Trailer Quick Tip: Humility

[Transcript from the Video above:]

The gameplay trailer for A Mortician’s Tale is brilliant for one easily repeatable reason: Humility.

Welcome to Game Trailer Quick-Tip. I’m M. Joshua. I make game trailers, but I also like to celebrate other’s great trailer work. Today we’re looking at one quick tip that’ll be helpful for you making your game’s trailer.

Trailer Quick Tip: Humility

Humility might be the weirdest ambition of a hype-train. But I would suggest it’s the most powerful tool in making a game trailer. Just humbly offer a transparent representation of your game. This will speak volumes on what your game is actually like. No superlatives. But no self-deprecation. Just an honest look at what your game is actually like to play.

We’ll take a look at the trailer now. Then we’ll explore how that can translate to your game’s trailer. Cool? Let’s check it out!

So, not every game is as simple as Mortician’s Tale. The game clocks in at just over an hour, and only has three or four different scenes—to really show different variety of gameplay. But that’s the brilliance of the humble approach: you show the simple core interactions of the game and as long at they look readable, it reads as “real”

And let’s be honest, that's what players want from a video game trailer: for things to feel as real to the experience as possible

Who's This Approach For?

Since this is a simple point and click adventure, it translates well to the humility approach. If your gameplay isn’t easy to read, you might need a little more of an elaborate explanation of what the game even is and why people want to play it. But once you get them there, you can continue to build on that core—and stick to the humility approach. This lets your audience draw their own own conclusions. And that’s the core. You want to build an environment that lets people draw their own conclusions about your game.

Again, this isn’t for everybody. And sometimes you need a way more “over the top” kind of approach. Because let’s face it, game trailers aren’t a “one-size-fits-all” kind of thing.

A key to the humility approach is to just observe how players naturally experience your game. And if you can just represent that as faithfully as possible—without getting in the way—this can work really well.

That’s it for this quick tip. 

~

I’m M. Joshua. Find my trailers at mjoshua.com. And feel free to subscribe, for the next time we look at a Game Trailer Quick Tip.