How to Get People to Rewatch Your Game Trailer

YouTube recently released a new feature which displays a popularity graph just above the progress bar of each video. Unlike a retention graph (which shows what percentage of the audience is still watching at each part of the video), this graph indicates the parts of the video people go back to REWATCH. At the time I wrote this post it seemed like this information is only displayed for videos which exceed several tens of thousands of views.

I was curious to see what parts of game trailers people go back to rewatch and drew some unscientific conclusions based on my own intuition, and a whole bunch of trailers. These seem to be the key things people go back to watch/rewatch either in isolation or in combination (in no particular order):

Amazing music
HUD/UI elements
Great action scenes
Funny scenes
Fast cut montages
Fine print and text
Narrated storytelling

[EDIT: It came to my attention after the initial writing this post that timestamps in the YouTube comments are also a big reason people rewatched particular parts of the trailer, as evidenced down below with Unpacking and later in the post for Loot River.]

This spike for Unpacking's launch trailer is due to someone in the comments timestamping a rather morbid achievement in the game where you put the toaster into the bath tub.

This is a BOP!

Music seems to be a HUGE reason people went back to rewatch parts of a trailer or the entire thing. This could also be in conjunction with fast cut montages of shots people want to freeze frame, but my intuition (and own tastes) tell me these examples are trailers whose music had people coming back again and again.

Notably, pretty much every trailer I made for Ooblets had a strong popularity graph and my intuition says it's because they're all centered around one great piece of music (as opposed to a trailer made from multiple music cues) that's a lot of fun to listen to regardless of what's in the trailer . The same goes for the trailers I made for Anarcute and BattleBlock Theater which both have very fun music. Others with great music with high popularity across the entire trailer were the Snow Runner: United We Drive Trailer, Tools Up!, and Gorn VR.

I also looked at a selection of movie trailers heavily centered around one song and noticed similar popularity graphs. This included trailers for The Princess & the Warrior, both trailers for Garden State, the Thor Ragnarok Teaser, Logan, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

*I'll say it until I'm hoarse; good music is REALLY KEY to a good trailer.*

But in most cases, really great music during the trailer's end montage is what drew people back in to rewatch. For example, you can see big spikes on the graph during the ends of the trailers for: Manifold Garden, Cyber Shadow, Figment, Spiritfarer, and Tetris Effect. I also checked out some movie trailers, and first trailer for The Matrix Resurrections has a big spike during its climactic end montage.

Again, this is all speculation. There could be other reasons or combinations of reasons people rewatch these sections. For example, the ending to the trailer for Spiritfarer is just an incredibly moving story sequence bolstered by phenomenal music.

*I was literally re-listening to this section of the trailer while writing this caption.*

HUD/UI elements

I've long said "TURN OFF THE HUD!" and then later softened to say the HUD/UI elements should mostly be off, but might be good to include in some shots. The graphs for a handful of trailers I looked at show very sudden spikes in parts which show the game's HUD/UI, menus, and other things you can't possibly absorb from a clip which is less than a second long.

In the case of Empire of Sin, the spikes occur during the intricate menu screens. For Hades there's a spike during an upgrade screen shot. Noita there are spikes for the shots which show the wand recipes I used to get those shots. And the trailer for Armello (which I edited while at Hammer Creative) has spikes during the game screens with rolling dice and other combat related UI.

I do still think for the sake of clarity that HUD/UI should be off during most of the trailer and especially fast cut montages, but I think there are times where it can contribute to the trailer, at the very least as a "second read" of the trailer for people to go back to and analyze.

*Good thing I used real wand recipes for the trailer, otherwise people who went back to rewatch would be disappointed O_O*

This one I'm a bit less sure of because it could just be the music bringing people back in, but these trailers seem to spike during incredibly well choreographed action scenes. For example, this trailer for The Wolf Among Us 2 has a fun action scene during its tail end. This trailer for Destiny 2 has some incredibly well done multiplayer capture I think many people rewatched. The Destiny 2 trailer in particular is what made me add this section because the music during the initial spike isn't as notable, but the action scene does really stand out compared to the rest of the trailer. [EDIT: I later found out via TikTok that fans rewatched this part specifically because they were trying to figure out if the Titan threw the shield to the Hunter and if they could catch it]

*If you want people to rewatch, just spend hours upon untold hours getting one shot incredibly amazing. So simple, right!? :P*

Funny or teasery buttons

Lots of people rewatched funny portions of the trailer either in the middle of the trailer or as the button after the title card. Loot River has a VERY sharp spike in the middle of its trailer which caters to a very juvenile sense of humor. Horizon Forbidden West and Half-Life: Alyx both reveal a mysterious figure at the end which people went back to take a closer look at. Lonely Mountains: Downhill had a very popular montage of bikers having funny accidents. Trailers I made for various LEGO games all have big spikes for their humorous button scenes. The trailer for Sniper Elite 5 has a big spike for the button where you're on a mission to kill Adolf Hitler, and DOOM Eternal has a spike during the reveal of an epic enemy. It makes a lot of sense to me that funny scenes and story teasers would pique people's interest, but it's gratifying to see they were enjoyed.

*This is the spike in the trailer for Loot River which was timestamped in the comments. Y’all have the minds of a 12-year-old :P*

Fast cut montages, flutter cuts

A lot of trailers I looked at had spikes during end montages or sequences which are cut very fast. This could also be attributed to really good music, but there were a lot of trailers where the music wasn't particularly exceptional during the spikes but the editing was very fast, so I'm guessing people went back to freeze frame and look at those shots like in the trailers for Atrio: The Dark Wild, Horizon: Forbidden West, It Takes Two, and Deathloop.

Not to say this means you should just cut a trailer impossibly fast in order to get people to pay closer attention to it, but you might consider layering in easter eggs or other fun montages where you're intending to cut very quickly anyway.

*Teasing a bunch of stuff in a fast montage*

Accolades, fine print, end slates

High popularity spikes for accolades, fine print, text, and end slates! Sometimes there's a bunch of text which pops up briefly for humorous effect like in the trailers I made for Among Us and BattleBlock Theater. I also noticed spikes in the trailer for The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe during the scenes with humorous slide shows.

It also seems people take closer looks whenever trailers feature a bunch of award laurels and accolades like in the trailers for Subnautica, The Adventure Pals and more. And I also frequently saw spikes for the end slates which show all the various studio logos, fine print, etc. like in this trailer for Loot River. The fine print makes total sense to me, but I'm a touch surprised to see them for accolades and end slates, because my impression was that people don't really care about those things.

*This part of the Among Us Cosmicubes Update trailer had a HUGE spike when the fine print at the bottom flashes for a fraction of a second.*

Understandably, there were also spikes in parts of trailers where something mysterious or teaser-y happens very quickly. For example, in the trailer I made for The Forgotten City, a statue suddenly changes position when you look away and then look back at it. In the recent trailer for Return to Monkey Island, people went back to look at the skull talking. In the trailer for Maquette a particularly mind blowing shot which shows how the recursive gameplay works has a spike. In the dev commentary trailer I made for Spelunky 2 there's a spike during a scene where the player accidentally kills themselves in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. There's a similar WTF moment at the end of this trailer for Inscryption.

*It seems like lots of people went back to do some Spelunky forensics to deconstruct how the character died so quickly.*

Storybook

This conclusion I'm less certain about, but I noticed a strong popularity graph across the board for the trailers for The Outer Worlds 2, and the trailers I made for Heaven's Vault and Spelunky 2. The common connection I see are these trailers are all tied together with a strong voiceover. The Outer Worlds 2 trailer famously pokes fun at cinematic AAA game trailers. And the Heaven's Vault and Spelunky 2 trailers feature narrators telling a story to the audience. In the case of Heaven's Vault I might also attribute to some fantastic music.

While speculating about the voiceover angle, I took a look at this movie trailer for Fences centered around a powerful performance from Denzel Washington which as I predicted has a very strong popularity graph.

*Want people to rewatch your trailer? Just get a top top tier Hollywood actor to deliver a smoldering speech written by a multi-award winning playwright.*

Again, this is all speculation based off my observations, and I could be off the mark in many of these cases. Whenever people collect data (especially for marketing) it's tempting to attempt to make some sort of magic bullet optimized thing for maximum engagement or something. But I don't think there's anything here that really changes anything I've already mentioned many times about trailers. People love really good music, funny moments in trailers, and a well told story. I don't think you can make a trailer which is just 100% rewatchable moments, but I do think one or two stand out moments can make your trailer more memorable.

If you have any more insights based off your observations of popularity graphs of game trailers please send them to me. I'm curious to see more!

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