Trailer Structure Based on Audience Questions

Trailers start conversations, because they communicate information to an audience through visuals, audio and editing rather than face to face conversation. Knowing your audience, and what questions they want answers to will help you figure out the structure of your game trailer. 

Here is how I see the questions of a game trailer audience and this is the order I think they should be addressed:

1. What is the game genre?

2. How is this game different?

3. Why is that interesting and/or noteworthy?

4. How does the game challenge me?

5. What is the scope & longevity of this game?

6. What is it called and how do I find it?

These will vary a bit based on whether the game is original or a sequel, but I think this is a pretty solid foundation to build upon. 

Your audience is full of questions!

What is the game genre?

This question can be answered in one or two shots depending on how familiar its visual trappings are to a savvy audience. For example, 1 on 1 fighting games like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat are immediately recognizable, as are grid-based puzzle games or first person shooter games. And yet, a lot of game trailers start with shots which have little to no genre indicators. 

Establishing genre up front is important because players tend to have particular tastes in game genres which they play within. For example, I like a lot of game genres but I shy away from realtime strategy games, building games, sports games, MOBAs, and multiplayer shooter games. If I'm watching a trailer which is for a game in one of these genres I'm likely to stop watching (unless I'm watching it to analyze the trailer). By the same token, if I watch a trailer for a game within a genre I've enjoyed in the past, I'll then move onto the next question.

A third person cinematic action adventure game similar to Uncharted or The Last of Us.

Check! What's next?

How is this game different?

There are many ways a game can differentiate itself, but I think there needs to be a critical mass or one key thing which makes it different enough for someone to want to either play the game or learn more about it. For example, there are a lot of first person exploration games like Dear Esther in which you play a digital archaeologist who walks to different parts of the world to discover what happened in each of them.

To be extremely reductive, that means a lot of games where you navigate to a space, hear a voiceover, go to another space, hear more voiceover, and repeat until you finish the game. Games within this genre often involve digging through drawers, reading through documents, uncovering clues, etc. I've played enough of these games that if I see a trailer for another, I want to know whether or not the story interests me and what are the things I'm doing as a player to uncover that story. If there's nothing new in that regard, then the audio/visual presentation needs to separate it from the rest.

Everyone has their own criteria for what is "different enough" and it will depend on the genre, but it's critical this question be addressed as soon as the genre is defined.

You're protecting your sick brother and have to navigate a plague of rats infestation.

Check, what's next!?

Why is that interesting and/or noteworthy?

This question needs addressing either right after the difference is established, or in conjunction with it. Being different for different's sake is not always interesting or good enough to entice players. This is a problem which often comes up when making trailers for sequels which tend to be iterations on the previous game's mechanics and story. 

For example, in the game Watch Dogs: Legion you can be just about anyone in the game with their unique set of skills, but I read lots of criticism which said the characters' abilities weren't so different it made each player's experience terribly unique or repayable. It sounds like a cool mechanic, and it undoubtedly took a LOT of work to create, but nothing about it sounded different enough to make it better or more interesting than playing a specific protagonist. 

But hopefully, the game you're working on has something in it which you can showcase in the trailer to show players the game has meaningfully interesting or noteworthy ideas which warrant attention.

You encounter a cast of companion characters with their own unique abilities which you use to navigate past a variety of different encounters. Also, your character does their best to resolve problems as non-violently as possible.

Cool! What's next?

How does this game challenge me?

Even if not all games are about challenge and difficulty, we tend to want something in the game's design to create new and novel ways of play. In other words, we don't want to buy a game which will get boring quickly or will feel like work rather than interesting play. For example, a heist movie where a group of thieves set out to steal something isn't interesting if everything goes to plan and they never run into any problems. 

Once you've established the genre, how it's different, and established why that's interesting, you need to show the twists and turns which the game uses to keep you on your toes. Whether it's via difficult and unique platform jumping sections, boss battles with unique game mechanics or interesting choices you're challenged to make when speaking to other characters. By the way, if you're mapping these questions onto the trailer line of rising action, this is the "escalation" and/or "twist" portion. 

To answer the question of how the game will challenge the player, show them how things aren't always easy, don't always proceed smoothly, and what the game will do to ensure you don't coast through by pressing random buttons.

Your sling can take out early enemies, but later you'll need to find other ways to get past more difficult encounters. Also there are environmental puzzles to overcome.

What is the scope and longevity of the game?

This is the climax where hopefully the player is bought in, but their second to last question is: "How much content is in this game and how long will I be playing it?" For some games the answer is 1-2 hours, for others it's 40 hours, and even others the answer is basically infinite. 

The answer the audience is looking for is not always going to be the biggest number possible, because some people like 100 hour games and others like 3 hour games. If your game is the sort where its variety, randomness, and collectibles mean potentially dozens of hours of play, you'll want to show that in the climax of the trailer. Depending on the design of the game, every bit of content in the end montage can act as a multiplier which says "Everything you saw can be played twice over because of [this thing] which changes the experience."

But if the game is one which is finite and easily finished in one sitting, you'll want to communicate that in the trailer for the people seeking that experience. 

Similar to Uncharted-like games this is a cinematic story game which will have an ending to it after about about 10 hours of play.

What is it called and how do I find it?

This last one is the easy one which is the call to action. Show the title, pick one important call to action like "Wishlist on Steam!" and put in logos or text telling people where the game is available. 

Hopefully your trailer got people this far through the trailer where all of their biggest questions were answered and now they're interested enough to want to know the name of the game and how they can best follow it so they can be ready for its release. 

(These screenshots are from A Plague Tale: Innocence which is one of my favorite games in recent years!)

This is a very broad structure for making a game trailer, but I think it's a good place to start. You can use these questions as prompts to solve the problem of what to show in each section of the game trailer:

1. How might we establish the game's genre in the first shots?

2. What will make our game look different from other games in that genre?

3. How do we show why that difference is interesting?

4. What parts of the game indicate the player will be tested and/or challenged as they play?

5. What parts of the game show it's either short, or indicate it can be played for hours upon hours?

6. What is the most important thing people do after they finish watching the trailer?

A lot of the posts I write about making game trailers are somewhat repetitive, but I know everyone works differently. It's my hope at least one or more of these posts is what makes the whole process click and make it easier to create your own game trailers. As always, I appreciate feedback or messages when something I wrote in particular helped you make your own trailer.

Thanks!