Apple’s App Store recently started allowing developers to include preview videos for their apps, which I think is a brilliant move because, especially in the case of games, a short video communicates much more than a handful of screenshots.
I whipped up a 30-second summation of Blowfish Meets Meteor:
It might lack the epic flair of our original trailer, but it shows off a lot more of the game (the entire 6 worlds as opposed to just 3 in the original, including some boss fights that you don’t encounter until much later in the game), and I think more accurately depicts the experience BMM provides. We wrestled with the quandary of whether or not we should reveal as much as we did, but ultimately we decided that in the mobile market (and the expectation of a shallow experience associated with it) it was important that people see the full depth of the game than simply worrying that we’d be spoiling it.
By the way, the preview video above was made with Apple’s built-in video editing software, iMovie, which is very intuitive to use if you want to churn out something quickly. It was my first go at video editing since working on animated shorts during my university years, and it’s been fun to get back into it. Moreover, as already mentioned, videos are far more powerful than screenshots and I think they need to play an integral role in any marketing campaign. We noticed this especially at GDC 2014 where so many people were drawn to our booth because we had BMM’s trailer on loop on a 47″ TV (which was the result of an amusing battle of big-screens between us and a couple Norwegians at a booth next to ours).
Editing preview videos in Apple’s iMovie.
I think one of the (many) mistakes we made with BMM’s marketing was the general lack of videos. We put all of our effort into a single, energetic trailer, but that isn’t enough. Many game developers talk about releasing teaser clips from very early on in the development cycle to gradually accrue interest, even if the videos themselves don’t communicate a whole lot (but in a way that’s a good thing, as at that stage the appeal is largely in its mystery). This is something that we’ve been bearing in mind for Blowfish Burst, and the time for teaser clips is fast approaching (if it hasn’t passed already).
And I’m all right with that, because video editing, while initially appearing quite daunting, ends up being a lot of fun.
– Ian
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