Trailing Off

Video game trailers are a strange beast. No one really cares about them except for the most hardcore of gamers, and even then very few of them get seen. They aren't commercials, and the only people that care about them will look elsewhere for actual information about the game. Developers pour money into these trailers with seemingly no reason other then to generate pure unadulterated hype. While that is a reason enough on its own, I think that the real reason for the existence of video game trailers is due to the desire for the video game industry to mimic the movie industry.
The problem is that video games are not movies. Video games rarely have "scenes" that one can splice together to allow a customer to get the general feel of the product. Video games are based on gameplay that simply cannot be conveyed with a montage of footage. The worst offenders are the "cinematic" trailers that misrepresent the game while generating free press. Recently a trailer for the upcoming game Dead Island made a huge splash in the gaming community. I highly recommend checking it out. (due to my lack of blogging experience there will be a link to a youtube video instead of an embedded one, sorry)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ialZcLaI17Y

Impressive right? It is deep, well paced, and nails your pathos right in the gut. Dead Island is undoubtedly one of the best movie trailers to come out in the last few years.
As a video game trailer, it falls flat.
When I watch video game trailers I am looking to grasp what kind of game I will be playing, not what kind of movie or cutscene I will be watching. The game has the entire experience to sell me on the story but the trailer has one chance to sell me on the gameplay. So as a movie trailer Dead Island is beyond fantastic, but it only tells me two things as a video game trailer. First, somebody is making a zombie game. Second, the game will try to be sad. Nothing else was said about the game. We don't know what perspective it will be in, whether it will be turn-based or real time, or even what freakin' platform it is on. All we get is a sad zombie family.

Good video game trailers are much less noticed and much less flashy. A perfect example is the trailer for the upcoming game Batman: Arkham City

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V1ZF5cNYCs

This trailer isn't nearly as entertaining as the Dead Island one, but it reveals quite a bit about the game. The playstyle, similarities to the first game and characters are all shown in quick succession without the need for a boring developer video or the polish required for a full demo. On the other hand, my skepticism was well placed in the Dead Island scenario with the gameplay trailer revealing under the game's high production cost coating it is just an incredibly racist shoddy Left 4 Dead cash-in.