I there anything more annoying than a teaser trailer? Many gamers don't think there is, but Nathan Lawrence isn't sure...
Over the weekend, the not-so-surprising news of Modern Warfare 3 came through in the form of several teaser videos. Jabs about an official announcement for a game that everyone already officially knew was coming notwithstanding, the well-titled ‘teaser trailers’ were—surprise, surprise—of the teaser variety.
Strangely, even correctly labelling a video release with ‘teaser’ is still met with an outcry from certain members of the community because such videos tend to not show a whole lot and tend to just, y’know, tease. But that’s the whole point, really. To provide confirmation that such a project exists, that it will eventually hit store shelves (even Duke Nukem Forever’s teasers will eventually prove true in June) and, most importantly, to get set the internet on fire with endless theorising.
The core function of the teaser video is to raise awareness by inspiring debate. This can be as simple as those whose two cents reads along the lines of ‘The last game was sucked, hope this one is better,’ to the opposite end of the spectrum for those ASIO agents in training that watch the video on loop, dissecting the tiniest possible clues frame by painful frame. These patient souls analyse and overanalyse every possible meaning, sparking much of the debate about features of the game that spread far and wide across the netosphere.
And that’s exactly what the publishers are going for. One might argue that it’s not that difficult to throw together a Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3 teaser video; particularly when compared with the likes of CGI trailers (the Hugo Strange trailer for Batman: Arkham City springs to mind) or even carefully orchestrated gameplay videos that can’t show all of a game’s features but need to reveal something that’s different.
But I would argue the opposite: that teaser trailers are difficult to put together.
I’m sure that more money is put into the likes of a Hugo Strange trailer, but I’d wager that there’s an incredible amount of consideration put into creating a teaser video; especially if it’s the first reveal of a game. When it’s a AAA title, it would be an even tougher feat… knowing that there would be a slew of dedicated fans reading into the tiniest detail in order to theorise about what may and may not be included in the final product.
Much like a Stanley Kubrick film, this means that everything that we see in a teaser video should be deliberate and have some sort of meaning. If you’ve ever revisited a teaser video after a game has been released, the chances are good that you would see signs in the video that you can now retrospectively trace to facets of the game.
But this onus on the tiniest details carrying meaning in teasers can also have two potentially negative side effects. The first is misdirection. It’s not difficult for publishers to suggest one thing in a teaser video or flat out mislead in order to throw inquisitive gamer minds off the trail of what to expect. This leads onto the second negative, whereby it can backfire if the misdirection points towards features that are more interesting/exciting than what’s evident in the final product.
I don’t have a problem with teasers. They’re infinitely more exciting than reading a boring press release that announces the existence of a game and they offer something to talk about in regards to what may be in the final product.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012