Curiosity and Motivation: Slowly pulling back the curtain?

So, as per Patrick's latest Worth Reading article I tried playing Candy Box. At first it was silly, I threw some candies on the ground, I ate some. But then slowly, more and more options opened up. I kept my browser open as I went about doing other things like eating lunch, going to the washroom, or browsing in other tabs of my browser. Slowly but surely, I get more candies, and more things to do with those candies.

Which got me thinking. A few days ago I commented on a certain game trailer, saying how it really bothers me that lots of trailers these days show all the different aspects of a game, it's mechanics and how it will work. And now I think I have a better idea of why I am bothered by this. Trailers like these, just don't leave a lot to the imagination. If you lay out all the games mechanics and show me how everything works, this takes out the curiosity factor, my own motivation going into a game trying to figure things out for myself, and enjoy the process as it happens.

This is why I think Candy Box is such a great case study about how motivation to find out more about games and play them more. You start off with one thing that is simple, then slowly show the player more things he can do with those things and expand on that. Right now, I'm pretty excited to just leave my computer on for the next few hours.

The money factor, trailers and established series?

NOW hold up, I just compared Candy Box, a text-based web-browser game, to Remember Me, a futuristic sci-fi game coming out this summer on consoles. So let's take a moment to consider how money factors into all this. You don't spend any money on free web-browser games like Candy Box, or Frog Fractions. But you would spend a few dozen dollars on Remember Me, if you decide to get it. So it seems like games which actually cost money would actually need trailers like the one above to inform players what they are spending money on, right? Well not completely.

As I was thinking about these things I thought about a trailer that I watched recently and made me immediately go "I want this game, I'm getting it, no matter what, holy crap, FUCK DAMN." And that trailer was for MGSV. I'm not even a huge MGS fan. I did play MGS4, and I have watched playthroughs of MGS1,2, and 3. The great part about the trailer is, I don't even know really how the game will play. Which takes into consideration the next factor, established franchises.

It seems the more established a series already is, the less they have to show in trailers for people to get excited for. This is partly true. I remember as a kid, ever since Final Fantasy 7, up until about Final Fantasy X-2, I would eagerly await and buy the next big Final Fantasy game. I would go into each game knowing next to nothing about the games mechanics, who the characters were and so on. All I knew was that this was going to be another final fantasy game, another world to get lost in, another amazing story with cool characters to boot!

How to make people interested?

I didn't care how much it cost. Now, it might be easy to chock this attitude up to me being a kid, but I think it is really relevant to how games present and market themselves. How do games capture our interest and what keeps us interested?

I can't even pinpoint to you what about the MGSV trailer had me so captivated. Maybe it was the idea of playing as a character who has been in a coma after 9 years, maybe it was the flaming whale? Maybe it was riding on a horse through a flaming forest? I don't know, but the fact that it did captivate my interest without showing me or explicitly explaining to me the games mechanics is noteworthy.

I just don't find it interesting to watch trailers where a developer is talking over gameplay footage saying "here is X mechanic, you can you use it to do Y... like so." And so I don't think it's the best way to make trailers for games, whether or not those games come from established companies or not.

I want to close by saying, there's probably no super magic formula for creating awesome trailers. Creating trailers takes creativity and work just in the same way that making an actual game does. I realize that money and how well-established a series is factors into marketing decisions. But somehow, deep down, something like the MGSV trailer, or the first few minutes of Candy Box showed me enough of the game, in a creative and new way to create enough of a sense of curiosity and motivation in me to find out more, to want more. I want more candies and lollipops almost similarly to how I want more MGSV.

Hmm yeah I just did compare MGSV to Candy Box... hmmm... I don't have any real answers to what makes a great trailer. Maybe we should spend less time watching trailers and just buy more on impulse, give in to those urges of curiosity and see where it takes us? What I do know is that by questioning what makes me interested in games via trailers or whatnot, I'm simultaneously questioning what makes me tick as a person, and what developers think makes people interested enough to play their game.

P.S. A final Note on that MGSV trailer

I'm not sure if I am the only one, but after watching the MGSV trailer for the second time. I went to watch the full conference on the FOX engine. I skimmed through it, but I didn't really find that interesting either. And I think I realize now why. It's because the conference is kind of like those game trailers that talk about the games mechanics and explain how everything works. Rather than tell me about the game engine, I think I'd rather see it in action. See what it's like when creativity really puts the engine through it's paces. And I think the trailer did just that, and it did so in such a brilliant fashion that puts all those floating balls demonstrations to shame.