Grognard Trailer! And Ruminations On The Throughline From All Our Past Games.

[x4000]

1) It's too fast
6) It's too long

What?  Those two don't go together.  Unless you're implying I should show less.

I haven't seen the trailer, but I think he means that not only is the pace high (like running a sprint), but the distance is long (like running a marathon).  Or something like that

Sure, I get that.  But he's asking me to make it shorter, slower, and show more.  Whoa.

IMO, there's a lot you can take out. By show "more" perhaps look at it as show "different". Show more fight detail, show some of the diplomacy screens perhaps. Show less (in-game) text. You brought up Paradox games, and I can't think of any of their trailers that show walls of text for even a second. They focus strictly on the action.

That's fair, but once you start getting into 30 seconds of a fight, that starts getting pretty tedious.  I felt like some of the clips I was showing here were already getting borderline on dragging.  A lot of what is interesting about fighting is stuff that has to be explained -- setting power levels, switching weapons, and so forth.  If I do that at my normal speed, it's too fast for people to see.  If I do that at a speed people can comprehend who are new to the game, that's literally 5-10 minutes for one fight (I've done that video already).

For the diplomacy screens, what's to really show?  You can look at them, and they have some static text.  You can go into the menu and select an option, and that then results in some more text.  What is exciting about all that is the larger macro consequences, not the moment to moment stuff you see in those particular areas.

I guess my example would be: showing a page of a book is boring, but reading the page -- in context -- is gripping.  Trailers are a visual medium, though.

[Professor Paul1290]

In general, I don't think you need to explain all the stuff you're showing as long as you're communicating the general idea behind it.

Text like the "Try To Unify The Eight Races", "Create The Federation", "Play At Your Own Pace" are good because they communicate what the stuff is for. You don't really need to say that "this is a graph" or "With At A Glance Summaries" and bits like that.

(On that note, I think "With At-A-Glance Summaries" should go as well because it's intent is already covered by previous texts, but the screen should still be shown.)

[Riabi]

Maybe pan a diplomacy screen (I mean the part where the player sees the aliens)? Why show it at all? They are visual, they are pretty, and if you show them breifly, they leave people wanting more.

As for the fights, of course you don't want to show setting power levels and that kind of stuff, you want to show things blowing up, you want to show clouds of tiny ships trying to head off a big heavy. The more I think about it, the less I think I agree with KingIsaacLinksr about the pace of it, speed it up, show flashes of brilliance, just enough so that players have some sense of what's going on, but not nearly so much that they don't want more. But, I think the biggest thing you can do is keep the whole thing under 90-100 seconds. A trailer really shouldn't explain the game, it should make players want to find out more about it.

Look at the trailers for any of the successful games on Steam, they all have a similar model.

For the overlay text, don't talk about logs and summaries and all that, talk about the emergent stores that come from the game. I think you've got a game that lends itself better to a good trailer than any you've done, save maybe for Shattered Haven (which IMO wasn't that bad, but that's another topic), but I think it takes a slightly different mindset than you're used to to make it.

[x4000]

I will think about it and see what I can do.  I certainly did want to be briefer than this, but it's kind of a tricky proposition.  In terms of the diplomacy screens, incidentally, you can't really see the aliens since they are behind the main text.

[Cyprene]

I think it was fine.  The majority of it is likely to be very appealing to its audience.  It's a very complex game, and you don't have an unlimited amount of time, but I think you hit all the points you wanted to.

Two things, if you are considering a second trailer.
I have absolutely no idea what the "glorious mistake" the player made in the end was, and I'm in the alpha.
Also, "Our lead developer thinks it's a really sweet game!" isn't one of the better catch copies I've heard. 

[x4000]

Fair.

[Riabi]

In terms of the diplomacy screens, incidentally, you can't really see the aliens since they are behind the main text.

Then grab the art and use that separately. Not every second has to be actual in-game captures.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

1) It's too fast
6) It's too long

What?  Those two don't go together.  Unless you're implying I should show less.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that the amount of information being shown is too dense per second and the trailer is too long for what it shows off. It sounds contradictory I know.

For a game that takes place over hours, about the best I can do is show the relationships between things, show some combat, and show the visuals of ships moving around on the solar map.  What else is there to show?  You can't visually represent an hours-long struggle.

Unfortunately, I can't answer this as I haven't been involved with the Alpha/Beta to give you an answer to this. I just feel like there's something missing. It's just, I haven't gotten this feeling when I've watched other similar 4X/Turn-based game trailers in the past.

This is just patently false, though.  The worst one ever was the Shattered Haven trailer, which did an awesome job establishing mood and story, but which a lot of people got the genre of the game wrong after watching.  They thought it was a turn-based tactics game in some cases!  I don't just say that to be argumentative -- but that's a trailer that was lauded by the people who already knew about the game, and then which absolutely failed in the wider market.  The two often have no connection to one another.

Touche, I guess I forgot about that game trailer. This is the second-worst trailer made hahaha.

Totally an aside, but I showed maybe 30% of those screens.  I think that for a game that has that many of that sort of screen to dig into, it's worth spending some time on that.  I may have spent a bit too much time on it, true.  But a lot of the people who like Paradox games, for instance, are the sorts of people who I'm trying to attract.  I want the people who like Dwarf Fortress, AI War, and stuff that Paradox makes.  And all the folks over at wargamer.com.  That's the core audience for this game, and everyone else would come to it as part of the extended audience, in my opinion.

Spending some time on it....yes. Spending a good chunk of the trailer on it.....I disagree. It's just, I think about it in this way: stat screens and mission summary screens are easy to do. It's pretty much expected that you're going to have them in a 4X game. I would have preferred that you show action and reaction. You showed a mercenary screen and explained what it was about, but you didn't show what we could do and how it would affect the game. I would have liked to have seen a button pressed and then the reaction from that shown in-game. I don't expect to see an hour-long game played out in a trailer but how the game can be a "story" in itself through your actions and reactions.

How would you slow this down, and yet explain more and show more interesting things?  I am not asking this rhetorically.  I'm open to doing a second launch trailer and putting both up on Steam or wherever.  The reactions on youtube to this one have all been positive so far, which is the only real measure I have so far, as everyone here is mostly an alpha tester.  Anyway, I am open to suggestions from you or others on another trailer in addition to this one, as I also agree that it is of the utmost importance to have a trailer that just really kills it.  If this isn't that trailer, that's fine, it doesn't really hurt anything; it's not like we can't do another one and use that as the primary.

Let me think on my response to this as my time is limited this morning. I don't have a quick response at the moment.

[x4000]

Fair enough; I'm not asking you to do my job for me, but trying to understand what it was you were trying to say is a big part of it.  I'm going to see what I can put together a bit later on this afternoon.

[Azurian]

I think you should introduce the races individually  with their names in the bottom. This will captivate the 4x crowd, and knowing the game has unique races with lore in a game are fundamental to them. . 

[Azurian]

Since the game is going on Steam can you upload multiple videos?

Maybe you can do :
Launch Trailer
In Depth Look

In Depth Look can be 5 to 15 minutes long and you can be the narrator talking about the major aspects in the game. Similar to what you did when you were showing alpha footage.  The In Depth Look is excellent for people who are hooked by the trailer and want to learn more about the game.

[Professor Paul1290]

This is probably tooting my own horn a bit, but as an extreme opposite example, here's my trailer for The Dark Mod 2.0:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFeaBDNmR4

I have some text and a silly voice over (not my voice) at the beginning as that bit is more played for humor, but as soon as the "serious" part of the trailer kicks in there's very little to no text or detailed explanation of what's going on.

I put in a quote to get across the idea you're a thief, but other than that everything is just shown and not really explained. As long as they understand the idea that you play as a thief and you steal things, they understand what what I'm showing them is part of that.
A lot of people asked about certain things in the trailer they were somewhat confused about, especially the lockpicking and pickpocketing bits. That's fine, they don't have to have a detailed understanding of what's going on right away because they can research or ask later, they just have to have get the general idea behind what I'm showing them.
If they come with questions about details then that's pretty good, it means they're interested and curious.


I'm definitely not saying you should get rid of all the text, a strategy game like this is definitely going to need a lot more text and explanation than a first-person stealth-action game.
That said, explaining what each of the screens your a showing do is overkill. I feel it's better across the idea of what you are doing, then show the UI and tools you are using to do that. They don't have to know right away how said UI and tools work, they just have to know the intent behind them.
For example, the audience doesn't have to know in detail how the graphs, summaries, and logs work, they just need to know that "the races have a detailed simulation behind them" and the graphs, summaries, and logs you are showing them are part of that.
If they come with questions regarding the details of how a certain interface or tool works, then that's good! That means they are interested and curious.

[x4000]

What you're showing is extremely familiar stuff, though:
1. First person, I immediately understand that.
2. Fight guys, sure.
3. Okay, you're picking stuff up and killing guys.
4. An alarm went off, I know what that means.
5. You're picking up a bunch of various objects, I guess that is the loot.

And that's pretty much what I took away from it.  The TLDR seems to be "you sneak around and steal stuff, and kill people from behind."  That's fine, but that's like trying to compare an explanation of Memento or Inception to an explanation of Speed.  The two require vastly different approaches.

[Pepisolo]

This is probably tooting my own horn a bit, but as an extreme opposite example, here's my trailer for The Dark Mod 2.0:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFeaBDNmR4

Nice! Dammnit... this just gave me an idea. We could have had a trailer competition. Users could have submitted entries, with the winner becoming the official Steam trailer as well as getting free Arcen games and DLC for life. Oh well!

I find the trailer pretty decent, myself. It sort of slaps Grognards (is that the term, heh) in the face and says "Yes, this is the game for you!". It's not very subtle, but seems effective to me. It is a little surprising that there is no mention of the individual races, though, although I guess you get a little of that on the relations page. A quick rollcall might be nice... "Burlusts!, Acutians! Boarine! and you ... the Last Hydral!"

Additionally, I actually like that graphs bit. Granted, average gamers might find that bit a little boring, but the target audience would be like "buildings.. ok... that's pretty basic -- anti-terrorist demonstraters, ok what else you -- afa insurgents...births and deaths...SPY PROBES..... MUCH OTHER STUFF! OK, I'M DOWN!" This might seem peculiar for your average gamer, but strategy guys get all excited by this stuff, right?

[keith.lamothe]

Having a mention of the Evucks as the "passive-aggressive telepaths" and of the Acutians as "dropped a moon on your (ex-)homeworld" would be fun