Scripting for Game Trailers Part 1: Emotions

A strong video game trailer will keep viewers interested all the way to the end, though that’s easier said than done. While there are many ways to hold onto interest, the emotions you’re inspiring in your audience is an excellent tool for retention. Emotions can create a path, with a beginning, middle, and end, that guides viewers through the trailer. That path can be relatively straight, or it can have a few twists and turns.

Emotions are an important element of game trailers because you want your core audience to know how they will feel when they play the game. People who enjoy a certain type of game are looking to recapture a particular feeling (empowerment, escapism, relaxation, etc). You want your trailer to make it clear that this game is a good opportunity for them to feel that way again.

Let’s take a look at an example. Here's a trailer I made for Wavetale: 

What emotions are evoked, in this trailer? For now let’s just focus on what the visuals and dialogue are making us feel:

1. Interest, Escapism: The first dialogue lines explain the premise of the world, which is very different from our own. 

2. Discovery: We also the player character surfing in multiple locations, and the dialogue tells us they are driven to explore and learn more about the world of the past. This is a very hero’s journey -esque section, where the protagonist is feeling the call to adventure.

3. Challenge: The stakes are raised as we begin to see combat, and secondary characters being released from a black goo (no spoilers).

4. Intrigue: The personal mystery that makes up the overarching story is teased but not revealed. You will need to play the game yourself to fully understand what is going on.

Consider how these emotions almost feel like a story in themselves, with a beginning (the initial interest and curiosity) and a middle (the challenge and intrigue of something more to be discovered). But the story ends there, without an ending. A trailer is ultimately just a tease of the game, so you're intentionally left without all the answers. You have to engage by playing the game yourself to finish the story.

The list above is also not the full extent of the emotions you might feel while watching the trailer. Emotions come to us through many channels.

Here’s a little exercise you can do, next time you watch a game trailer, to notice all the emotions inspired:

As you're watching, try to think about each of the following elements separately. What emotions does each element make you feel?

• Music

• Character Dialogue

• Narrator Dialogue

• Art style

• Combat Gameplay

• Non-Combat Gameplay

• Bonus: What are the characters shown feeling in the trailer?

Not all of the above will apply to every trailer, of course. But this can help you think about how each element of a trailer has an emotional weight to it, and they all work together to create a stronger resonance with the viewer.

Let’s look at a trailer for a totally different game, and apply the same exercise. Take this trailer Derek Lieu created for Slay the Spire 2: 

So, what emotions does each element inspire? 

• Music: Awe, Suspense, Excitement

• Narrator Dialogue: Dark, Playful

• Title Cards: Playful, Challenge

• Art style: Excitement

• Gameplay: Excitement, Challenge, Empowerment, Mastery

You’ll notice there’s a lot of overlap here, and that’s a good thing. Each element is layering on similar feelings in the viewer, to make the end effect stronger. The music, dialogue, combat—everything is encouraging the viewer to feel excited to play the game for themselves, amused by the tone of the writing, and empowered to achieve mastery in the deckbuilding mechanics.

So, how do you decide what emotions you want your game trailer to convey? Think about what a player might feel when they experience your game for themselves. What are the characters feeling, that players might empathise with? What feelings does the combat evoke? 

When I worked in-house at game publishers, I used to do an exercise with developer teams to help us identify the emotional rewards that their game inspired in players. We would begin with a list of commonly found emotional rewards in games, and assign a number (1 thru 10, 1 being the strongest and 10 the weakest) to determine how strongly that emotion would be felt during gameplay. 

You can have multiples of each number, and you can come up with your own emotional rewards as you go through the exercise. By the end, you’ll have a lot of 10s, 9s, 8s, that you can probably disregard. But your 1s, 2s, and 3s will become the emotional roadmap of your game.

For you to play along at home, this is a starter list of emotional rewards often found in games (Full disclosure, this is a list we used when I worked at Fellow Traveller Games!):

• Collection: The player can collect characters, weapons, cards, or other objects. Their collection can be measured and creates a sense of accomplishment as they progress. This comes up in all sorts of games, from the entire Pokemon franchise to collectible card games to RPGs where you can collect feathers.

• Competition: The player is up against other players and must defeat them in singleplayer or team-based gameplay for a win state. 

• Connection: The game creates a social setting where players can engage with other players across the world. Common in MMOs and MMORPGs.

• Creation: The player can create their own designs and their creativity is its own rewards. This can range from farm layouts in Stardew Valley or interior design in House Flipper or The Sims 4.

• Discovery: The player can explore new locations or uncover secrets. 

• Empathy: The player will feel invested in the story, sharing the characters’ emotional journey as it unfolds.

• Escapism: The game and/or the world it’s set in feels wholly different from the real world, allowing the player to become engrossed and absorbed, leaving the cares of everyday life aside while they play.

• Excitement: The game creates a feeling of high adrenaline in the player, encouraging fast response times and the player is rewarded by being fully engaged.

• Fear: The player feels frightened and anxious during gameplay, in a state of heightened awareness. Common in horror games.

• Frustration: The gameplay requires precision or is influenced by RNG, so failure is built into the gameplay experience. The player will feel a stronger sense of accomplishment when they succeed as a result.

• Growth: The player will begin with something small and improve and grow it over time, so they can appreciate how far they’ve come. This can be seen in builder-type games like Rimworld.

• Joy: The gameplay is accessible and creates a pleasant low-stakes experience for the player. Think  Farmville or Candy Crush.

• Mastery: Gameplay requires skills that the player will learn, creating a sense of increasing ability as they progress. The player feels increasingly powerful and capable, the longer they play.

• Reflection: The game’s story encourages introspection in the player, often mirroring the emotional journey of the protagonist. 

• Relaxation: Gameplay is calming, creating a relief from stress for the player.

• Suspense: The gameplay experience is filled with tension and intrigue, where the player is uncovering a mystery or unsure what’s going to happen next. Common in mystery and horror genres.

• Wonder: The game offers impressive and beautiful spaces to explore, with environmental visuals that inspire awe in the player.

Let’s say that after you did this exercise, you had a tidy list of 5 major emotions that your game evokes. There might well be some obvious overlap in those emotions (Suspense and Fear, for example). Now you know what emotion(s) you might want a viewer of your trailer to walk away feeling.

Every trailer you make for a game does NOT need to include every emotion in your roadmap. But you can pull from these as you develop scripts for multiple trailers. If your game trailer is embued with the emotion(s) your core audience enjoys feeling, you have a greater chance of getting them invested in the game.

Stay tuned for more! Next time we will discuss how MUSIC affects scripting.

This post is part of a series about how scripting for game trailers is made up of several creative factors that all interconnect and combine.

I am releasing these parts a couple days apart, during this week. This is also by no means every single aspect of scripting for trailers. The key thing to keep in mind is that everything is connected, and because of that it’s important to always keeps your goals in mind as you progress with your scripts.