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| Thread: So what's with Blackhole's trailers? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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mlai
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 05, 2011 02:36 AM |
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It's a tried-and-true media presentation method, that the viewer must visually see the person talking, instead of hearing a voice. As humans, seeing the talking head engages us more to what is being said.
Why do you think TV news show you the newscaster/reporter, instead of just the scene of the event that took place?
Ubi isn't the only dev whose reveal videos show the dev talking about the product. Every company does it. These videos aren't the commercials selling you the product. They're bits of news for ppl who want to learn more about it.
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chimthegrim
Adventuring Hero
That guy ...
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posted May 05, 2011 03:09 AM |
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Just to point out that the StarCraf 2 cinematics/cutscenes (and storytelling overall) are almost as bad as the Heroes V ones. Cheesy and artificial to the extreme. Unlike the StarCraft/Brood War cinematics - and especially the Brood War intro - which are an excellent achievement.
As for the thread itself - let's say that this summarizes my opinion as well:
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designed to look cool and to woo teens who like flashy graphics and titty-armor and overpowered characters who kills demons and stuff while looking unbearably smug.
I respectfully disagree.
While there were some blatant cliches, it wasn't enough to make them remotely as bad as the HoMM V cinematics. The presentation was some of the best quality around while some of the story elements were sort of lame. HoMMV cinematics can't even really be compared. The level of detail is just too far apart. One of them is in a different league than the other.
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It's a tried-and-true media presentation method, that the viewer must visually see the person talking, instead of hearing a voice. As humans, seeing the talking head engages us more to what is being said.
Why do you think TV news show you the newscaster/reporter, instead of just the scene of the event that took place?
Ubi isn't the only dev whose reveal videos show the dev talking about the product. Every company does it. These videos aren't the commercials selling you the product. They're bits of news for ppl who want to learn more about it.
That is a news report, not a trailer. When a company like Nintendo, Konami, Capcom, Square-Enix, or Blizzard shows you a trailer, for the vast majority of it they show the game and either voice work and music. Or they show you a guy talking about it very briefly, then while the guy is still talking they move over to the action that shows either cinematics or gameplay. Now, what Ubisoft/Blackhole is doing with their "trailers" is showing a 4 minute video with half of it literally being a guy telling you a story and making ridiculous gestures as if he himself is an Orc. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but it was so painful for me to watch that I just skipped the whole video. I love HoMM, but not enough to get through that.
I've taken college level courses on news gathering and journalism. And I know how to make and edit my own videos, so this isn't something new to me.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted May 05, 2011 03:17 AM |
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So are we talking about cinematic teasers or cinematics in general?
Because I have no problem with those.
The "follow up trailers" aren't really trailers though.
They're more like developer commentaries/diaries, which is somewhat different.
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Brukernavn
Hero of Order
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posted May 05, 2011 04:39 AM |
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They are "faction reveals". Instead of posting the news on the website with a few pictures, they made a video with commentary. I appreciate that. I felt a little awkward the first time I heard him imitate an ork as well, but that doesn't mean the video didn't serve it's purpose.
Besides, if you've been following the news about H6 you'd have noticed by now that Ubi's marketing division has a lot to learn.
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chimthegrim
Adventuring Hero
That guy ...
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posted May 05, 2011 04:44 AM |
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2)You don't see Mike Morhaime with his persona explaining Diablo III to me in their trailers, so why can't these smaller companies learn from the biggest and the best?
Most likely because they don't have a budget of several billions of dollars and neither a team of 40-50 artists devoted to making trailers and cinematics 
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3)Why are there two people explaining the story to me? It is very frustrating and an insult to my intelligence.
I don't even get what your problem is.
I wanted to respond to this one again because i didn't respond to it right the first time. Your answer was "Most likely because they don't have a budget of several billions of dollars and neither a team of 40-50 artists devoted to making trailers and cinematics " Now that would be a justified answer if it was true that Blizzard was always a big company. For its first 5 to 10 years as a company, Blizzard was very small. In fact, it almost went bankrupt on a few occasions because of low resources in the 90s. What has got them to become big is the right decisions that they made with their business model, commitment to quality products, and how they conduct their marketing.
Ubisoft can do this too, they simply choose to make the dumbest of decisions I have seen in a while.
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So are we talking about cinematic teasers or cinematics in general?
Because I have no problem with those.
The "follow up trailers" aren't really trailers though.
They're more like developer commentaries/diaries, which is somewhat different.
I think you've made a very good point here. Recently I noticed that they are calling these either "reveal" trailers or "Developer diaries." So I am not sure what the marketing strategy is with this when they could just show a little bit more of the game and give us a real trailer. It's very confusing and counter productive in my view.
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Nelgirith
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 05, 2011 08:55 AM |
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I wanted to respond to this one again because i didn't respond to it right the first time. Your answer was "Most likely because they don't have a budget of several billions of dollars and neither a team of 40-50 artists devoted to making trailers and cinematics " Now that would be a justified answer if it was true that Blizzard was always a big company. For its first 5 to 10 years as a company, Blizzard was very small. In fact, it almost went bankrupt on a few occasions because of low resources in the 90s. What has got them to become big is the right decisions that they made with their business model, commitment to quality products, and how they conduct their marketing.
Ubisoft can do this too, they simply choose to make the dumbest of decisions I have seen in a while.
Sorry, but who gives a f*ck about Blizz almost going bankrupt like 20 years ago ? There are so many companies that went bankrupt despite making great games ...
Since Blizzard has been bought by Activision, they need to do some huge lights and sounds show for everything they're releasing ... everytime they release a trailer for their next patch, people are pissing their pants and once the content is live, they wake up. The novelty of the latest WoW patch (4.1) has gone after less than a week and noone cares anymore about their super-duper trailer that cost them several millions $.
Also you're comparing Blizzard which is a fulltime game developper to Ubisoft which is a game publisher that is "subcontracting" most of their licenses to the original developpers (Settlers = Bluebyte / Assassin's Creed = Gameloft / Prince of Persia = Broderbund, etc...). Instead, you should compare Blizzard to Black Hole Entertainement and you'd see they're not playing in the same league.
Black Hole sure aren't beginner but they are far from having the same means as Blizzard. The Blizzard logo will pretty much guarantee their game will be a best-seller and Activision knows that (Why do you think they can afford postponing Diablo 3 for so long ?). On the other hand, Black Hole and Erwann Le Breton have to prove the M&M license will be worthy for Ubisoft.
And to answer your previous question, no I'm not an Ubisoft fanboy, I'm even an Ubisoft hater, but I'm willing to give the Black Hole guys and the Ubi-team on the M&M license a chance to prove themselves instead of bashing them down for not being Blizzard ...
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted May 05, 2011 09:07 AM |
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Nelgrith does have a point.
Whilst it is reasonable to expect people to try and learn from (but not copy) success, one has to bear in mind, not all companies have equal funds.
Blizzard is an industry juggernaut without equal, they practially already were beyond the scope of most companies when they produced Starcraft, Warcraft III and Diablo II, and those 3 games got completely eclipsed (financialy... NOT in quality) by World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft is now one of the biggest reasons why Blizzard can afford to sink UNGODLY amounts of cash into ANYTHING THEY WANT.
Whilst it's fair to expect other companies to look at popular games (not just Blizzard games mind you, previous HoMM titles for example are also a good place to look, or X-com *sob* or Master of Magic *sob* or Zelda games *yay!* or even flippin pokemon games (not the spinoffs)) and emulate some of the techniques (which is different from stealing IP) you cannot set the same standards for everything.
THEN AGAIN:
Not all great games are made on massive budgets.
Minecraft being one of the hottest things since hotness was invented and it's development budget is microscopic to the big AAA companies.
(Though the money it earned is FAR from microscopic.  )
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted May 05, 2011 10:31 AM |
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I respectfully disagree.
While there were some blatant cliches, it wasn't enough to make them remotely as bad as the HoMM V cinematics. The presentation was some of the best quality around while some of the story elements were sort of lame. HoMMV cinematics can't even really be compared. The level of detail is just too far apart. One of them is in a different league than the other.
Only the quality of the animations was better. Other than that - I can easily imagine Jim Raynor shouting "Griffin eternal" before each mission. The guy was just pathetic, like the majority of the "cast". Everything was made to tell you "Look here! LOOK HERE YOU MAGGOT!!! Don't you see how epic is this?! It has "epic" written all over it! Now one of the characters will talk and he'll talk f*cking EPIC things to his EPIC friends and enemies! If you don't get the feel of EPIC, then you are blind, deaf and daft!" Hell, even the bloody Hyperion was transformed from a battleship to some space decoration which is supposed to shine and not to fight. That should ring a bell by the way. 
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ragamor
Tavern Dweller
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posted May 05, 2011 03:47 PM |
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What I miss is more in-game footage, also the people talking strikes me as a tad cheesy, it's like they have nothing of real value to say so they just keep talking about junk facts.
____________
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted May 05, 2011 04:29 PM |
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Only the quality of the animations was better. Other than that - I can easily imagine Jim Raynor shouting "Griffin eternal" before each mission. The guy was just pathetic, like the majority of the "cast". Everything was made to tell you "Look here! LOOK HERE YOU MAGGOT!!! Don't you see how epic is this?! It has "epic" written all over it! Now one of the characters will talk and he'll talk f*cking EPIC things to his EPIC friends and enemies! If you don't get the feel of EPIC, then you are blind, deaf and daft!" Hell, even the bloody Hyperion was transformed from a battleship to some space decoration which is supposed to shine and not to fight. That should ring a bell by the way.
Sounds like you were so overwhelmed by the epicness it busted your epic meter, you should get that fixed because you obviously can no longer epicly appreciate epicness of such a mighty epic levels of epic.
(did I kill the word "epic" yet?)
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted May 05, 2011 04:51 PM |
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At no point do I want to see the developer while he is telling the story. Nor do I like crazy cinematic trailers that don't show footage. I'd be fine with his talking while they showed pictures and in-game videos that are in line with what he is saying. Even a slideshow while he talked would be better.
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted May 05, 2011 05:00 PM |
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Edited by Avirosb at 17:03, 05 May 2011.
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The floating head of a developer superimposed in the corner of actual gameplay footage, that would've been something
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MrDragon
Supreme Hero
Eats people with Ketchup
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posted May 05, 2011 05:09 PM |
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And now I'm getting Zero Punctuation images in my head of Peter Molyneux's head floating around being really excited over the next fable game.
I like Peter Molyneux, just not so fond of the games he's been making recently.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 05, 2011 05:31 PM |
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ugh I hate that Fable went from old, true fantasy with some new creative stuff to some steampunk, industrial revolution setting. Here's hoping that future Fable games will be set in the Old Kingdom and bring the fantasy and heroes back...
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Avirosb
Promising
Legendary Hero
No longer on vacation
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posted May 05, 2011 05:37 PM |
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I feel the same way, only with The Elder Scrolls.
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chimthegrim
Adventuring Hero
That guy ...
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posted May 05, 2011 10:45 PM |
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Quote:
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I wanted to respond to this one again because i didn't respond to it right the first time. Your answer was "Most likely because they don't have a budget of several billions of dollars and neither a team of 40-50 artists devoted to making trailers and cinematics " Now that would be a justified answer if it was true that Blizzard was always a big company. For its first 5 to 10 years as a company, Blizzard was very small. In fact, it almost went bankrupt on a few occasions because of low resources in the 90s. What has got them to become big is the right decisions that they made with their business model, commitment to quality products, and how they conduct their marketing.
Ubisoft can do this too, they simply choose to make the dumbest of decisions I have seen in a while.
Sorry, but who gives a f*ck about Blizz almost going bankrupt like 20 years ago ? There are so many companies that went bankrupt despite making great games ...
Since Blizzard has been bought by Activision, they need to do some huge lights and sounds show for everything they're releasing ... everytime they release a trailer for their next patch, people are pissing their pants and once the content is live, they wake up. The novelty of the latest WoW patch (4.1) has gone after less than a week and noone cares anymore about their super-duper trailer that cost them several millions $.
Also you're comparing Blizzard which is a fulltime game developper to Ubisoft which is a game publisher that is "subcontracting" most of their licenses to the original developpers (Settlers = Bluebyte / Assassin's Creed = Gameloft / Prince of Persia = Broderbund, etc...). Instead, you should compare Blizzard to Black Hole Entertainement and you'd see they're not playing in the same league.
Black Hole sure aren't beginner but they are far from having the same means as Blizzard. The Blizzard logo will pretty much guarantee their game will be a best-seller and Activision knows that (Why do you think they can afford postponing Diablo 3 for so long ?). On the other hand, Black Hole and Erwann Le Breton have to prove the M&M license will be worthy for Ubisoft.
And to answer your previous question, no I'm not an Ubisoft fanboy, I'm even an Ubisoft hater, but I'm willing to give the Black Hole guys and the Ubi-team on the M&M license a chance to prove themselves instead of bashing them down for not being Blizzard ...
Do you really think that a successful game studio like Konami, Nintendo, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, etc. got where they are today without making the right decisions time and time again? The reason I brought up the example of Blizzard being a relatively small company before WoW was to provide a relevant model to look at and see how Blizzard became successful and why Blackhole/Ubisoft's way of doing things is not the correct choice. I think you're really missing the point I am trying to make. I wrongly expected you to be able to see that I was providing this example for you to compare and contrast. Which why I expected you to see the real issue in the topic I brought up, it was my mistake to think you would be attentive and astute enough to have this conversation--especially in a civil manner.
While your intentions to "give the blackhole guys a chance" are nice, the truth is that they aren't making the right decisions. It only hurts the gamers and the game makers when a high profile game fails to capture its target audience due to silly amateur mistakes--which is precisely what they are guilty of making.
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