Transcript

For this exercise I'm going to demonstrate how I look at a game and take stock of all of its contents which I think might be enough to make a noteworthy trailer. I'm cheating a little bit because I'm using Spelunky 2, which as of this recording I've made about five trailers for.

Spelunky 2 is the sequel to Spelunky, which combined a platform game mechanics with randomly generated levels and also some very deep systems and puzzle elements.

Here's a quick brainstorm of things which I could see making into trailers for Spelunky 2.

• An announcement & launch (of course)
• Gameplay
• The story
• The wide cast of characters
• New enemies & bosses
• New biomes and levels
• New items
• A new "path"
• New design decisions
• And there's always the possibility of making a trailer about the developer themselves.

After the announcement I made four trailers for Spelunky 2, but the first three I think contained most of what needed to be said.

They were a gameplay trailer, a developer commentary trailer and the launch trailer. Past that point the trailers would've started feeling repetitive, especially if they preceded the release of the game. 

The first gameplay trailer, was absolutely necessary since the announce trailer only included story illustrations, so fans were dying to see some real footage from the game. 

The second trailer was made because Derek Yu had an opportunity to show Spelunky 2 in Sony's State of Play livestream event. So we made a developer commentary trailer because I thought one big question fans might have was: "Why make a sequel to a game a lot of people considered to be perfect?" This trailer also featured new footage from previously never before seen biomes. I did this to make sure the footage didn't feel too same-y.

The launch trailer featured the story framing of the game along with some new never-before-seen areas. 

Since so much of Spelunky's appeal is about its secrets we didn't want to show too much of the game; this is one big reason I thought more trailers wouldn't have been a good idea. 

The fourth trailer we made was for a very specific use case to promote a speed running tournament. That trailer was a gameplay trailer which I captured specifically to reflect the quick restart trial and error experience of trying to get a really good run, but from a gameplay standpoint wouldn't have been a big new marketing beat.

Had I continued making more trailers using the contents I listed I think they would've all essentially felt the same. Rather than feeling like different courses in a meal, they would be like different flavors of jelly beans from the same dish.

For Spelunky 2, these are how the contents sorted into three trailers:

• Gameplay trailer: Gameplay, new biomes, enemies, items, characters
• Commentary trailer: Developer story, design decisions, gameplay, new biome.
• Launch trailer: Story and more gameplay

Let me walk you through how I'd break down the contents of a few more games into trailers just so you get the idea.

Neo Cab is a visual novel style game where in the not too distant future you're the last ride share driver in an automated city picking up and interacting with passengers while searching for your lost friend. You also wear a mood bracelet of sorts, and certain dialogue choices are only available when you're in the right mood.

Compared to a game like Spelunky 2, this game is smaller in scope. I think this game could support a story trailer, a trailer about its mood bracelet mechanic, maybe one about its diverse cast of characters, and a trailer about the game developers and their vision. Past that point I think the trailers would start to feel repetitive.

Manifold Garden is a first person puzzle game where the world wraps around on itself kind of like how when you exit from one side of a level in Pac-Man, you emerge on the opposite side. It's like that, but in 3D.

I think this game could support a trailer focusing on its unique architecture, a gameplay trailer, maybe one specifically about the world wrapping, and of course one about the developer's story, which in this case took seven years of development. I think those would yield the most unique trailers, but would get repetitive soon after that.

Now on a completely different spectrum there are games like Subnautica which are chock full of content in many regards. There's the story, the idea of exploring a water world, there's the salvage and building mechanics, tons of different biomes, different alien life, the developer's story, and since this was an Early Access title there were plenty of opportunities for update trailers during its development.

So now that I've walked you through this exercise it's time for you to go to page 5 of the workbook and list out as many aspects of your game as possible which you think could support either an entire trailer or in combination could make a trailer.

List as many things as you can. If you don't come up with that many things that's ok. Not all games have enough content to warrant more than two trailers or even one.

Then once you've listed out all the content, sort it into one or more trailers. It's okay to have some overlap of content ideas, but try to think about whether or not the combination of trailers would create a campaign which formed a complete but still teasing picture of the game.

Then once you're done with this exercise move onto the next video where we're going to discuss your target audience.