The Voice of Gameplay Explainer Trailer

Trailers which use voiceover to explain a game's design, mechanics, and features point by point can be an effective way to answer lingering "But what is the GAMEPLAY?" questions. This is especially true for games which announced with a stylish teaser or cinematic trailer which was heavy on ideas, but light on gameplay details. Narrated explainer trailers can also be good for game livestream events if you're fortunate enough to be featured in one. The tricky part to making them effective is writing a good voiceover script, and deciding who should deliver it.

There are a few possible ways to do this, each with their own benefits:

• Game Developer Voiceover

• Professional Voiceover

• In-game Character Voiceover

In order to decide which is best, first take a good look at your game, the size of the team making it, and the target audience. If trailers are a way to engage in a conversation, this first step is how you read the room before opening your mouth.

Always good to read the room before you say anything.

Game Developer Voiceover

I find voiceovers by game developers most effective for indie games because part of the appeal of an indie game is the fact they're made by smaller teams with a unique and personal vision. Using the literal voice of someone from the team is a way of giving the players more of what they want and expect from indies.

I think a professional voiceover artist will make it feel too much like a trailer for a big budget AAA game; that style might be unappealing to an indie game fan seeking to either take a break from AAA games or avoid them entirely.

When writing the voiceover for a game developer explainer trailer I find it best to avoid a salesman-like tone intent on pumping up the game's image and telling the audience the experience they'll have. For example:

"In this game it's super fun to use the double jump, and the combat is incredibly satisfying because of the dynamic enemy AI."

This script tells the audience they WILL have fun using the double jump. People don't like being told what they will feel, and when talked to in this way I think they will look for evidence to prove or disprove the thing they were just told. For example, if you're on a date with a guy and they say "I'm the nicest guy you'll ever meet" you're probably not going to take them at their word; you'll likely watch how they treat the wait staff and people around them to decide on your own.

People generally trust their eyes and ears more than the things they're told.

I would rewrite that particular line to be more humble by focusing on the intent of the design, and leave it open to the audience to decide on their own without triggering a skeptical reaction.

"I spent weeks tweaking the double jump to make it feel fun to use, and we designed the enemy AI to make combat encounters satisfying to play."

This version essentially conveys the same information, but it doesn't outright say these systems ARE what they designed them to be or tell the audience they WILL have this exact experience. 

How specific you should get into the features of the game really depend on the visuals. If the gameplay is relatively easy to understand even without voiceover, I think it's good to talk about high level design goals and choices, which the audience can then try to see in the gameplay. This has the added benefit of letting the audience more actively engage in the footage by attempting to decipher how it connects with the voiceover. For example, an explainer trailer for Mark of the Ninjacould say something like:

"We designed the visuals of the game to make it feel like you're always hyper aware of every little sound, movement, and light around you."

It works better to talk in terms of benefits rather than features. Read more in this post by Chris Zukowski.

But a game like Opus Magnum might need some more explicit narration to describe what each and every thing on screen is since the graphics of the game are much more abstracted.

The voiceover should also have something of a story arc to it with a beginning middle and end. Start by explaining what the gameplay is, then move onto how the mechanics create interesting situations which will test your abilities, and finish by sharing some of your hopes and dreams for the game and the players' experience with it. But above all, I think it's good to show some vulnerability by not dictating what the player's experience WILL be. 

If you get a really solid voiceover script locked down, then it will be much easier to capture the gameplay you need to match up to each moment. When it comes time to record the actual voiceover of course you need to speak clearly, but most importantly I think you need to sound as natural and conversational as possible. This can be tough especially when recording by yourself; voiceover can easily sound very rehearsed and stilted. If it helps, have a friend around to read or talk to. You can also have someone coach you through it; it's likely their ears will have an easier time hearing when your delivery feels dead or impersonal.

For more of my thoughts about this trailer, read my review!

Professional Voiceover

This is the sort of trailer made famous by Rockstar Games. They love releasing extensive 5 minute or longer trailers with a voiceover artist spelling out each and every feature of the game. 

I find these trailers rather dry and impersonal, but fans seem to love them. I think because of fan followings and AAA production value, these games can do either developer or professional voiceover. That said, I think the professional voiceover tends to work better because this is what people expect from big budget games. In fact, making the voiceover TOO informal might make the audience suspicious the big budget game backed by a giant corporation is trying to be too down to earth. So for that reason I think if the game is big budget, it makes sense to get a professional.

I also think even for a AAA game it's good for the script to avoid sounding too sales-y, because I think people will almost always become adversarial when you tell them what they will feel or are feeling. Until the end of time I'll likely use the Mighty No. 9 Masterclass trailer as the quintessential example of a grating voiceover artist saying "YO, THIS GAME IS COOL!!!"

Don't do that.

This has been Rockster’s house style for a while now.

In-game Character Voiceover

This is when a character from the game explains the various actions they can perform or plan on performing in the game. This technique is a bit trickier because unless you want to break the fourth wall, it will feel weird to have a game character saying something like "Try out my double jump, it's super fun to do!"

There are exceptions like how characters in the Metal Gear Solid games call out buttons to press in order to perform specific actions like crouching or going prone. But in most cases it works better if the script can feel like something the character would naturally say in their world. Take a look at this example from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:

This trailer has a mix of story and gameplay, but you can see how the gameplay is explained not from a design perspective, but from a character perspective. At about 1:09 Adam Jensen says: "I'm going to use every advantage I have to stop them..." and he then talks about how his augmentations allow him to do things like attack with a lot of force, infiltrate, and circumvent defenses. 

If written and performed well this style of explainer trailer can be fun because you can learn about both gameplay and story at the same time. Again, unless your game has some great fourth wall breaking humor, I think it's generally best to keep the voiceover in-world rather than make the game character a surrogate for one of the game development team.

For some more examples I talked about some more examples from games like Monaco, Pyre in this post about treating game trailers like tutorials; the voiceover in the trailer for Old World is also quite good.

Not all games need a trailer which so explicitly walks through the design and mechanics, so you have to decide whether or not it's appropriate for your game. The key is to stay abreast of the conversation around the game and see if there are people who feel their questions aren't being sufficiently answered in a way which helps them know whether or not they want to play the game.

One nice bonus for explainer trailer is they're generally a bit easier to make for less experienced editors because they don't rely as much on good pacing, sound design, music editing and trailer story structure. Just work really hard on the script, speak naturally in a conversational tone, and treat the audience's intelligence with respect!