DEATHLOOP and trailer fatigue
Does it matter if an extended trailer campaign kills hype in some people? If so, how can you prevent a campaign from going stale? After two delays added about a year of development time, Arkane Lyon's latest game DEATHLOOP has released to rave reviews and at least a week after release was #1 on Steam. After its release I saw a handful of comments from people who grew fatigued with DEATHLOOP's trailers. I counted myself among them, because even though I recognize, appreciate, and admire the excellent craft of the gameplay trailers (made by Hammer Creative), I think at least 2-3 felt redundant. I feel bad saying it because they are really superbly made trailers with so much style, fantastic capture, fun music and tight editing!
First let's look at the trailers and then discuss whether redundancy in a trailer campaign is even a problem.
Cinematic trailer. Cool, got the premise and feel, what about gameplay?
DEATHLOOP announced with a bang in mid 2019 with an incredibly stylish CG cinematic trailer (which was one of my favorites of the year). The unique premise, strong art direction, well choreographed scenes, fun music, and tight editing made it instantly stand out. Two people locked in a seemingly endless battle to kill each other.
In June 2020 they released a 3.5 minute gameplay trailer which starts with a great extended gameplay intro and then spells out the story premise in much clearer terms with a mix of stylized 2D animation and gameplay. You're stuck in a time loop where you have to kill eight particular bosses while also being hunted by Juliana, a rival character trying to kill you. Arkane games give room for a LOT of creative player expression, and the capture for this trailer is utterly fantastic. There's also a tease showing that Juliana is a playable character.
September 2020 brought the second gameplay trailer which probably would've been the penultimate one, but in November the release was delayed to May 2021. This trailer also excellently leans into a mix of Grindhouse film and Saul Bass motion graphical style. This trailer expands on the game's premise, citing how you'll have to manipulate events so multiple bosses end up in the same spot where they can both be killed at the same time. At this point we're still getting a nice pace of meaty ideas.
The third gameplay trailer came out February 2021. This one is cut to a James Bond style song and is loosely framed around killing another boss character. It shows some new powers like invisibility, but otherwise it's very montage-y with cinematic freecam shots, and lots more very well captured gameplay. It doesn't really communicate any new gameplay concepts, which makes it feel like a launch trailer whose role is to review old material and announce the release.
Okay, I can see how the basic gameplay works now, lots of games have good gameplay (like previous games by Arkane) how is it different?
March 2021 they released a video DEATHLOOP explained where the director break down how the game works. This trailer uses the term "murder puzzle" which is a more explicit phrase assigned to the ideas explored in the 2nd gameplay trailer. It also shows off some new abilities and specifies the flexibility you have to tackle the puzzle at your own pace. It also discusses keeping weapons, powers, knowledge of targets and upgrades. I like how the director keeps getting "looped" as he explains the game mechanics, but overall this is a very features heavy trailer, and ironically, the game loop (i.e. the cycle of things you'll do in the game repeatedly) is not very fleshed out yet. Even with more detail, it's feeling a bit redundant.
In April, DEATHLOOP announced its second and final delay to September 2021. In July, they released a nearly 10 minute Gameplay Walkthrough video. This focuses on another boss character and gives a slower, moment by moment look at the gameplay and also introduces the "Reprise" ability where after you're killed you can come back two more times without resetting the loop. It also covers gun jamming, hacking and absorbing the game's currency which lets you retain weapons across loops. It also quickly says Juliana is controlled by either AI or another player who can invade your game. They kill the boss, get out and then get killed by Juliana. Even though the aren't a lot of new features here, by showing extended gameplay this trailer is at least providing some presentation variety.
In July they also released a pre-order trailer to talk about pre-order content and a PS5 immersion trailer which cited the ways the game uses the PlayStation 5 Dualsense functions built into the controller to make the game more immersive. These are less substantial and feel less meaty because they're not core to the experience.
Okay, it's a murder puzzle. Got it. But is this game too hard for me? 😬
In September, just a week before release they put out the Story Trailer. It's structured around another voiceover by Colt which leans into how many questions the game and its premise present. It shows some new weapons, but other than the new trappings, this trailer doesn't explain much more than the previous trailers.
Finally there's the launch trailer which has another great song and more very well done capture featuring impressive trick shots and fun match cuts. It's a really good trailer with a lot going on which is all extremely well executed.
The last two trailers felt very much the same as some of the first gameplay trailers, so it's not surprising there were people who felt some redundancy or fatigue, especially when the trailers were featured in livestream events where they're expecting new announcements, not trailers for games which are well made, but in their content don't have a lot of new information.
Out of curiosity, I ran a poll on Twitter asking whether or not the campaign had just the right number of trailers, got a bit repetitive, or had too many. About 170 people responded and:
20% said it was the right amount of trailers
55% said they got a bit repetitive
25% said there were too many
Replies ranged from a couple people who said they don't remember seeing the game very much, some felt the trailers showed the same stuff over and over again, others just frustrated seeing them repeatedly in showcases, and in the best case there were some who stopped watching them because they were already sold. Another sentiment which I related to was the "Wait, is this game out yet or not?" reaction. And one which felt like it was going to be perpetually promoted, but never released.
I can play as Juliana? How does that work?
But does this even matter?
After all, I stayed aware of DEATHLOOP's existence, and I purchased it after some reviews and tweets helped me decide whether the game would be a good fit for me. This is the funnel doing its job. The trailers kept me aware of the game, helped me consider whether or not it's a game I wanted to purchase, and then reviews convinced me to buy it.
Also, I'm someone who watched all the trailers and keeps up to date on as many livestream events as I can. I don't think this is typical. If you're perpetually online watching games discourse on social media, YouTube, Twitch, it can be easy to think the people who express opinions about games online are the only ones buying games. When in fact, I'm sure there's a large percentage of people who aren't watching all the trailers, and might only catch one or two of them during the entire campaign (if that!)
A common theme I saw after reviews hit were comments from people who said there are a lot of concepts in the game which they never saw in the trailers, and even before reviews hit I had questions of my own like:
What is it like to play as Juliana?
How DIFFICULT is this murder puzzle for someone who doesn't want to take copious notes and have to figure everything out?
All of the shots look like they're done by an expert player. Will this game be too difficult for me?
I think there were opportunities there for trailers to have unique gameplay ideas in them without much overlap, so I'm curious how/why they weren't made. One very plausible scenario is the Juliana gameplay was not ready to be shown in much detail. Also, there is just SO much in the game that even one in-game tutorial will make you understand as the game shows pop up after pop up explaining its interface.
Another reason the campaign could feel redundant is after the first few trailers, most of the following ones didn't have a unique enough message to make the conversation around DEATHLOOP interesting or fresh. It wasn't something like "Did you see that you can invade other player's games in DEATHLOOP?" It became more like "Did you see the new weapons and powers in DEATHLOOP?" which is not nearly as a juicy a topic.
Oh, we're going back to the story. Wait, I still have questions!
This was an unenviable situation to be in because of the multiple delays. The trailer makers have to proceed with their strategy assuming there are no delays and will make trailers appropriate to say, a month before release and then imminent release. But delays mean that trailers intended for late in the campaign are now in the middle, and they once again have to make more trailers for release. It's kind of like how some people said the movie The Return of the King had multiple endings.
Do I think this is ultimately a successful campaign? Absolutely, the results speak for themselves and the trailers were masterfully done. I think a mix of delays and creative direction are to blame for some redundancy between them, and there were some other gameplay concepts they probably could've explored to keep things fresh, but it's really just a nit-pick. If people are really interested in a game, getting tired of seeing similar trailers will probably only make a very small number of people decide to not get the game because of fatigue (if any)
The ideal circumstance would've been that people are excited to see new content every time a DEATHLOOP trailer shows up, but the way to do that would've been to overlap less content and/or make fewer trailers. But with fewer AAA next-gen releases, I'm sure PlayStation was eager to show DEATHLOOP off as often as possible. Again, people who watch every single trailer I think are in the minority, so for the people who only check out the occasional livestream, it was probably the right amount of trailers and it's probably totally ok that most of the trailers said essentially the same thing.
I think a trailer campaign can be like a social media feed, just because you tweeted something in the morning, doesn't mean everyone who follows will see it. So it makes sense to have several trailers with a bit of redundancy, especially when you have ways to amplify the signal and the AAA budget to make the trailers. For indie games for which it is more difficult to not make redundant trailers, it makes sense to be much more conservative when making trailers in order to keep things fresh.
