As the game gets closer to release, it’s time to start dividing my time between marketing as well as development. So much has changed since the last time I did that with a new game (it was 1999), but one obvious difference is that games have trailers.
So here’s ours:
This is a “teaser trailer,” which to me means there are no spoilers about the story. That was a pretty big constraint on selecting art and game play, but I think I managed to get a good selection of artwork in.
My design phase also tried to embrace the fact that the game is very different from the typical game on the market. So the trailer needed to stand out a little, while still being a decent video. This meant no gratuitous animation (lots of trailers these days seem to add animation to static images) and avoiding the portentous announcer voice many trailers have.
Rather than get good at video editing, I found someone who could do that. One thing I did have to figure out was how to actually distribute the video. “Upload to YouTube” isn’t necessarily as simple as saying it, and YouTube has changed things so that it’s hard to annotate the video with clickable links. (That’s why it helps to subscribe to our YouTube channel, which will let us level up and enable that.) My impression is that YouTube is not at all oriented to game developers (as opposed to game players who want to share their play sessions).
As usual, the product went through several refinements, including QA noticing artifacts in the voiceover track.
It’s nice to be able to show a little more of the game, and it’s going to make it easier to work on the next videos.
P.S. No, we have not announced a release date.
So excited for Six Ages! 🙂 I enjoyed your trailer – the art and character portraits are looking absolutely gorgeous; and from what I could briefly see of the UI it’s looking very polished and I could tell the team is taking a lot of care to preserve that classic KoDP feel.
The only constructive criticism I can think of is that I found the music track playing during the trailer to be somewhat underwhelming. The music recorded for KoDP was very memorable and unique, and used a variety of interesting instruments (flutes, pipes, drums etc) to create a distinctive flavor of a complex tribal culture very different to our own; this really contributed to the atmosphere. The current trailer music seemed more like a generic MIDI trumpet fanfare track that you could expect to find in any fantasy game. Anyway, if you need to reuse any of the original music from KoDP I wouldn’t mind one bit as I still enjoy it a great deal!
Congrats for the teaser. This will be a first day purchase for me.
A question: Players will need to memorise lore , like the legends of KODP?
Any word on preorders maybe soon? 🙂
Not gonna lie…this looks amazing, been following this for a while and I cant wait to get my hands on the game. Just one thing…You might wanna find someone with a deeper and slightly more dramatic voice to actually voice in the trailers. I believe it would make much more of an impact then.
While it was a matter of some debate, avoiding the clichéd announcer voice was intentional. Six Ages is not a standard game and it didn’t seem like the video had to be just like everyone else’s. But this isn’t something we are locked into.
I agree that it shouldn’t be the melodramatic bad acting that so many games use, but I still would have rather at least heard it from someone with an older-sounding voice. Maybe this is just my prejudice but I think it’s one a lot of people share, and that’s that it’s hard to take something all that seriously when you’re told about it by a kid. And since it’s marketing, you want to use preconceptions to give people the idea that your game does have the gravitas that your budget might not (I doubt you’d have lost much game design learning to do that level of powerpoint-tier video editing) and leave reshaping those conceptions until after people have bought the game.
This is very funny. I am fairly sure that’s David’s voice and he’s an actual grandfather.
Cannot wait!!!
I’m Glad to have helped put the trailer together. Hope all goes well with ironing out the rest of the game!
Oh the game is looking so good. I can’t wait to get it on iPhone and buy it for several of my friends! I’m going to advertise it to everyone I know!
Excitement and fear. A violent attack on my thesis, hahaha. 😀
Couldn’t have said it any better! I’m also scared for my thesis.
Far out, my jimmies are rustled! I’m so excited!
I’ll wait patiently, be the best game you can be Six Ages!
Shut up and take my money!
Whoa, those alien folks look really … well, alien Curious about their backstory.
I guess the waiting is almost over.
Really excited for the game! Thanks for keeping us updated.