Guild Wars 2

I do a lot of marketing at my job…including using high quality production software…and I don’t know who came up with the idea for the “Our Time is Now Trailer” but seriously fire the guy.

I’ve had several of my friends watch the “Our Time is Now Trailer” and none of them know why it was even made. There isn’t even any direction to it. At one point in the video you had some guy walking across lava rocks…what the hell?

Normally I wouldn’t even waste time on another companies marketing but you guys need some serious help.

If you want to stick with the “Our Time is Now” theme and promote the game then do so in a way that people can relate to, understand, sparks an emotional response…and it grabs their attention.

My solution:
“Our Time is Now” should be through the eyes of the races in which the players can play. Use each races history in the trailer and “our time is now” could mean what you….as a player….contribute to their race from this point on. For instance you could show a trailer from the perspective of the Charr….and show 1,000’s of angry bloodthirsty charrs destroying a Castle’s Walls and flooding into it and slaughtering everything in their path…then show the charr proudly rebuilding their main city on top of it…and then show a dragon or some army they’re rushing to confront and right before they attack have the screen either black out or go white…then have a single charr say at the end of the trailer “our time is now…”. This will not only strike emotion but get viewers wondering what are the charr….whyd they build their city on top of this other city. That’s the kind of race I want to play…etc. You could make a trailer for each race in the game showing their history and what conflicts they have now. Your trailer did none of this…

You didn’t understand the trailer, or who it was marketed to. The “Our Time is Now” wasn’t about the game story or characters in the game – it’s directed at a section of the market that has been disenfranchised by the direction of MMOGs the past decade – which is why the oppressed and the underclass and the rebels (in the trailer) are invited to move past the paralysis of even trying a new MMO because of the fear that it is just a repackaged version of the status quo. They – the casuals, the RPers, the soloers, etc. – can now enter the game – walk across the coals that have burned them for so long – come together on their terms, playing their individual way, and enjoy the same kind of epic encounters that used to be reserved only for the elite – represented by the sequence at the end of the trailer.

It’s perfect marketing – it shows me that Anet really does understand who their target market is, and gives me hope that they can withstand the vocal minority that would change the game back into the status quo.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

You didn’t understand the trailer, or who it was marketed to. The “Our Time is Now” wasn’t about the game story or characters in the game – it’s directed at a section of the market that has been disenfranchised by the direction of MMOGs the past decade – which is why the oppressed and the underclass and the rebels (in the trailer) are invited to move past the paralysis of even trying a new MMO because of the fear that it is just a repackaged version of the status quo. They – the casuals, the RPers, the soloers, etc. – can now enter the game – walk across the coals that have burned them for so long – come together on their terms, playing their individual way, and enjoy the same kind of epic encounters that used to be reserved only for the elite – represented by the sequence at the end of the trailer.

It’s perfect marketing – it shows me that Anet really does understand who their target market is, and gives me hope that they can withstand the vocal minority that would change the game back into the status quo.

Actually you are wrong. I understood perfectly who they were aiming at. The sad part is they missed their mark and did NOTHING to help the game. Why in the hell would you promote a trailer that has nothing about the game in it? Is their target market people walking on lava rocks or spray painting buildings? I don’t know anyone that walks on lava rocks. And if you think MMO players are their target market….I’ve shown the video to several of my friends who play a variety of MMO’s and not a single one of them understood the video…in fact the only thing they all seemed to say is at the end “thats a cool dragon”….thats about it. They learned NOTHING of the game.

It’s one of the worst trailers in gaming history, I have to agree. If it could be taken as a trailer for ANY game, it’d be closer to TSW than GW2.

@Wintyre Fraust

Do you really think that the people watching that video knew that walking across lava rocks meant that casual gamers could walk across the coals that had burned them for so long……………or do you think that most people that watched thought…..why in the hell is that guy walking across lava rocks?

It was a perfect marketing video from my perspective — I understood intuitively that it was saying that the game is designed for people who are misfits under traditional MMO design approaches. It was quite clever, actually, and well done.

I love guild wars, i really do. However, this trailer was horrible. It was obscure, too selective in its audience, and was a disjointed mess or random snippets.

Hell, i didnt even realize i was watching the video until 30 sec into it because i thought it was a commercial. It fails to answer the “why should i play” question that all game trailers strive to entice you with.

My suggestion for an actual “Our Time is Now” Trailer and possible commercials.
Five commercials or trailers. Each one for each race detailing their races history and future goals. Then, at the end the respective character for each race says (Our time is now.) And the camera zooms into their eyes and then zooms out to reveal them with the other races as they get ready to battle Zhaitan.

For example. In the charr version Rytlock could be explaining their past and the fighting in Ascalon. He would be detailing the ghosts of ascalon while fighting with them and saying how their just may be some larger threat somewhere else. As he breaks through/blasts a wall in, it gets silent as he is with multiple Charr and states “Our time is now.” Then the camera zooms into his eyes, zooms out and shows him roaring as he charges into a fight with the undead and Zhaitan.

OP,

The trailer had a deep abstract meaning to it. The problem is that most people likely won’t get it or interpret it correctly.

What the most hilarious part of this marketing attempt by ArenaNet is that the people it’s aimed at likely won’t have a clue what that trailer was about.

Can someone please explain the cryptic meaning behind the girl swimming underwater in a mansion and the girl spray painting the wall………….and the guy watching police in riot gear on TV…..since I obviously wasn’t their target audience.

I actually suspected it was aimed at those who do not game, but are considering getting into it but feel a little shy, perhaps because of the stereotypes that build up around those with our particular obsession.

But I may be wrong. Has this trailer appeared anywhere other than on the official GW2 site since it was released? Things got rather quiet after all that hubbub.

Trailer didn’t make any sense until the lady ‘grew’ the norn tattoos.

Waste of funding prior to that IMO.

I think the “Our Time is Now” trailer should go like this…..

Show a cinematic of each of the World of Warcraft raid instances with a closed door to them and a sign on each that read “NO trespassing!!!!”…..and then have the Guild Wars 2 Logo pop up with a message “Our time is now….”

Okay so for those who ‘understand’ the trailer. Imagine for a moment if you have heard about Guild Wars 2 and were thinking about purchasing it…. then you saw this Ad…. Keep in mind all you know about Guild Wars 2 is that its an MMO and that it is B2P. You really think that these ‘oppressed MMO gamers’ are going to be like, “wow that ad just speaks to me on a conscious and sub conscious level with its deep and abstract meanings and subtle marketing.”

For those of us who knew all about what GW2 includes yes we understood what their ‘abstract’ message was trying to convey. However, attempting to market this to people who do not have the first notion of why Guild Wars may or may not be different from their current MMO is going to be rather difficult to pull off with this advertisement. I would imagine that a good portion of people would watch and and say, “what the crap did I just watch?”

A better ad would have been a more condensed version of the Manifesto they presented a while back, or something with actual in game footage along with their epic soundtracks.

As someone who walks across lava rocks…. I liked it.

I understood that the trailer was about GW2 breaking the mold of MMOs and that it is our time as players to get to play something new and fresh but the trailer was still VERY ‘meh’ it was clever but still underwhelming. You couldn’t even tell the trailer was about gw2 until the very end. Though I suppose most of the game’s marketing came from word of mouth and the trailer wasn’t really necessary anyways.

try showing them this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XnB0e9UONo

*i used the share link on the video to find it

The trailer was a waste of money, IMO.

After I finished seeing it, the only thing that came to my mind was “wtf”?

Remember the Skyrim trailer? I watched that one over and over again. It was incredi-awesome. That trailer alone must’ve boosted sales tenfold.

Go back to the drawing board, Anet.

Amon.5042:

The trailer was a waste of money, IMO.

After I finished seeing it, the only thing that came to my mind was “wtf”?

Remember the Skyrim trailer? I watched that one over and over again. It was incredi-awesome. That trailer alone must’ve boosted sales tenfold.

Go back to the drawing board, Anet.

I loled

the trailer was terrible.

i was like “what?”
then forgot about it.

Bluestone.7106:

Trailer didn’t make any sense until the lady ‘grew’ the norn tattoos.

That last part onward was cool.

In the vein of overdoing and over complicating, “fear not this night” is a beautiful melody but with too many words in it (IMO). There may be a pattern of trying to add too much info with getting the word out. Or in other words, they seem to be having a hard time expressing their labor of love in a very limited medium. Maybe they should strive for “aweingly” simple and straightforward.

My two cents.

The fact that the OP is using the words “lava rocks” in place for “hot coals” tells me his intelligence is lacking.

Yes, the trailer is going to make people go “wtf? what was that?” But you forgot about the second reaction to that previous question:

“Idk, dude, but I’ll look it up to see what it is.” That, right there, is the desired reaction.

I’m saddened by the lack of intelligence I’ve witnessed, but then again the general masses tend to be much less educated and would most definitely cry out for something so simplistically rudamentory such as a CGI cutscene/trailer instead of something with a deeper meaning simply because “I don’tz getz to seez epick fight1ng!? WTF?!”

Amiron.1067:

The fact that the OP is using the words “lava rocks” in place for “hot coals” tells me his intelligence is lacking.

Yes, the trailer is going to make people go “wtf? what was that?” But you forgot about the second reaction to that previous question:

“Idk, dude, but I’ll look it up to see what it is.” That, right there, is the desired reaction.

I’m saddened by the lack of intelligence I’ve witnessed, but then again the general masses tend to be much less educated and would most definitely cry out for something so simplistically rudamentory such as a CGI cutscene/trailer instead of something with a deeper meaning simply because “I don’tz getz to seez epick fight1ng!? WTF?!”

This

If you judge a game’s content entirely upon a trailer, you need a reality check. That only tells me you’re very close-minded and unable to think outside the box.

I will have to admit, I laughed when I saw the trailer. I guess I “understood” it as being targeted towards people who do not really play games, but it was a bit vague. Too disjointed and not entirely clear- unless you play games and know of GW2

I literally laughed at some of the scenes, and my girlfriend came over wondering what I was watching.

As long as you’re debating about it, it had success ….

Marketing 101 :P newbs :P

Out of 947,742 views, 6876 likes, 4909 dislikes. people can spin it all they want it wasnt well recieved.

Kaine.3501:

Actually you are wrong. I understood perfectly who they were aiming at. The sad part is they missed their mark and did NOTHING to help the game. Why in the hell would you promote a trailer that has nothing about the game in it?

Have you ever watched commercials? Most memorable commercials have nothing to do per se with with the product. What do a bunch of dancing people in the streets or polar bears have to do with soda? What does anything in a beer commercial have to do with the beer being sold? Generally, you only see the product at the end of a commercial, and often you have no idea what the commercial is about until the end.

Most advertising is about establishing an emotional connection and attachment between consumer and product. You want your target market to identify with the product being sold, and that is done by visually connecting people you are like, or want to be like, or feel that you are like, with the product in some way. You want to also create buzz and make an impression – make people talk about it, think about it.

Mission accomplished.

I do like the people, simply saying ‘2deep4ubro’.
People do like to act pretentious over the internet don’t they?

The message of the trailer is so contrived and horribly portrayed. You could slap on a Pepsi logo at the end and it would still make sense. (getting rid of the five seconds of gameplay of course)

The part where the guys walks across hot coals, i still can’t help myself from laughing at the trailer though “oooh look! the guy is talking his first brave step into a new game! amagd deep!!”

They’ll try to tell you that if you don’t like it, its because you aren’t the intended audience.. but they need to wake up and face reality. There is no target audience that will predominantly respond well to that trailer.

I assumed the hot coals were a metaphor for their support (or lack thereof) during launch.

My suggestion. Larry Bird and Michael Jordan in a gym with 1 computer. They both want to play GW2, so they play a game of horse where each shot gets progressively more difficult to the point of absurdity like shots from the roof and shots from the moon.

Then a picture of a monkey and/or a midget because everyone loves monkeys and midgets.

I literally said “What?” several times watching this trailer.

I mean, we’re such rebels, playing this new and daring MMORPG. It just makes me wanna go outside to spray graffity on walls, evading police choppers. Down with the system!

While there will always be apologists, there is one objective measure that can’t be denied. The purpose of a trailer is to generate interest and ultimately sales for the product in sufficient quantities to justify the cost of making and showing the trailer.

This trailer without question has failed to do that. It may have been a “calculated” risk, but if that is the case, then I think someone forgot to “carry the one”.

I really REALLY love GW2, and have hardly been away from it outside of work and sleep, but I have to ask regarding this trailer: “what the kitten were you thinking?”

It wasn’t “weird”, it was just bad.

Out of 947,742 views, 6876 likes, 4909 dislikes. people can spin it all they want it wasnt well recieved.

Um, that means it was a smashing success. Almost a million views. That’s the entire point.

knightblaster.8027:

Out of 947,742 views, 6876 likes, 4909 dislikes. people can spin it all they want it wasnt well recieved.

Um, that means it was a smashing success. Almost a million views. That’s the entire point.

It’s a trailer on youtube, for one of the biggest releases this summer. A million views isn’t that noteworthy. It could be anything, and it’d get at least that many.

Do you honestly believe that a more well liked trailer would get less??

Critique on this specific trailer has nothing to do with viewers’ intelligence. It’s its ability to entice new players that got lost in translation, making it ineffectual for the masses.

I do hope they’ll come up with something less abstract and more appealing.

The trailer did nothing for me personally… I knew exactly what the message was watching it and I hope that it had the desired effect on it’s target audience, because if I was only just deciding about buying the game this trailer would be a considerable factor in the “con” collumn.

I absolutely love the idea in the OP though – got chills just from imagining the Charr example.

That trailer was ridiculous. Well, the beginning was, I closed the window after a while.

Lots of opinions and very few facts. I suppose that the people who didn’t like it generally already play the game. That’s my gut feeling. If it brings in more sales then it will be successful. I get what they were trying to do and no I didn’t hate it, even though it wasn’t directed at me but I can see how it would work for a specific target audience. In any case….people are talking about it.

Gehenna.3625:

Lots of opinions and very few facts. I suppose that the people who didn’t like it generally already play the game. That’s my gut feeling. If it brings in more sales then it will be successful. I get what they were trying to do and no I didn’t hate it, even though it wasn’t directed at me but I can see how it would work for a specific target audience. In any case….people are talking about it.

Just so. That’s why I keep wondering where it’s appeared outside of GW2-related media. Is it on television, theaters, etc? Is it running on TV’s in restaurants, medical clinics, your local Walmart?

That’s what I’m curious to know. My Asura mesmer wants to study reactions to it.

;)

Careful guys. I got an infraction for sharing my opinion on this in a similar thread last week. And my post wasn’t nearly as lambasting as some of the others here (or even the OP for that matter).

Anyways…no sir I didn’t like it. But I do admire that Anet stood behind their marketing team by telling us all we already bought the game, so we aren’t their target audience. Insinuating it wasn’t made for us, so it only makes sense we wouldn’t associate with or understand how it’s supposed to sell copies. Well we are consumers, gamers and the core demographic, so that seemed a bit snooty to me. But at least it was a response.

I actually thought it was some anti-Illuminati propaganda or something lol.

i shot a cannon at Zhaitan for 10 mins . So yeah that was pretty much my time is now.

When i saw the trailor on the main page i thought oh i bet this will be some really cool cinematic style video for the game so i was excited to check it out. so i clicked it and no offense but i thought the first half of it was really corny and to me made no sense. if ive never heard of guild wars and saw that on tv i wouldnt be interested in checking out this game at all.

Adding my “wtf was that” on the list.. If they’d just cut to the last 2 seconds before the transition to in-game play I’d be SOLD.. Then again I guess I’ve just never been intelligent enough to be appealed by completely off-target intros.

Seriously if my friend had showed me that trailer when he first told me about GW2 it would’ve taken a LOT more convincing to pre-purchase.

@Amiron.1067
I can be close minded if i want. you dont need to get so hurt when someone is

Yeah, ANet I love you and I love this game, but that was a big steamy one.

I hated it to be honest and yes I did understand what it tried to “say”. That video is completely coherent with a particular ideology that impregnates this game and I believe such agenda might hurt the game more than gameplay itself in the long run. The worst part of it all was how much hype they (probably) intentionally created for it, while people were actually expecting a live-action trailer (like Skyrim’s) or some CG cinematics. Please ArenaNet, rid your gorgeous and fun game of this sort of ultra-modern crap.

I rewatched the trailer. It still made me laugh, which I guess is good.

I was amused by the parkore punk girl wearing a gas mask, I was unsure why she had it on while running and jumping the fence, but then I realized that she was wearing it to avoid inhaling the fumes and contaminates from the spray can she was using to tag. And I thought she was just a hipster!

In the end, it is way better for the game that they made the trailer they did, rather than wasting a bunch of money on some CGI video that has nothing to do with the actual gameplay- take SWTOR for example, those trailers were pretty good, and exciting… and then you play the game which is a real bore.

Keep putting the $$$ money where it matters, into the actual game development.