24hr Exclusive - How To Make an Indie Game Trailer | Game Maker's Toolkit
Hello! Okay, time for something a bit different.
Making a game is hard. Marketing that game can be even harder. A big part of this is making a really powerful, well-paced, and effective trailer. So I thought... why not make a video about it?
I watched tonnes and tonnes of trailers; read, watch, and listened to everything I could from the best trailer makers around; and analysed lots of trailers to provide the best advice I could.
This was a really interesting / weird video to make... because I didn't capture any game footage whatsoever! Just some stuff from the PSN and Switch shops for the beginning. The rest is all trailers off of YouTube! Really strange editing process, but still fun in its own way.
Anyhoo, hope you like - it will be available this time tomorrow for the world! If I made any terrible mistakes, lemme know now while I can still change them ;)
Mark
How To Make an Indie Game Trailer | Game Maker's Toolkit (YouTube)
Comments (12)
Hi. I’m looking to polish my own games and get help with PR. Do you often help indies with this kind of stuff? I’m working on my own Patreon page too.
Loved this one a lot, Mark!
Hi! Great video, as always. It's nice that you can take us on these tangents that are critically important to video games as a whole. I did want to highlight one offhand comment in the video (at 5:08) about Fallout 76. It felt a bit more negative than your usual videos, kind of like a burn more than a criticism related to the topic. If you ever decide to follow up this video, maybe it's a nice idea to talk about video capture artists as well? I had no idea that job existed until recently, but their role is vital for trailers, especially when shots require a camera angle or motion that doesn't exist in the game itself.
Really enjoyed this! Not sure if it's worth making the change, but the quotes at 1:12 and 2:07 both have awkward-looking hyphenation on the first line ("informa-tion" and "some-one" respectively). Maybe consider nudging the text box widths slightly, to see if you can avoid hyphenation altogether? Other than that crazily fussy nitpick, another great episode. :-)
Ack, that slipped me by! Not fussy - it's messy. So I've changed it for the final video. Thanks!
This is a fantastic one. Thanks, Mark! One quick heads-up: Gris is pronounced "grease."
Cheers Sam - I've replaced that line in the final vid, to avoid the inevitable comments!
Great video, Mark! As expected, you made a way more polished and concise video about this than I probably ever would 😅 Thanks a million for the citations and links!
Thanks Derek, glad you liked it! Your content is amazing and was invaluable. Couldn't have made this without it
Okay... Took me a second to realise it's not a trailer for a new series on how to make an indie game...
Great video, Mark, and a cool topic for you to tackle. Trailers for movies are hard - trailers for games have the added complexity of conveying game mechanics, not just character and story elements. I think you conveyed that really well, without an explicit comparison to film trailers. Nicely done!
Solid