The Micro Trailer
Hyper Casual strategies applied to AA indie games.
These are my notes and references on how to deliver a kick-ass trailer in 2022 and hopefully it can help you too! This article is aimed at indie game studios working on a new PC game, who are mostly unknown, have a limited marketing budget, no publisher, and want to grow their audience, communities and wishlist count.
→ Your first trailer is a critical milestone that can make or break your game. And you’re very likely making and publishing it without the help of a game publisher or PR firm. But everyone will be judging it as if you had. So what can you do to maximize success?
The idea is to focus on a lean trailer MVP which only last 5 seconds: the Micro Trailer. Cheap to produce and easy to iterate on, it will prove your product strategy and launch your game. It’s such a cool little clip that everyone just HAS to share it.
The Micro trailer is the ultimate catchy clip, featuring your product. It’s really hard to do, and many games are not youtubable enough to even reach such viral heights. But understanding its concept will help your game even if you don’t decide to go that route, because it could be your guide to a really catchy trailer intro.
But before we dive into the Micro Trailer, some general tips that will make your trailer easier to be discovered, liked and shared:
Focus your efforts: define the trailer type, publishing format and the targeted audience
Having a clear product: title, key image and tagline to instantly answer “what is it?” with something understandable and catchy
At least one feature with high youtubability to catch people’s attention in the trailer intro
Accessible visuals that let anyone understand what this is about, instantly
Keep it short, maximize quality, only show amazing shots, don’t try to answer all the questions
I focus a lot of my attention on the first few seconds, and here is why.
You Have 3 Seconds
Everyone knows the term “elevator pitch’ which is a short version of your product pitch that can fit inside an elevator ride. This is probably what you would have needed for a game a few years back, but I strongly believe that elevator pitches are now way too slow. You now need a micro pitch, something that might not even have words, something people can just see, instantly understand and catch on to. No one is going to wait for an entire elevator ride to know about your new idea. We live in a world much faster than that.
It’s very likely your average customer have a very low attention span. Most people are doom scrolling Facebook, Tiktok, Reddit, Twitter, Steam for hours per day, bored by most new ideas or products. An evolved species who built natural defenses against a noxious ad-filled environment. The next level of banner blindness, but for anything new, everyone enjoying their own bubble of truth.
Not only people have low attention span, but they also don’t want to make any effort in knowing something new. They want to relax and be entertained, they want your product on a plater, served with a lot of fun, explosive visuals and for free. Hyper casual games have been exploring that space since 2017, and Voodoo coined the term Youtubability, which is about making your game eye-catching, easy to understand and super appealing / satisfying / exciting / visually addictive. It is an art and a science.
In most cases you have about 3 seconds to convince someone that your game is worth checking out. This is true for most strangers on the internet but even for your friends or your family, people are just that impatient. As a result your PC trailer is really made of 2 distinct parts:
The intro which needs to be interesting enough to retain viewers more than 3 or 5 seconds
The trailer to dive deeper into the game, only for people who care enough about your product
If you fail your intro, you fail your trailer. So let’s focus on these first few seconds.
The Intro
What is the twist of your game? How is it innovative and yet visually addictive? If you can answer these questions visually and with flair, then you will have a great intro. It’s impossible to come up with a definite list, but here are some ingredients you’ll probably need:
Something cool right away, you probably cannot afford slow beautiful shots, logos or fade in, except if you’re an established brand
Make your new innovative idea accessible to everyone, instantly
To have something unique = the micro pitch, which makes viewers want to know more
It should answer the “what is it?” question with a very powerful answer
Note that it can be very deceiving to look at famous IP trailers, or trailers from big publishers, because these can afford to slow down their intro. Just because their audience is already hooked, they are trusted. But you’re not. Not just yet!
To learn more about product & trailer design:
Save The Cat, is about screenwriting and product design in the film industry
The Art of Innovation, is product design and innovation 101
The Innovator’s Dilemma, is all about disruption and how to compete
Derek Lieu Academy is a list of YouTube videos specifically about game trailers
I’ve Watched 150+ Game Trailers So You Don’t Have To, game trailer tips from Berke Sayıl
The Micro Trailer
I really hard to give a recipe for a good intro. But the good news is that you can actually market-fit that intro or key moment directly in Twitter / Tiktok / Facebook, exactly like what hyper casual games do. You don’t need to produce the full length trailer for months to realize the intro (or even the product) was bad! Make what you think is the best 5 seconds clip your game can have, and test it for real on social media. Don’t wait for months to make what is best about your game. And if people don’t react to it, then you will need to iterate and polish or even pivot a bit, to find something more juicy and exciting to present.
Many smart and talented PC indie dev are already doing it, just search Twitter top tweets in #gamedev with 25k+ likes. Usually these hit tweets are from projects that are still in the prototyping phase.
I call this the Micro Trailer. It’s much cheaper to produce. And it’s much easier to test and iterate on. It will help you to understand what your audience wants, and what your product is about. It will define your game for thousands of people who will like that super short clip. It is your product, in the palm of your hands. People don’t actually need to see your full trailer if your Micro Trailer is good enough, all you need is a useful call to action following it: wishlist, follows, subscribe to newsletter, or even donate.
For example of great micro trailers you should explore the hyper casual space:
Any video by the Rising High Academy (Homa Academy)
CPI Case Studies like this one by Voodoo
Sharing your intimate prototypes can be scary. You will be copied and people will steal your ideas or your style. But it’s still a great place to be in, because you’re now in a very good spot to find a publisher / investors who are a good fit. Long before you make your first real trailer!
Once you have that great Micro Trailer or trailer intro, then the hardest part is probably to stay true to your product, to stay lean and keep its soul intact. It’s so easy to make a game very complex, I’ve made that mistake so many times already. So I’ll leave you with this legendary quote so that hopefully we’ll both keep it in mind:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. (…) It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. (…) You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”
