right your viewer will click off your trailer quicker than players abandoned Fallout 76. And to get this right, you could do a lot
worse than cribbing from Derek Lieuâs graph of rising intensity, which looks like this⌠So step one is the cold open. The beginning of the trailer is crucial to
get right, so Derek often starts strong with an intense action moment, a slice of gameplay,
or even a joke - DELILAH: Manifest tells people not to go too far in
there - itâs pretty dangerous. Youâre in it, arenât you? HENRY: It doesnât seem that dangerous - woah, ah! DELILAH: Henry! HENRY: Seriously, itâs completely fine in here. DELILAH: Damnit!â Donât bore your viewers with exposition right
out of the gate. And unless youâve got some serious clout,
hold back on the studio logos, as well. âFrom the makers of FTLâ is a hook in
of itself. But Constipated Gorilla Studios doesnât
mean anything because I just made it up. Now, you canât keep that level of intensity
going throughout the whole trailer. Non-stop action is exhausting, and viewers
will start to zone out and stop paying attention. So itâs time for step two - introduction. At this point, Derek takes a moment to slow
down and turn the viewerâs attention to something less intense. This is a good time to set up the story, introduce
the world, or - as before - explain the main game mechanic. With the viewerâs attention secured by the
cold open, and their basic understanding of whatâs happening achieved in the exposition,
we can move onto step three: escalation. Here, we can build on things. We can slowly increase the intensity, add
in more mechanics, ramp up the action, show more explosions, and reduce the time between
cuts. Itâs really important to have lots of variety
here. If youâre always seeing the same type of
enemy, or the same location, the viewer will start to think âis that all there is?â. Make a point to show different things with
every cut. Thereâs a cute trick that a lot of trailer
makers use where the main character doesnât move, but the backgrounds or enemies or costumes
do, to indicate oodles of content. Itâs a bit played out, but still better
than a title card that says â60 levelsâ. Step four is the climax. This is where the action builds up to its
most intense point - and then stops. We donât want to show everything, and ideally
we want to leave lingering questions in the viewerâs mind. This Hyper Light Drifter trailer ends with
an eeery boss fight. And this Firewatch trailer expertly sets up
a mystery that makes you want to play the game and see what happens next. DELILAH: âWait, youâre already there? Youâre not in your tower? HENRY: No, Iâm not. DELILAH: Then who is?â. Itâs here that we finally reveal the gameâs
name or logo, and relevant information like platforms and the release date. And maybe a call to action - just, donât
give your viewer decision paralysis: ask them to do just one thing. And, sometimes, thereâs step five. The button. a cute extra joke, or bit of action, or a
tease after the end of the trailer. You want to end on a high note, after all. Presentation for trailers is particularly
important. With so little time, so many fast cuts, and
with first impressions being literally all you have right now, itâs more critical than
ever that you make every frame count. The most crucial thing is making the trailer
readable. This means reducing clutter to only focus
the viewerâs attention on the most important stuff. Lucas Pope could have shown Papers, Please
like this: this is how it appears in the game, after all: three different windows, all vying
for your attention with loads of noisy information. But, instead, Lucas crops the viewpoint down
to only what he wants to show - the line of immigrants. The faces. The documents. The stamp. The rule book. The photos. Itâs generally a good idea to hide interface
elements like the HUD and mouse cursors. And use crops, close-ups, or even custom-made
areas to highlight the important bits. Donât let noise compete for attention. Clarity between clips is important, too. The viewer will try to focus on something
on screen - usually the player character. But when the video cuts, theyâve got to
find that point of focus again - which is tiring and wastes time. Instead, try to keep the focus point in generally
the same place between cuts. Beyond readability, we want trailers to look attractive. So think about composition, and use tricks like
the rule of thirds, scenic landscape shots, tracking cameras, and heroic character portraits,
to make the game look great. And remember that as the trailer maker youâre
not just the director and editor, but also the actor: and so you want to show off gameplay
that looks super slick. Derek records dozens of takes of the same
action, like throwing this bottle in Firewatch, to get one that looks perfect. And unless youâre making a point about permadeath,
you donât really want to be taking damage or dying in your gameplay footage. Sound is super important, too. Music should ideally match the intensity of
whatâs happening on screen. So, sometimes the composer will write a specific
song for the trailer. Other times the OST can get chopped up to
fit the marketing. And sometimes the trailer gets cut around
a song. Putting cuts on the beat is fun, and so is
putting actions on the beat. Donât forget sound effects, though. M Joshua says âyour players feel the game
through the sounds, though they might not realize it. If youâre showing a trailer with just music
and no sound effects, more than likely, it feels dry and lifeless.â You know how important sound effects are in
the games themselves, so maybe donât mute them for the trailer. So letâs look at it all of this stuff in
action. Hereâs the trailer for Subnautica, made
by Derek Lieu We start with 12 seconds of high intensity
action. Explosions. Fire. A disintegrating ship. The music is high tempo and the cuts are fast. Then we change gears for the introduction. Things are calmer now. And we see what weâre actually going to
do when we play the game. Weâll jump into the ocean, swim around,
stab stuff, craft things. After a while thereâs a voice over, which
sounds like an AI voice from our drop pod. And it elegantly explains the core loop of
the game: AI: âUtilising alien resources is a proven survival strategy. Explore. Study. Catalogue new species. Secure food and energy. And gather data on unusual phenomenonâ. Things get more intense with the escalation. The music swells as we see just how much stuff we
can do in this game. All the things we can build. All the animals that are trying to murder
us. Bones in the deep. Plus: review quotes! If youâve got âem, flaunt âem. And then the climax, an ominous line... TRAILER GUY: "We shouldnât have gone so deepâ. ... a mysterious chamber. And then the game name and logo. Oof! This is a really well paced trailer which
explains how the game plays, and leaves unanswered questions that encourage you to play for yourself. It shows loads of variety, suggesting that
thereâs a lot to uncover in this game. And Subnauticaâs hook - that itâs a game
about crafting huge structures to survive in an underwater alien world - is expressed
really clearly. Top marks for this trailer. I guess the only thing left to consider is,
if you follow these rules too closely, your trailer will start to look like all of the other
trailers. And youâre back to your first problem: standing
out from the crowd. So itâs important to be creative and different. Use these ideas as guidelines, but not as
a template. So, for example, take this amazing trailer
for Factorio. It still shows off the gameâs hook, tells
you how the game works, and ramps up the intensity over time - but it does so in a single, continuous
shot. And if in doubt, hire a professional. Iâve put links to the websites for all the
best trailer makers in the description, plus additional resources for things like capturing
high quality footage, using ESRB and PEGI logos, and more. Hey! Thanks for watching! Obviously this one isnât about game design,
per se, but itâs still super important for those wading into the scary world of indie
game development. I guess I should take my own advice now and do
just one call to action. Okay, this time I want you to⌠just have
a really lovely day. Okay bye.
I found the video to be quite informative. Just wishing it had come out earlier since it helped me see a lot of the faults in the trailer I recently released.
I'm glad he brought up the fact that if you have every trailer have the same flow and format, then they all become boring and mundane again. However he is not wrong that showing the first cutscene of the game is a terrible way to introduce players to the game.
Serious question, do game maker's actually benefit from these "game maker's toolkit" videos? Honestly, it seems like he doesn't provide that much insight into many things, kind of scrapes from the top and sometimes provides a cool fact here and there, or presents it in a sometimes interesting way. Like, almost every video I've ever seen from him I leave the video thinking "yeah sounds about right" and not "oh wow, I see things differently/I learned something".