Is there any good and "honest" way to make a game trailer?

I was thinking about the critcism I've been hearing about the trailers like: "Is just a cut scene and almost no gameplay", or "boring gameplay", "or poorly cut" etc.

Since games are mostly interactive and long form and trailers aren't, is there a way to find a good balance when making a game trailer that can excite people without bullshitting them?

I can't think of one single exemple of a game trailer that does that.

What do you guys think?

Rockstar's narrated trailers are the best in the game. Show gameplay and thoroughly and plainly explain mechanics and stuff. I think they are really fantastic.

I don't think the trailer for Life Is Strange was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the trailer for Forz 7 was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the trailer for The Last Night was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the trailer for Kingdom Hearts III was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the DOOM VFR trailer was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the trailer for Cuphead was bullshitting anyone. I don't think the trailer for Minecraft was bullshitting anyone.

@nodima: I tend to agree with this as well. Just take a trailer for what it is. Wait until release. People kind of go crazy with this stuff nowadays (the graphical downgrade shit some people still rail on about like the developers don't want the game to look as good as they can manage).

I think where developers get into "bullshitting" territory is when they don't make it clear, or rely on the audience to understand, that what they are showing is a conceptualization. I don't even consider these "trailers", per se, which is why I didn't mention Killzone 2 or Bioshock Infinite or the new Metro game. The issue there, I think, is media literacy, which could understandably be lacking back when Killzone 2 was shown because we hadn't really been shown a misleading concept video at that level of fidelity or accessibility before. But we've had video on the internet for a while now, and we've seen presentations given in that style several times now, so I think it's now on the viewer to understand when a reveal is a conceptual ideal and when it's the game itself as it will present itself to the player.

That Metro video was an entertaining watch, but you have to take note of the lack of U.I., of the perfectly timed moments and interactions with the enemies and the environment. There's a chance that the game has moments of tension like that, but ultimately I think that game was more finely tuned than the end product will be. There was a level of polish to that game and the presentation of Anthem that seperated them from the Need for Speed reveal in a key way, and that was the lack of HUD elements guiding the players along and it still feeling tight. The Need for Speed reveal was engaging in part because you could tell that was just how that game was going to play, whereas Metro and Anthem were engaging primarily because you hope that's how they play (or not, as the case appears to be for most of GB's forum members w/r/t Anthem).

I happen to disagree with people who think that practice is inherently and intentionally misleading, but I'm an empathic person and I think most people are doing the best they can.

The Assassin's Creed gameplay bit was great. That's what I wanna see. Show some cutscenes, sure. Show some story. But I want the gameplay to be shown, and look like proper gameplay. I believe AC Origins and Star Wars Battlefront 2 were real. I don't believe that Anthem or Metro Exodus were any more real than that first No Man's Sky trailer. It's pointless and uninformative, just generating hype and preorders without actually showing what the product is gonna be like in your hands.

Trailers are very rarely dishonest. Rather, it is people filling in the blanks willy nilly and then getting upset if their own expectations don't come to pass. Just look at We Happy Few. That game didn't lie about anything.

What is even the last truly dishonest trailer? Killzone 2?

I think most people have covered the points I would touch on. To which I would only add this: If I were a developer, I would think long and hard about putting out any kind of trailer at all until I was damn close to release.

Case in point, Wolfenstein2 looks awesome. It also comes out in October, so I'm reasonably certain the game will look pretty close to what was shown since they don't have time to change anything substantial. Anthem looks awesome too, but it's more than a year out and it's probably even money the thing will get delayed. It's an almost sure bet that the game won't look quite as good when it does come out, either.

If I were making a game and chose to do anything farther out from release, I'd probably prefer a series of "behind the scenes" videos so that people can see the development process a little bit and if you're changing anything you get to contextualize it instead of the process being (a) awesome looking trailer --> (b) less awesome looking game.

@zevvion: In that sense it's less about lying and more about promotional material being a more accurate representation of the product. You don't need to lie to be deceptive, assuming a misleading trailer was even trying to be deceptive at all. Regardless of intent it's important that trailers accurately portray the game they're trying to sell (or at least should be, I guess).

Well, it all depends what you consider a trailer. I did a little digging around and none of the actual trailers for that game showed anything that wasn't true game footage. They showed that concept video, and sold it as real, which is fucked up but as I said before came at a time when our media literacy in this field wasn't as developed as it is now because we hadn't seen anything like that before. Now we see something like that with no UI and enemies interacting contextually with the environment, the player and the other AI and understand, "well, that's probably how they hope this game turns out."

Whereas Bioshock Infinite put out TV ads with pull quotes from reviews and a release date that consisted entirely of FMV and a fabricated scenario that never takes place in the game.

Though most of the surrounding elements were in the game (the characters, the weapons, the enemy models, the mechanics) I find that pretty disengenuious, but better than releasing a trailer that contains inaccurate, "in-game" footage which I'm fairly certain they never did. I'm of the opinion that them showing as much of that game as they did while they were still workshopping everything from its UI to the character models to the scenarios and art direction was a bold move and something it would be cool to see more often from more developers. I don't consider any of the extended gameplay footage they released and did walkthroughs of to be "trailers" or "advertisements", so I struggle to find anything facetious or mean-spirited about them. Was it bold? Yes. Misguided? Maybe. An evil trick meant to steal your lunch money? Doubt it.

The problem is most of the time there are other things like dev blogs, interviews and gameplay walkthroughs that explain what a game is\isn't but people see one annoncment trailer and base their entire opinion off of that. Like there was whole "making of" videos put up during No Man's Sky's development but people were still proclaiming they had no idea what the game was months after.

@flackbyte: Maybe people should worry less about things that don't matter in the big picture, like game trailers.

It's games, bro.

You have to remember that unlike movies, video games are actively being made when you see an announcement or trailer. So what you're seeing is the hopes of the dev and publisher.

You also have to remember it's marketing material. It's made to try and get you to buy something.

It's ok to get excited, it's ok to get hyped, but don't let your excitement blind you to reality. If you're into a game wait until you see gameplay and reviews.

I hate most video game trailers. They don't interest me at all. Half of them simply CG which is pointless and the other half so scripted it may as well be a movie. Often feel like me as the consumer, as the gamer, isn't being respected. But ultimately I guess th3 trailers arnt for me, because I've already said they hold no interest for me. Wait until something is released, hear the good word of mouth, watch some footage myself, make a purchase decision.

IMO, here's the simple version from a IT/Marketing professional: marketing is ALL BULLSHIT. ALL! Unless you count (unmanipulated) word of mouth and such.

Seriously, never trust a sales or marketing person unless you have good evidence to do so (in the capacity of their profession, I mean... not always them as a person, though there's an argument to be made there too about a successful salesperson/marketer and their nature, in many cases).

Note that I chose specifically not to work in sales and marketing shortly after college because it was scummy by its very nature, in the vast majority of cases (because the corporate world demands scumminess to compete in many areas, if you get down to it).

A demo of a game is the only real honest "trailer" equivalent. Games are interactive, and thus game trailers are only truly there to show you the game exists and what it looks like. You can't know how it plays unless you play it.

So basically every game trailer is dishonest.

But then again, movie trailers are plenty dishonest sometimes.

I think a lot of people have a skewed idea of what e3 is/was supposed to be? I dunno. I somehow always manage to temper my expectations pretty well.

A lot of times the problem isn't the trailer itself

it's just the game that it's showing is bad....

I agree with this completely. The Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer was some fucking spectacular CGI, but we didn't see a game. Much like 2008's teaser trailer. Did they spend 9 years working on another trailer? Has any work been done on an actual game at all? This kind of stupidity is the reason I pay the games press almost no attention at all. That, and the incredible awkwardness of middle-aged men trying to be cool. So grateful Giant Bomb exists to endure all that crap for me and get the salient points across in a not-cringeworthy manner.

One of my very favourite trailers of all time. It's incredibly funny, and weirdly informative. What I'm looking for in a trailer isn't a vertical slice with perfectly executed gameplay, I just want something that somewhat accurately represents the atmosphere of the game. It's perfectly alright to have hot-ass CG trailers, as long as that isn't the only thing you're putting out there. A "trailer" really ought to be rated in context with all the other ones put out for a game.

You want to know whether a game is good or not before launch? Do your research, and listen to your gut. It goes a long way, and you'll probably be right more often than not.

Just as there are different types of games, there must be and are different types of trailers. I think many games need to have a progression of trailers. I think in teh early 2000 people started getting extremely puritanical that all trailers for game needed to be mostly "in game action", while well intentioned I think it was wrong headed.

Today most people are accepting that some trailers are mostly cut scenes and some are a mix of gameplay & cutscenes. Each type is suited to different sorts of games and different uses for advertising or getting the word out.

This game is not as honest as oatmeal...it didn't seem WET at all?

Sure, Quick Looks. Even if my taste in games is pretty different from everyone at Giant Bomb, it's still an unedited look at a game played by someone usually only loosely familiar with it.

@frostyryan: I think you pretty much nailed it. The most honest way to showcase a game is a demo. Sure, there are still ways to be dishonest doing that, but it's still a better way than a non-interactive way.

Foud this old RPS article about the death of the demo.

"Adverts and trailers don’t tell you the truth, but so often they’re all we get to go on until embargoes lift and launch-day reviews land. In a very fundamental way, such marketing lies about the experience you’re going to have. The camera angles are rarely those you’ll see yourself, while the checkpoints and the chokepoints and the guy named CockLord12 and all the minor irritations (and indeed minor, personal pleasures) you’d experience bear no mention. It sells an idealised version of the game experience, and one that leans far too closely to the movie model – nothing at all to do with the act of playing a videogame."

The main problem is the idea of "hype" and speculation by people. The expectation of upcoming games gets so blown out of proportion and the speculation they come up with at times spins out of control into this product that they assume is going to be a life changing experience. Let's be honest...Watch Dogs 1 is a bad game. Yet that first reveal trailer had so much hype behind it, everyone thought that the next coming of Christ himself was descending upon them and blessing them with next gen gaming. I think that if people realize more that you're going to get a video game that is going to play very similarly to the ones you've played before, they would probably not buy into the hype as much, but of course, I don't think companies want them to feel that way either. They want you to think that it's going to be the biggest new thing ever, but unless explicitly shown and reported otherwise, they're still going to be relatively the same stories and gameplay that we've experienced before.

Games are just games. Nothing more and nothing less. It's the same with movies and books. They might elicit some strong feelings occasionally, but overall, they're not going to have the huge impact on your life that most expect. The Death Stranding trailers are well done and really interesting. I think that it might have a unique story in there with some emotional roller coasters, as most Kojima games do, but I also don't think it's going to have such a life changing experience with twists and turns that people speculate so much about.

So I don't think trailers are the problem here... it's people's expectations.

Probably not, and certainly not when you're over a year out from release.

Trailers, and early gameplay demos, are targets. They're what the team believes they can achieve given their current time and budget. Then reality exists.

Think about anytime in your life where you expected to be somewhere in a year's time, and then where you actually ended up.

All trailers and all of E3 is marketing, they are trying to sell you something. Get excited, have fun, but remember they're trying to sell you something and be cautious about promises until they are fulfilled.

People shouldn't look to trailers to be honest.

The point of a trailer is to make you interested in something. If you are interested in it, go research it, then make a purchasing decision that suits your means. Sorry to sound like a robot, but this is the consumer loop that makes sense to me.

• Company makes a product > Trailer draws attention to Product > Prospective consumers research Product via Free Press > Purchase Fork