Make the Surprising Familiar, and the Familiar Surprising

One of the most powerful skills of a good trailer maker is to sell something surprising by making it familiar, and to sell something familiar by making it surprising."

This idea comes from the book Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson who also did a talk about his book at Google. 

A big part of the book discusses how most people claim they want something new, but in reality they tend to look for things which are already familiar to them, but with some sort of twist. For example, Star Wars is kind of like an American Western movie, but in space. Or as another example, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is like Super Mario 3D World, but in the game you can't jump.

Making something surprising by making it familiar, and making something familiar surprising sound like two different concepts, but I think they're actually the same thing just framed in a different way; whichever mindset helps you make an interesting game or trailer, that's the one you should go with (Also, another thing explained by Derek Thompson, is phrasing ideas in this mirrored fashion is just one of many ways to get people to remember ideas. Think of The Sphinx from Mystery Men).

I tend to think more in terms of "How do I make this surprising thing familiar?" because that's what I need to do in order to educate the trailer's audience about a game's hooky mechanic. Games already have such a history of visual language within their genres, that making the familiar surprising will naturally be achieved simply from watching the footage as long as I don't edit the trailer in a way which doesn't give the audience enough time to read what they're seeing.

For example, Way of the Passive Fist is a game which is heavily inspired by 90s arcade games like Final Fight and Turtles in Time. I could've easily made a trailer which made it look exactly like those games, but its unique mechanic of parrying attacks until the enemy tires enough to be shoved with a single touch is the surprising element I needed to show as soon as possible. This is how I took the surprising part, and made it familiar. The montage for the rest of the trailer was my way of showing the familiar part of the game incorporating the surprising element.

Similarly, Neo Cab is structurally very much like a visual novel game where you interact with characters by choosing from a number of dialogue options. This is a genre which has its own built-in audience of fans, but to branch out I had to take this familiar thing, and make it a bit surprising. That's how I came up with this trailer which is structured around an explainer video. In the game, the main character's has a bracelet which displays her emotional state; this is the surprising element added to the familiar genre.

This line of thinking is also very useful for trailers for sequels whether it's for games or movies. I loved the recent trailer for A Quiet Place Part II; it's the perfect example of something familiar in need of some sort of surprise. All sequels run into this problem, because there needs to be something new and surprising to justify the existence of a sequel, otherwise what reason does the audience have to watch or play the new thing? Aside from simply being a continuation of the first film, the big difference is the family is on the run instead of hiding in their fortress-like home, and really that's it. This is one fundamental difference in the characters' situation which changes the dynamic of the story.

For well trodden game genres like rogue-likes and rogue-lites, it's very VERY important to take the familiar structure and show what about it is surprising! There are so many games of this type, that art style and graphics are often not enough (unless they're at some truly extraordinary level of quality!), so it's really important to genuinely surprise, rather than garner some sort of "Oh ok, I guess that's different" reaction.

So if your game has a really really unique and surprising mechanic, concentrate first on how to make it understandable. And if your game is very very familiar and traditional, find out what one or two things make it surprising!

For some additional reading, I recommend Chris Zukowski's post about Knowing Your Game's Anchor which discusses how games fundamentally need SOME sort of familiar elements in their game in order for an audience to truly latch onto.