Hey everyone, how's it goin'?
I figured I should do a few more blog posts, and I thought of the idea to write about how I went through the process, and how it escalated into the trailer it is now.
Plus, I'm super tired now, and writing kinda gives me a burst of energy
So here goes nothing!
If you haven't seen the trailer, you can do here
For reference to what I'm talking about in this post, here's a link to the unlisted first draft.
Pre-Planning
Before doing any of this, I had recorded myself playing the game for about 45min-an hour. I'd split each video up into different labyrinth dreams, and play each one in a certain style. This would help me make sure I have as much good footage from the start as I could.
Planning
There was none. I'm not that kinda guy.
Actually- I take that back, there was very, very,
very, little planning.
See, I designed the trailer with Steam in mind, and one of Steams bullet points when you upload a video, is to get to action as quickly as possible. I had to agree with this one, because I personally did not like
the previous trailer I had made back when the game was titled Labyrinth.
Ignoring the odd resolution during the recording in the first trailer, it took way too long for any sort of actual gameplay to show; which is where the game flourishes.
So maybe, I didn't have a direction to go with the trailer, but I did have a direction as to where NOT to go with the trailer.
Creation
So the first thing I did was get some clip that I thought would show a few different mechanics of the game within a short time. The clip I got was of me breaking a pot, finding a power capsule, immediately using it, and killing a blue slime.
It was fine, and all, but no one really, commented anything good about that clip specifically. Same thing happened for the next clip afterwards.
So... I scraped 'em. I replaced the first clip with a clip showing that the player can knock torches off the wall, and burn/kill an enemy. This clip specifically, got me some reactions, people actually started to comment on that 4 second clip. I repeated this process for all clips.
If there was no positive comment towards a clip, I assumed it was not beneficial to the overall trailer.
That was pretty much the basis of the feedback, but... there was an issue... I had a small collection of people I was showing these trailer drafts to, all of which have seen and played the game before, so they know exactly what the game is about.
I needed more accurate feedback; feedback that would be more akin to those of new players in the shopping mood on Steam.
Retrieval of Feedback
Right, so, how did I go about this? I needed strangers feedback, but I needed it directly, and needed them to be genuine.
Well, I picked up a popular messaging app called Kik. You're probably heard of it. It was kind of odd for me to be using it for professional purposes, since I had only used it in the past with my close friends. But there was a reason why I chose this specific messaging app.
Kik lets each user have specific "interests". There's a handful of pre-set options, so I chose a single one; "gaming". Now, having selected that, I can click some button to pair up with a stranger, and it's guaranteed that I get paired up with another person who is into gaming; aka, someone who has (presumably) watched several video game trailers during their life, but not mine. And that's the exact kind of person who'll find it on Steam.
So I'd just ask them if they wanted to help me out real quick by giving me their opinion on the trailer, and it worked out wonderfully because, as I originally thought, people love when you ask them for their opinions. Many of them pointed out faults that I had fixed, and suggestions that I added.
What was even greater was that, it wasn't just the trailer they were commenting on, it was also their first impression, which helps me out a ton, because I now know what some people will think when they see the game for the very first time.
I essentially repeated this process, over and over, until I got the final trailer.
Conclusion
Well, by the time of writing this, I had ended up collapsing at my keyboard due to lack of sleep, so, maybe it didn't give me the presumed burst of energy I mentioned earlier.
But the main takeaway here is to pretty much use what you can to reach out to strangers, even if it is a messaging app with a arguably bad reputation; and another take away is that when you explicitly ask for someone's opinion, you'll never make them be upset, pretty sure.
I hope ya enjoyed this... tangent of semi-guided thoughts.
-Ryan
