The Importance of Trailers and Cinematics in Video Games

Animated game trailers give an audience a taste of what a video game will be about and give animators an opportunity to entice potential customers. In-game animated cinema and cutscenes offer even more creativity and content in an already-exciting form of entertainment. Utilizing short movies in games, no matter the type of game, bolsters the value and provides a method to engage the player even further than before.

Here are a few reasons to use animated trailers and cinemas to improve video games.

Trailers Can Promote and Market the Game

Much like a film, you need a way to showcase your game and create a buzz before launch. With animated game trailers, you can show off gameplay and give a taste of what your product will offer. If you are making a fighting game, professional animators can create thrilling trailers that incorporate clips or footage of some of the playable characters in a match. If you are making a sandbox game with many landscapes and settings an animated trailer is the ideal method to showcase your world.

You could compare the idea of a game trailer to an animated explainer video, which is a short clip that describes and details a product or a service. Since many trailers don’t need to show footage of someone actually playing the game, animators are free to show off the world, the characters, and give an idea of the style of gameplay to explain the game to viewers. It is an effective way to market to a highly visual audience.

Another Way of Immersion

Video game culture revolves around word-of-mouth recommendation, so games need to impress to make it big. In-game animated cinemas allow video game animators to add another level of storytelling. With these cutscenes and films, animators can provide a deeper story, show characters talking to and interacting with each other, or show an important plot point like the villain capturing the damsel in distress. The type of animated cinema depends on the type of video game, but you can find a good place for these short movie clips in any game.

The Disney Interactive video game Epic Mickey 2 features animated cinemas to move the story of the game along, and keeping with the Mickey theme remind players of the films the game is based on. With animated cinema, you have the opportunity to provide a similar feeling to your viewers.

Freedom to Do More

In a cutscene, your animated characters are able to do more, such as communicate with other characters or listen to other characters’ conversations. There are also things that perhaps can only be done in an animated clip, like having a character jump over a wall in a game where you do not have that ability. You can also show more realistic dialogue and conversations between characters, as they could be more lifelike and responsive in animated cutscenes as opposed to just in-game depictions. This, of course, depends entirely on the type of your game, but you have the freedom to do whatever you need with cutscenes.

Animated video game trailers and cinematic scenes combine the feel of a movie with the style of a video game, allowing your players to experience the best of both worlds.

Author's BioPowerhouse Animation is a traditional 2D animation studio based in Austin, Texas. Since 2001, Powerhouse has been making ideas come to life through animation, illustration, and motion graphics. With a staff of 35 in-house artists, animators, videographers and designers, Powerhouse works on a wide variety of projects and has created animation for companies including EA, Microsoft, Hasbro, Disney Interactive, Sony, Pladom, Playforge, Gree, Kabam and more.