At this point, it’s pretty clear: the Living World trailers are not very good. They’re not exciting for existing players, and they’re not intriguing for new players. I don’t know what ArenaNet are trying to achieve with these trailers, but it’s just not working. They need to either drastically improve their approach, or change their approach to one they can execute on.
The chief problem with all the trailers, but especially with the recap trailers, is that they don’t mean anything to an audience who isn’t familiar with the game. The recap trailers are very exposition-heavy, in the way that bad fantasy is, where the author explains who begat whom and the houses and the various kingdoms and you have no context for any of it and no reason to care about any of these relationships. The choice to use a disconnected narrator who breathlessly intones lore emphasises the effect. It does not help that the narrator’s scripts use bizarre word choices, like describing Scarlet’s campaign as a ‘journey’, and is packed with cliches. Focusing on the story in trailers to such an extent suggests that a) the story is the focus, over gameplay, and b) it’s not very good.
If you’re advertising a story, you need to show the basic elements of a story: character, and conflict. Compare either of these two trailers to sister studio Carbine’s open beta trailer for WildStar. It’s the closest in tone of all their trailers, so it’s a good base for comparison. Notice how quickly character and conflict come into play: character from the guy in his spaceship going ‘wow’ at a planet, who is having a human emotion we can empathise with, we get motivation for about twenty seconds as the tension builds, and then we see conflict nearly half-way through, leaving a full minute to show all the various ways exciting problems will happen. We could just as easily compare ArenaNet’s trailers to Hollywood’s output; the same problems apply, although Hollywood is generally better at obscuring structure, which makes it less useful as a case study.
For instance, the Alien trailer appears not to start off with characters at all, but even then the trailer makes clear why we should care: the tension of the opening titles slowly fading in keeps us invested until we realise we’re looking at an alien egg, which starts to dramatically hatch – and then there’s Sigourney Weaver running down a corridor, and very bad things will happen. Once we see the character, we get the motivation and conflict in one hit. Anyway, you have to crawl before you walk; no-one’s cutting a trailer like the Alien trailer if they can’t get the basics right.
For existing players, though, the Living World trailers don’t really work either. I’m thinking specifically about the four update preview trailers that were used instead of update pages. These trailers are focused on existing players, and it’s assumed that third-party sites will fill in the context for new players. You don’t need to explain to existing players where the story is up to; the purpose of these trailers is to tease and excite. Usually, in film, this means quick cuts, fast action, high-tempo music. What we see instead is very slow music, sweeping shots, and a lack of action. It’s very hard, from these trailers, to understand what players will actually be doing, and so it doesn’t work to build anticipation.
What’s particularly disappointing is that we’ve seen much, much better from ArenaNet. The Wintersday trailer sells the mood of the holiday wonderfully, in part because it avoids character in favour of a mood-appropriate bit of poetry, and it’s clear to existing players how things have changed. The Super Adventure Box trailer is a pitch-perfect parody that apes a real 80s ad, so character and context are clear to non-players, and it shows gameplay so existing players can understand what it is they’ll actually do.
Who is putting together these new trailers? Is it the marketing department? (Can you borrow Carbine’s marketing department?) Whoever it is, they’re not helping.
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