The video game industry has long had significant ties to the film industry. Video games and movies are two forms of media that serve to entertain and tell a story that captivates the audience. Combined, they form an extremely powerful marketing strategy for the promotion of video games, as evidenced by the growing popularity of live-action game trailers.

The game promotion period, which frequently begins before the release of a game, is vital. It’s when you can cut through the noise and build a lot of hype and anticipation for your game. Among all ways of promoting a game, trailers are considered one of the most popular and well-received. Promotional video game trailers come in various forms, but traditionally, they tend to focus on showcasing gameplay and some gameplay mechanics while not revealing much about the universe in which the game takes place. It's more of a look at what to expect from the game rather than setting the tone for the story and feel of the game. This results in a much less immersive experience for the consumer, and that’s why it’s important to complement the technical aspect of the game with a more cinematic and artistic take.

Live-action game trailers essentially utilise the medium of movies – which is widely considered more predominant than the medium of video games – to incite our emotions more easily, whether joy, nostalgia, curiosity, sorrow, or anger. By appealing to something familiar, you can reach a much wider audience, not just existing players. You can instantly take things to the next level by introducing a human element to the universe through look-alike casting or even surprise celebrity cameos. Just take a look at the official live-action trailer for Elden Ring featuring actress Ming-Na Wen. Characters are an essential component of any universe, and by putting them in real-life situations, for example, or revealing different bits of their personalities, you can make the game more appealing and more memorable to players and non-players alike.

But there are also visual and sound aspects to consider. With immersive world design and realistic visual and sound effects, you can sell something that’s also visually and auditorily pleasing to both the existing player base and the general public. Live-action trailers provide an almost endless stream of creative possibilities, thus giving room to truly connect with the audience on different levels and show some humour where it's due. By dramatising what it’s like to play the game, you’re simulating the feel and impact you want the game to have.

Such trailers are hardly new to the industry. Consider the live-action trailers of Halo 3: ODST, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Call of Duty: Black Ops III, to name a few, all of which have garnered millions of views. They’re proof of how much can be crammed into just two minutes and how much hype these two minutes can build within an audience. More importantly, they show that their companies are willing to go the extra mile to captivate their audience. Some have gone much further, producing entire movies and shows around the game’s universe, such as The Witcher, Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog, Tomb Raider, and The Last of Us, which will be released next year. Imagine just how much of the mainstream public now knows and cares about these franchises as a result of such ventures.

Of course, the budgets attached to such endeavours can be overwhelmingly high. But the production of live-action trailers remains accessible to those hoping to enter the industry. You don’t necessarily need a high triple-A budget to produce an enticing live-action trailer. In fact, you can immerse your audience into the world you’ve created at an average budget of £20,000, thanks to small and medium-sized production teams. For example, a local film production company in London has revealed that they’ve directed and produced live-action game trailers at costs ranging from £6,000-£12,000. These trailers were at most 90 seconds in length and had a good deal of VFX work involved. One project cost only £6,000 and got a little over 50,000 views, while another project cost around £10,000-£12,000 and got over 200,000 views. Not bad for medium-sized! The typical timeline for such projects ranges from 3-6 months with a maximum of 3 days for shooting per project. The post-production stage is often the lengthiest of all, but this can ultimately be reduced with a slightly higher budget.

If you would like to know more about these projects, what they entail, and how to get in on them at very accessible rates, make sure to hit us up and make use of that FREE consultation. Ukie members get special treatment!