Marketing of board games has long been confined to written & print media (perhaps rightfully), with minor exceptions in the distant past and one notable recent exception: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/tideofiron_downloads.html

Yet this “video preview” for Tide of Iron suffers from being overly long and trying to communicate too much. What I mean is, the advantage of video over other media is entirely emotional. The information presented in this video is interesting, and it’s impressive to see all the components in a new way. But the vast majority of the content in the video could have been better presented in standard written form with still photography.

A “trailer” as I think of it need not communicate anything but excitement. A good piece of video marketing is almost exclusively emotion. The object is to get people interested enough to delve into the details, not to try and communicate everything about the game in such an informationally inefficient medium as video.

It should deal with the topic rather than the details, the spirit of the game rather than the mechanics.

With this in mind, I give you a trailer concept for an already-released game, Twilight Struggle. Talk about a topic jam-packed with theme and history, this game is an excellent candidate for such a trailer. I had to kind of choose a period to focus on, so I chose the Kennedy era, as did the game’s title.

The result is, one of the best speeches in American history gets to help market the IDEA of the game, instead of awkward developers who were never meant to step in front of a camera being forced to try and explain fiddly DETAILS of the game.

At any rate, enjoy, and let me know what you think:



(Apologies to Mr. Horner for swooping his music - and I adapted the narration straight from the description on BGG; remember this is not an official video at all, purely a fan experiment. Also incorporated the artwork & logo redux I worked on with my friend Daniel McGinty: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/169196 )

video doesnt play back for me, i have qt 7.1.x

Dude, I never had the urge to play TS before seeing your trailer, and now it sounds pretty cool. Worked on me, good job.

Excellent production quality. And if you were working to stir my emotions, it worked. I want this game now...badly.

I agree, an evocative teaser / trailer is a more effective use of the video format than an informative inventory of the mechanics and pieces. Still, I appreciate the effort and resources FFG put into the TOI video. For the most part it was very good.

I like your video (although it would fit the theme better if the historical clips weren't so skewed towards one side). It's a good exemplar for how a board game trailer that is meant to build excitement more than provide basic game instructions should be constructed.

Wow!

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, so I think you can count that as a success.

Fabulous job Mark

Yeah, I considered the "patriotism" thing, but it's really hard to balance out both sides (especially using the Kennedy speech) in the time I had alotted. Found some great footage of Stalin speaking though, but that doesn't do much good as it's mostly in Russian. Plus, hey, America won.


It would be interesting to try and make one that was more balanced, but it would ultimately be less efective I think and just come across as wishy-washy.

Thanks, everyone!

1. I'd love to check it out, but your server blows... I am sure I will get a chance to see it sometime later today when it fully loads.

2. I don't think videos HAVE TO BE limited to trailers/teasers. I didn't see the FFG video in the same vein as a trailer; sure it fit that role, but it was purposely made more than that.

I think this is important to recognize. It may be enough to get someone excited about a game, especially if the audience is largely comprised of average joes. But what FFG was doing was A. getting people excited about the game, and B. addressing some points of concern/doubt that had been voiced in the gaming community.

There is such a backlash against hype, quite obviously most when a product (whether it be a movie, book, game, etc.) doesn't live up to it. Movies and books and things of a more story-based type can't afford to reveal too much for obvious reasons. But if someone fairly in the know regarding games is interested in a particular game, they have to get around the hype and see certain elements for how they will play or handle in the game.

I think FFG was able to straddle the line here between getting people hyped and revealing how certain elements will work in the game that it settled a lot of questions in people's mind about whether TOI is the game for them.

I'm not disagreeing that the ToI video accomplished what it set out to do. Just saying that it was the wrong goal to begin with. BUT It's neither here nor there, it fulfills a purpose, and is cool as well. Just explaining my thinking behind this experiment. As a video professional, it pains me to watch people trying to force video become something it's not good at being: a purveyor of data.

it's a nice video, but in terms of a 'trailer' it shows so little of the game and gameplay that had i not already played and enjoyed the game, i'd be a little suspicious of what the makers of the trailer were trying to hide.
a trailer\commercial for a game is definitely a tough thing to pull off since games aren't typically that exciting to watch being played. (see the great geeklist of a bunch of old game commercials on youtube) a balance needs to be struck between the granduer and emotion that stock footage can evoke and the actual game.
the ffg video preview is coming from a different angle. it's a pretty standard format for video game mini-docs and it's nice to see it about a board game. i really enjoyed seeing all the details and didn't think it was overlong or too full of details, and i enjoyed seeing the developers and the people behind the game. if FFG was creating a video as a 'trailer' or a commercial i'm sure it'd come out much different, this video preview is obviously more akin to a extra on a dvd than a trailer. so it's not really fair to try to compare them as the goals of the two were much different.
and as for the "awkward developers who were never meant to step in front of a camera..." comment. well, that's a bit uncalled for, and frankly, the narrative voice in the twighlight struggle has a bit too much emotion (it sounds like they're about to cry)

good effort though says Abe.

now i gotta go rent me some JFK docs...