Trailers (change this fucking ten character title rule)

How much do trailers make you want to get a game or deter you away from them?

For me, if they don't include gameplay, and rather snippets of action and cutscenes, as a rule I'll normally wait for the actual gameplay videos to come out and decide then. However, with the newest Singularity trailer I've begun to rethink stuff a little bit.

You see, many of the trailers for games coming out soon tend to have no real marketing value to them other than looking pretty. Many of them, Crysis 2, Gears of War 3, et cetera, tend to opt for showing the gritty setting and having a peaceful song going on in the background. Everything about those games is otherwise unknown and probably uninteresting.

The reason I brought up Singularity is because of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkk4jK_qVkI&fmt=22&annotation_id=annotation_956382&feature=iv which is prerendered, but more than just beauty shots. It shows me what is going to happen in the game other than a generic firefight with more polygons than will actually be in there. It gives me the anticipation that setpieces such as this will happen in-game and feels far more effective than all other Singularity trailers, or nearly all trailers ever.

Are there certain things that get you hyped for games more than just beauty shots and the like?

Generally I prefer trailers that are more geared towards epic, but epic in a sense of just how magnificent it is, now how many explosion you can cram into 60 seconds. A good example of this would be Warcraft trailers. While I love Warcraft RTS and despise WoW, the trailers for both types of games likewise are so incredibly awesome I watch them over and over again. Music is important too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ShSf4Hn-0

Gameplay is always nice though, but usually the beta or demo takes care of that.

Honestly, and this is going to sound like utter bullshit, I never really watched trailers before doing RWEP. I read previews though, and previews can get me interested in a game.

However, speaking of this, you made me think of something that occurred to me the other day. I get very varying view numbers on the RWEP videos. I don't think this has much to do with the quality of each video, if it's funny or not, it's already too late as you've watched it. So what does affect the numbers.

Basically, player awareness of the game. If people know about a game they'll search YouTube for trailers or reviews and might stumble across one of mine. This is further confrimed by the fact that most of my vids get a spike in numbers in the week of release, as people look for reviews. So in other words, I get a very interesting inside look at how well known and searched for certain games can be.

The reason I was thinking about this is because of Red Dead Redemtion. Like I said, most videos spike once they've been released. RDR still hasn't been released and accounts for about 10% of my total video views, which is unprecedented.

In other words, whatever Rockstar is doing to hype RDR seems to be working incredibly well. People are aware of the game and obviously massively hyped for its release.