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Designing Game Trailers play an extremely important role in marketing campaigns because of their specificity and pervasiveness. To learn more about the process of making game trailers, let’s find out with Animost in this post.
Operation process of game trailer
Normally, a well-organized Marketing campaign around Game trailers will need the following stages:
Release the teasers
This is the stage when the game is about to launch. The teaser includes video cut scenes, partial previews of features, plot, Behind-the-Scene segments of the producer, side stories to arouse users’ curiosity. Early promotion helps you capture the psychology and create interest from users when the game is launched.
Release Official Game Trailer
This is the stage when the game has just launched, the Official Trailer will be released at the same time as the game. This part needs to be done as neatly as possible. For games with a lifespan in years, the Official Trailer may be changed during major events (Christmas, Halloween, …) and when there are major updates.
After release
This is the stage where your game has been running for a while and has a steady stream of users (if the game runs well, of course). Now, depending on the amount of user data you collect, determine the next direction for Marketing with a Game trailer.
Here are a few popular directions:
- Build WalkThrough videos, Wiki…
- Build videos Tips, Tricks, Easter Eggs…
- Collect user videos about your game.
Notice
Keeping in touch with users is extremely important to show how serious you are in operating the game. You should build a separate channel for your game and pay much attention to it. That way, the cost of Marketing will be greatly reduced thanks to the number of Organic Users obtained through the available Viral clips.
Normally, if you are just a small game producer, Indie Studio, or company with weak human resources, stages 1, 3 and most of stage 2 will be abandoned. Only 1 Game Trailer left. Of course, if you do this video well, its impact is not small. So how to do it right?
Time
The first thing to consider is how long will your trailer be? In my opinion, 2 minutes is the longest time you should take for your trailer, even Hollywood movie trailers rarely pass this mark.
A trailer longer than this time is very risky and you can lose a large number of users right from this part if you are not careful. The standard for a Game Trailer should be between 40 seconds and 1 minute. Especially if you upload the trailer to the App Store, the trailer must be under 30 seconds.
Content
There are many ways to build content for the design of Game Trailers, usually the most complete way will be:
- Storytelling – Tell a story, a setting, a character… Storytelling is an effective way to market to users compared to running a series of videos to show game features. Most well-known speakers, before presenting something to the audience, start by sharing a story to ask questions and arouse curiosity.
- Feature Showcase – Show off the features that you find attractive in the game. Be careful if your game is a big game, choose only the features you think make you different from the rest of the world.
- Final message – Some games close their trailers with a slogan (Join the Battle, Let’s Fight,…), which reminds users that not only should enjoy the trailer but download the game to get the most accurate experience.
Identify the most appealing features of your game to showcase in a limited time, that way, you can see for yourself, what’s so appealing about your game?
Working steps
After determining the duration, you need to determine the content to build to convey the message to the user:
- Write Storyline – List the messages you need to emphasize in each scene of the Trailer.
- Storyboard Shaping – Pre-render raw cut scenes to compose each scene.
- Image processing – Processing effects to make an impression, pay close attention to this part, do not let the effects overwhelm all the messages to be conveyed.
- Sound Editing – Dubbing Sound Effects and Background Music.
- Post-processing – Return to standard formats for your channels if they have technical limitations (Size, Resolution, FPS…).
Related post: Kirby and the Forgotten Land Game Trailer Reveals New Gameplay and Features
Conclusion
Marketing plays an important role in bringing games to users. If you do this in a planned and methodical manner, you will contribute a huge part to the profitability of the game. If you have had experience in designing Game Trailers, please share with us!
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Animost – Vietnam 3D Animation Studio
hello@animost.com