How Accolades Trailers Can Make Your Game Look Worse
When I was an assistant editor at a movie trailer house I (along with the other assistant editors) was tasked with finding accolades for the TV series Firefly because the film sequel Serenity was the current project, and someone decided the trailer needed some more help to entice people to go see it.
Here are the quotes we found:
"Superb" -DVDtimes.co.uk
"Smart" -DVDjournal.com
"Fresh and Original" -DVDverdict.com
"One of the Top 10 Must-See Movies This Year" -Movie-Source.com
If it wasn't already clear based on the websites with "DVD" in their domain names, this was in 2005. Every step of the way we thought these quotes were terrible, because at least two of them look like they could potentially be taken out of context to look more favorable, and they are not from reputable websites. They were literally the best praise for Firefly we could find online. I'm sure there were good review for Firefly somewhere, but they weren't readily accessible online (this was before Serenity released).
Even when I was a kid I would laugh at TV spots for films whose accolades came from obscure radio stations or local TV channels; a sure sign they needed to dig to find positive reviews or comments. Any film with universal praise showed high review scores, 4-5 star ratings, and quoted publications like: The New York Times, the LA Times, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and they did it in BIG LETTERS.
Which brings us to the launch trailer for Forspoken.
This is a 30 second trailer (which tells me this might be broadcasting on live TV). Just like the movie spots and trailers for mediocre movies, there are red flags all over this trailer
First, are the very short quotes:
"Beautiful" -Distractify
"Endearing" -PlayStation Lifestyle
"Impressive" -Game Informer
"Fun" -RPG Fan
"Absolutely Magical" -Gaming Trend
Then:
"So much to do in the game" -Tech Raptor
"A solid and expansive combat system" -Push Square
"An absolute blast" -Mobile Syrup
Seriously though, I know I always have trailers on my brain, but how can anyone look at this and assume this doesn’t look suspicious?
The full Distractify quote is:
"So long as the narrative continues to hold through beyond the three chapters I personally tested, Forspoken has the potential to be a beautiful story-driven game that will pull at your heartstrings with each new chapter."
This is a pretty good quote, but the word "beautiful" feels pretty qualified by the word "potential" and it doesn't really seem like it's just saying something as simple as "This game is beautiful."
The full context of the PlayStation Lifestyle quote of "Endearing" is:
"She’s not exactly a noble warrior at the outset, and that comes across as believably endearing as you see her cold façade gradually chip away as she warms up to a select few people in need."
First of all, on its own, "Endearing" isn't necessarily high praise, but in the context of the quote it's also describing something which sounds more a matter of fact than being in a tone of acclaim.
This was done as a joke in a trailer for Bugsnax. The full quote was: “Looks like shit honestly, but for a window of several weeks it will be one of the nine best games for the PS5.” I’m guessing The Onion enjoyed the humor of this quote being used.
The "Impressive" quote from Game Informer seems to be from this article for when a new Forspoken trailer released. The full quote is:
"Frey's traversal abilities are impressive, allowing for fast movement in and out of combat, both in aerial and aquatic situations."
This is praise for the game, but it's specifically about the traversal abilities not just the game as a whole. Even in the context of a review this quote could easily say something like: Though the traversal abilities are impressive, it's bogged down by a flat story and boring combat.
The RPG Fan quote of "fun" could be one of five uses of the word "fun" in this preview article:
""Later in Forspoken, you can definitely increase your stamina gauge, and it seems there will be ways to avoid expending it at all, allowing for an almost infinite sprint. It is fast, fun, and easy to use, as every traversal mechanic should be."
"During the preview, I was limited to the starting Earth-aspected magic and didn’t get a chance to play with the others. I can’t wait to do so because what I tried was super fun."
"Magic Parkour really makes it fun and fast to explore."
"You quickly find yourself using Magic Parkour to scale the mountain to begin your assault on the keep while being bombarded by artillery fired from trebuchets. This section of Forspoken was pretty fun; you can pick and choose how you want to scale the mountain and the castle before heading inside. "
This person did seem to genuinely enjoy the game, but it still doesn't feel like they're showering praise upon the game.
The other quotes are ok, but not glowing.
"Dancing between attacks, racing past foes, and flipping is absolutely magical, and it works – it works very, very well. Until you run out of stamina anyway." -Gaming Trend
"So much to do in the game" is not necessarily praise. I feel like this could easily be something that is considered a downside if the things you do are not very interesting.
"A solid and expansive combat system" is pretty good too if a little boring and features-driven.
And the best for last is Mobile Syrup's "Frey’s magical abilities, in particular, are, so far, an absolute blast to use and well-worth the price of admission alone."
This is nice, but again, talking about some abilities, not the game as a whole.
I think Mobile Syrup got more out of this than Forspoken (it’s a Canadian tech site)
Based off the very scientific process (not scientific at all) of reading internet comments, people are already pretty distrustful of accolades quotes, so giving the audience any further reason to doubt your use of quotes is just shooting yourself in the foot. The way you cut your trailers is part of your brand, because it's a thing that represents either the studio or your games.
Hideo Kojima's trailers are always long, esoteric, mysterious, with oddly written copy, music video credits, and full of unique imagery.
Among Us has funny, self deprecating, jokey, yet incredibly sincere, and surprisingly intense trailers.
Supergiant Games has trailers with beautiful music, beautiful images, just enough story, and a smattering of gameplay.
I think if you were to start judging the brand Square Enix's trailers based off this Forspoken trailer, it would be that they will pull quotes which on the surface appear to say great things about their games, but when you dig deeper, they're kind of just okay. Which says Square Enix is trying to be deceptive in their advertising. Which means you should take their trailers with a grain of salt or automatically be suspicious.
Trust is EVERYTHING in branding, advertising, and marketing. So I think doing anything in the slightest to jeopardize that trust feels foolish and short-sighted. Especially when the audience is already prone to being distrustful (and many game fans are, ESPECIALLY when it comes to AAA games).
This trailer is a good example of the common mistake I cited in my talk about common indie game trailer mistakes, which is "Too Insecure." The people making this trailer decided they HAD to make an accolades trailer rather than just make a trailer with no quotes. They clearly had to do some digging, because these are apparently the BEST quotes they could find about the game. If I were the one making this trailer I would say it's better to just not use any quotes at all, than to use the suspicious 1-2 word quotes which are easily taken out of context.
This infamous poster for Legend features a 2-star review between the characters made to look like it’s another 4-star review. I think this one is the marketing people being cheeky rather than trying to enhance the feedback (especially since there were so many 4-star reviews)
If this is what you have to resort to in order to find favorable quotes for your game, I think you're better off just cutting gameplay to music with minimal dialogue, like in the Forspoken demo trailer. The footage the game already looks very impressive, and they clearly are able to find lines which are just generically "badass" instead of the quippy lines that got them in so much heat for their social media spot.
Accolades might just seem like something that game trailers are just supposed to do like adding a thumbnail to your Steam page, but you should not automatically assume it's a requirement. My advice is: in the absence of a excess of overwhelmingly positive reviews, use review quotes which help illustrate the game's design and features. Again, people are already very suspicious of quotes.
I think the only sort of accolade that's somewhat compelling are when trailers show dozens of very high review scores and award laurels. I've seen comments from people who say they just flat out don't care about any accolades and aren't affected at all. I also bet there are a non-zero number of those same people who will hop over to Metacritic to check out if the majority of the review scores are high and low. Showing a ton of these in an accolades trailer just saves them the time.
Some people on the internet like to say they’re not swayed by quotes and review scores, but how many of those people are the same ones who harass people who give a low score to their favorite game? -_-
If you want to compare, just look at the accolades trailers for God of War: Ragnarok and Elden Ring which are the same in length and format. The difference is these trailers mostly use well known publications, and the quotes are longer and more unequivocally positive. The one odd exception is the 10/10 score for God of War: Ragnarok by "Dextero" which is a site I've never heard of.
Again, especially for indies, I highly recommend generally not using review quotes at all UNLESS you're using them to illustrate core talking points about the game or if you have tons of very high scores. I feel like a lot of people do it in trailers because they feel like "That's just something everyone does." I'm here to tell you no, it's not, and not everyone should do it. ESPECIALLY if you find yourself having to dig for the words of praise.
I feel like digging for quotes just damages the reputation of either the game, studio, and all you get out of it are MAYBE some people who become more interested. But I think it's more likely you just give people more reason to be skeptical of game trailers and you don't win them over at all. This is pretty risky, especially for a game that is probably already in the middle review-score range. Better to just make a trailer with no quotes at all, and try to hope for the best than to use quotes and risk your reputation and trust of your audience.
