Trailer Breaking Dawn Part 1

[Gregory Monty]

Ireally did not want to care about the upcoming The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 1 yet when I saw the trailer at the cinema recently, I felt myself silently squealing like the fan girl I obviously am. I think it was the sight of Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) in a tuxedo that set me over the edge despite my very best intentions. Or perhaps it is that I am an incurable romantic and the sight of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) in a wedding dress sent me swooning.

Whatever the case, I loved the trailer and cannot wait to see the film. Of course, based on past experiences, it is entirely possible that I will be as disappointed with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 1 as I was with Twilight and Eclipse. I was thrilled with New Moon.

What impressed me most about the second film, New Moon was that it was visually stunning with generous lashings of the deepest reds and golden browns. I missed that with Eclipse and it was one of the reasons I was so disappointed with the film.

Judging from the trailer and from the stills released below, it looks like we can look forward again to a visually stunning film with bold colours, stunning cinematography and heavy reliance on water imagery. I am optimistic that director Bill Condon can succeed where David Slade so obviously failed with Eclipse.

Luckily, I had an expert I could ask about this - Derek Lieu, the dedicated game trailer creator for Psychonauts 2, Half-Life: Alyx, Among Us & more, who also writes extensively on the subject and has a video course on it. And turns out - he agrees!

As you may know, mobile discovery is a whole other can of worms compared to the PC/console space we tend to cover, largely based around paid user acquisition for games that most aggressively monetize LTV (lifetime value) per player.

Microlinks, Pt.2: top Roblox game Adopt Me shuts down in The Netherlands and Belgium over loot box woes; Twitter has bold plans to become the center of the gaming community - but first, it has lessons to learn; an interesting podcast & transcript with Mark Bergen, the author of a new book about YouTube called Like, Comment, Subscribe.

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by \u2018how people find your game\u2019 expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Welcome back to another week aboard the mule train to the Sierra Nevada gold mines that is \u2018success in PC/console game discovery\u2019. Will one of your steeds get bitten by a rattlesnake? Will some flash floods wash away your backpacks? Isn\u2019t it fun?

We\u2019re starting out this week with a major game discovery element that, frankly, we don\u2019t talk about enough - game trailers. And more specifically, the videos that you pick to appear and autoplay on key game platforms like Steam and console.

There\u2019s a tricky element to the pacing of game trailers, as follows: a lot of devs and publishers showcase games in a traditional movie-style 'slow burn reveal!' trailer format, which doesn\u2019t show your gameplay clearly in the first few seconds.

This might work OK at the PC Gaming Show or a Keighley-verse showcase, where watchers are committed to sitting through the whole thing. But if you want players to eval and wishlist your game on Steam, they need to see gameplay or target gameplay footage way quicker. Having it appear 15-30 seconds in? They\u2019re not going to wait.

Derek explains: \u201CA lot of my trailers now are structured like this one I made for Noita or [the above for] Tactical Breach Wizards which has a few seconds of gameplay up front (so it's already started playing before people have a chance to start clicking through the progress bar).\u201D

He re-affirms that people should have their lead Steam/console page trailer show gameplay ASAP, \u201Cespecially because of Chris Zukowski's research which showed a lot of people tend to just click through the trailer's progress bar in search of \u2018raw gameplay\u2019, rather than watch it from the beginning.\u201D

If you\u2019re being 1000% practical, \u201Cstory and cinematic stuff is the \u2018nice to have\u2019 stuff that supports the core gameplay loop. Story acts as support to the gameplay\u201D for most games. So Derek recommends \u201Cthe first trailer be gameplay gameplay gameplay, and MAYBE have a second trailer\u201D which goes deeper.

As for whether you should recut a trailer just for Steam: \u201CWhether or not you make multiple trailers might be limited by budget, so if you can make a trailer which is both good for a wider PR beat AND the Steam page, then that sounds ideal to me.\u201D

You could even change it up entirely, for example: \u201CDerek Yu put this developer commentary trailer I made first in line for Spelunky 2. Muted, it looks like raw gameplay - but with audio you hear him talking about the game.\u201D An interesting approach! (Alternately: if you livestream onto your Steam page, that creates easily viewable gameplay footage, of course.)

Finishing up, Derek Lieu jokes of the \u2018too many trailers\u2019 brigade: \u201CIf you want a good example of what NOT to do, then look at the Steam page of a lot of AAA games who put up sooooo many trailers (of course, they're operating on a totally different level than indies, so they can get away with it).\u201D Sure, but \u2018just keep making new trailers and never removing the old ones\u2019 isn\u2019t that tactically sound, no matter how big you are\u2026

Finally, Derek has a fairly recent blog post about making an \u2018MVP\u2019 trailer, for devs in a rush to get a Steam page launched. He explains: \u201CThis style of trailer is made for people who click through the progress bar, and NOT intended for a Twitter post or YouTube announcement.\u201D But it\u2019s still a good take on the minimum you need to get there\u2026

No sooner had I praised mobile F2P UA expert Matej Lancaric as a \u2018James Dean-esque young rebel\u2019, content wise, than he came back with this particularly good post on the mechanics of how mobile devs create \u2018fake ads\u2019 to engineer profitable growth.

He explains: \u201CI ran a RPG game some time ago with $150 CPI in US with Purchase campaigns on Facebook. Value optimised campaigns showed $300+ CPI. This game was killed after global launch \u2013 could have been done earlier! What can you do in this type of situations - kill a game, right? Or, you might try to run FAKE ADS to save it!\u201D

That way, you can get super-low CPI (like the game is hypercasual), but then monetize like the hardcore strategy RPG game you really are. A wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing, right? Matej\u2019s key example? Mighty Party, which actually looks a bit like this:

But if you go look at all of the example screenshots on the Google Play page right now, they\u2019re solely showing screenshots like the below one. Which is to say, a completely different looking, far more casual title:

So yes, this is a similar tactic to Hero Wars, if you\u2019ve seen their relentless ad spend recently, but even less subtle. (At least Hero Wars tries to vary its App Store screenshots to hint at what the game really looks & plays like. Sorta. Kinda.)

Anyhow, this seems to be a formula for some large mobile devs. At least one of the games mentioned in here - X-Hero - is making $3 million per month with a combination of \u2018save the dog\u2019 hypercasual grafted onto a hardcore fantasy RPG. (?!)

As for what\u2019s to be done about this? Honesty-wise, if you look at YouTube videos showing Mighty Play in action, you can certainly \u2018play mini games\u2019, like in the screenshot and ad creative. It\u2019s just a fig leaf to onboard users to the real game inexpensively, though. So.. it\u2019s kinda yucky, right? But profitable yucky.

[And this is why we don\u2019t cover mobile discovery. God speed to those like Matej who do, though - go read his article for more. It\u2019d be nice to see platforms do something about this.]

As we pull into a pitstop with our mules in tow, it\u2019s time to assemble the ol\u2019 campfire and round up a whole host of interesting game discovery and platform news. Let\u2019s stoke the flames and start heating the beans:

The Xbox dashboard\u2019s revised home screen is live for Insiders in beta, leading to YouTube videos showcasing it. Kotaku adds an \u2018explainer\u2019 for it: \u201CBut maybe the biggest change to the dashboard in this potential future overhaul is just how prominently Xbox Game Pass is featured\u2026. the company\u2019s subscription service basically dominates the home screen now.\u201D Quelle surprise.

A super wide-ranging new SuperJoost newsletter on how platforms run the show has one major takeaway (above graph): \u201CHardware used to represent 47 percent of total earnings but has declined to 36% in 2021. And third-party publishing increased from 31% to 43% over the decade. Platform holders have switched roles, and increasingly operate as an intermediary between game developers and players.\u201D

The October 21st appeal hearing re: Epic & Apple is looking juicier and juicier: \u201CThe [U.S. Department Of Justice] and the [state of California] will indeed speak. The DOJ gets 10 minutes; California gets 5; and Apple gets an extra 10 minutes for the sake of balance.\u201D The DOJ is \u201Cconcerned that the district court erred by reading Section 1 of the Sherman Act narrowly and wrongly by carving out particular types of \u201Ccontract[s]\u201D from its reach.\u201D (In other words, they think Apple got off too easy.)

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