
The bridge collapses at the end of the first shot in our Poly Bridge trailer. Open on the most emotion-rich interaction. ’ It sounds like you’re actually ready to start showcasing with the most emotionally powerful moments from your game (we can tone it down if it’s too much).
POLY BRIDGE GIFS HOW TO
You’ve already started mentally mapping the highs and lows of ‘ how to craft a trailer’s emotional journey. Say you get this: you’re feeling exactly what the players should feel for each of your features. Granted, we had the advantage of player footage here, but it was our best tool for establishing the new tournament feature. We wanted to say “new tournament mode,” but this is how part of it came across in our trailer: Like take what we did for Tricky Towers tournament update. But discerning the heart of the feature will affect how it reads in the trailer. I mean, sometimes you have to state the facts. Think about their heart-impact instead: “ What will this feature make people feel?” Try to make them feel that. I know game devs have a tendency towards the programmatic language of “features” instead of a game’s emotional benefits, but try to get past the features’ functionality. Nobody cares about your facts - only how you make them feel. This will be your springboard rolling forward. Slap all this information into a column on your game trailer script.
POLY BRIDGE GIFS FULL
Your trailer’s script works as a rubric: a lexicon of the full range of emotions you want to convey and contrast well-before you lay anything down in your working timeline. The most-helpful question for your trailer is, “What do I want players to feel… at this moment?” You might be wrong or inaccurate (we all read emotions differently), but starting with our first impression assumptions builds a place we can iterate on. Maybe it’s, “Winking Fear of Death,” “Lips-Pursed Empowerment,” or “Holy Balls! What Am I Even Looking At?” It’s just a matter of thinking about the emotional intent of that scene. Ask, “What’s the emotion here?” Write it down. Or maybe just look at those GIFs you’re posting to Twitter that showcase key moments. Let’s get into the trailer emotion toolkit.Ĭreate an “emotion” column in your trailer’s script.įirst you need to establish your game’s emotional vocabulary. Fortunately, developing emotional intelligence for your game is not as hard as it sounds: it’s just a skill forged over time - and iteration. And if you get really good at it, you may even become a good listener.Ĭrafting your game’s trailer requires that you become as good of a listener as you can be: discerning each interaction’s precise emotions. It’s a long road until we grow to feel what others feel, but this is emotional intelligence in a nutshell. But we spend our whole lives learning to really read emotions. I mean, just after birth we start reading other people’s faces. Since most games don’t have human faces for emotional readability, you have to get creative at bridging that emotional gap.

This is the only way players can feel your game before picking up the controller. Your game should connect with players on an emotional level.
