You’re going through your DVR, catching up on your favorite television program after a hard day at work.  A commercial comes on and you are ready to hit fast forward on the remote until you realize it’s a commercial for a hot new video game about to come out next month.   The game looks intense and incredibly real.  You think, damn I can’t wait till the game comes out so I can run out and buy it.  Here’s the rub, the trailer that you watched may have little to no actual game play in it.  The trailer often is merely a marketing tool, a great visual element to help tell the story of what the game will be, but isn’t exactly what the game will look like and scenes from the trailer certainly won’t be in the game.  The question I have is, does it matter? Should the game play and the storytelling / marketing pieces be the same or should the storytelling / marketing piece evoke the look of the world, but not have actual game play involved in the piece?   As someone who isn’t an avid gamer, I was sort of shocked when I found out that this practice was common.  I equated it to watching a trailer for a movie that you are excited to see in the theater.  You run out and spend $15, but the scenes you were excited to see in the trailer aren’t actually in the movie.  So how do gamers actually feel?  I spoke to some to find out more about this on – going debate.

During my conversation with Aaron Sternlicht, the EP of Games for Zoic Studios (http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/08/03/popping-my-gaming-cherry/), I learned there are two ways a gaming company can create their trailer or commercial, in engine (showing the actual game engine) and pre-rendered (CGI).  From my understanding, today most companies use both.  I wanted to know why people would have a problem with it.  Sternlicht doesn’t think they have a problem with the ads themselves as much as the CGI component of the advertisement.  “What they have a problem with is CG.  What the issue they have is most gamers when they see something their reaction is, ‘well ok cool it’s CG, but I want you to show me the game, that’s what I want to see.’  Don’t give me a head fake.  Many companies have been burned by this.  As such, the majority of the trailers we produce are under of the auspices of being ‘the game + 20%.’   So it’s CG, but leverages game assets and is still extremely tied to the games aesthetics. There are some rare cases when this isn’t true.  Blur Studios does a bunch of tremendous trailers (one of the top animation companies for game trailers).   For example, some of their work, like what they did recently for the Old Republic, is rather far removed from the actual aesthetics of the actual game.

Another example is the Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed trailers

The textures in game are in no way the quality of these incredibly hyper real trailers.  Yet it doesn’t matter.  It’s such an entertainment, story-driven vehicle that it doesn’t matter.  It’s gorgeous eye candy, true, but it’s still part of the brand, and as such a great marketing piece.”

However, sometimes this can backfire.  “The only big no-no is trying to pass off pre-rendered as in engine.  ‘Bullshots’ (doctored screen shots for marketing to make them look better) are very common, but frowned upon by gamers,” says Zach Haefner.  Haefner, a Co-founder of Downsized Games and currently the UI Director at Killspace Entertainment has been working in the gaming industry for six years and has also been a gamer since he was in junior high when he bought a Sega game console while all of his friends had Nintendo.  I talked to Haefner about his feelings on the marketing aspects of the gaming industry and whether he felt that the industry was essentially pulling a fast one on the consumer, “There is a sense of them trying to pull a fast one, but if you know in advance that the trailer is nothing like the game it excites you in a different way.  You look at it as its own stand alone thing not associated to the game at all.  You can appreciate it for the trailer, it tells a good story and it excites me.”  For Haefner, he researches the game to know what to expect and as someone working in the gaming industry Haefner feels that pre render is acceptable for marketing.  “There are a lot of factors that go into how you want to portray your game.  Pre rendered is usually kind of a turn – key solution, you just tell an outside vendor what you want and they’ll go and do their own thing.  The game company can focus on working on the game.  If you do the trailer in engine, you have to hire on all these other animators; it’s a lot more work internally rather than externally… The game comes together in the tenth or eleventh hour and you have to start the build up for the marketing of the game months before the game comes out.”   So if gamers understand this, why is it such a debate?  Why should gamers care whether the marketing of a game is done pre rendered or in engine? “It is kind of a cop out for companies to try to make their product look better.  If you are promised one thing and you get something else that is going to cause controversy.   If you are trying to make the game look like a movie and the game looks nothing like that, the gamer is going to feel cheated because it doesn’t live up to their expectations,“ says Haefner.

When Zoic Studios did a trailer for Killzone 2 in 2009, it was mandated that Zoic produce the commercial in engine.  They learned from 2005, and wanted to show off how great the product actually looked.  Says Aaron Sternlicht EP of Gaming at Zoic, “When we went to do the commercial, we ended up doing it in their engine.  They were very excited about that because they could showcase an original idea that was just designed to be an advertisement, but using their game.  The quality came out fantastic and the final result was SONY releasing a playable version of the spot on PSN.   Everyone could see for themselves that it wasn’t a head fake, and the game just looked that good.”

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1896788887?bclid=1745181321&bctid=16942867001

Louis Goldberg has been an avid gamer for years and he says that gamers know when a game trailer is pre rendered or not. “I personally don’t mind it so much, but I do prefer it if advertising is done with actual game play. In many pre-rendered cases, what you are seeing is a cut scene in the game so you at least expect to see that scene when you play.  Does it piss me off to see pre-rendered CGI in game marketing? Not really, but I often wish they’d at least show some game play.”  Goldberg normally doesn’t buy a game solely on the commercial, “There are online videos of game play, early player reviews, and a lot of times there are demos you can download (those save me money when I play a demo that I don’t like). Maybe the point of those ads is to get gamers to hear the name and look into it more, because I think often they will.”

Matt West, an avid gamer and former CNN correspondent who covered the intersection of tech and entertainment – with a heavy focus on the gaming industry believes that it is virtually impossible to have the marketing piece showcase the in engine of the actual game.  “What ends up happening is that pre-release animation is created and used as marketing content and ends up becoming  the ‘image of record’ representing the game.   West sites the game “Call of Duty: Black Ops” as an example.  “From my eye, it looks almost entirely to be created out of cut-scene animation vs. actual gameplay. The mechanics of actual game play are so much more complex than that required for cut-scenes and as I said before, is usually the primary reason this practice exists. Unfortunately, the length of time it takes to develop a game prevents the marketing department from waiting until a product is fully completed before going out into the marketplace with content and game play. It’s the nature of the business… but not necessarily one that serves the product – or for that matter, the medium very well.”

As technology changes and games can be produced faster, in five years will the issue of pre render vs. in engine still be a debate.  For Sternlicht he isn’t sure.  “I honestly don’t know.  I personally love doing the CG projects. They’re fantastic.  Judging by a lot of the reactions, they are very successful. With that said, look at a game like Modern Warfare 2, which came out last fall.  All of the marketing for that was game capture from the game and edited really well.   Ant Farm did the advertising for that and that is the largest selling entertainment vehicle ever.  They did a billion dollars in like two months.   It was crazy. So you know I think in the end if you have a great product and you can sell it, do it. “

I personally agree with Sternlicht, I think if the company can show the game play in the trailer it would be better.  I am all about creating an entertaining and engaging marketing component, but as someone just getting into gaming I would want to actually see what it is I was about to play.

So I Design Your Eyes Readers I ask you, if you are a gamer how do you feel about pre render vs. in engine in game marketing?  Let me know your thoughts and reactions to this post!