We've all seen them. They went straight for shock value and wanted to spark controversy to get hype. And while the games that these trailers advertise are great games, I personally think that it's ridiculous that there has to be trailers that cause a lot a problems just to try and get more people to buy the game. What I'm going to do is put up a couple of game trailers that I'm talking about from youtube, along with who has the rights to it, so I don't actually steal their trailer. Then, I'm going to talk about how I feel about controversial game trailers. This is just my opinion, so please don't this for a fact. Enjoy!
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thanks to CGR Trailers for my use of this trailer of Hitman: Absolution.
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Thanks to IGN for my use of this trailer of Tomb Raider(2013)
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thanks to VISO Games for my use of this trailer for Dead Space 2
Now that I've gotten the trailers out of the way, to sort of help set the mood for this blog, I'm going to give my own views on why controversial game trailers are useless.
The reason that I don't personally like controversial trailers is that I don't think they should be necessary. If your game isn't good enough to sell without having to stir up a lot of controversy to get people talking about your game, than I don't see buying your game as necessary(note that I actually own Dead Space 2 and the Tomb Raider reboot, and only don't have Hitman: Absolution because it doesn't really interest me to begin with). If you can make a game that I want to play without having all of the bad publicity from the media, than I will definitely play your game, but please don't make controversial game trailers a habit.
Take this for example. My parents and I sat down to watch the Watch Dogs trailer. And now my mom doesn't want to let me get the game, because she thinks that it revolves around selling women. And while my mom isn't a huge gamer, and doesn't know what this game's about, I know for a fact that that isn't what the game is about, but the fact that the trailer has that in it means that simply, I'm going to have to convince her that that isn't what Watch Dogs is about. And while I'm sure she won't see a problem with it after she understands that that isn't the games main focus, I don't think that I should have to explain this to her, because having these kinds of trailers is almost distasteful. Why have something like what Hitman: Absolution did for their trailer? And while Watch Dogs' trailer isn't to that level, I still feel that they could have done it a little bit differently.
And sometimes I understand why a company makes one of these trailers. Either they don't have enough hype going for their game, or people just don't care about their game at all, so they do something they know will cause a lot of crap, and then their game gets some attention. But if you aren't making a game worthy of attention in the first place, than your controversial trailer is just going to clue more people in to the fact that your game isn't worth their time. If you can't make a good, non-controversial trailer, than don't make a trailer, and maybe stop making your game, because that proves that your game has nothing going for it other than controversy, and that's never a good thing.
All the games up top that I posted the trailers for had good things going for them other than controversy, which is why it seems to me like an even bigger waste of time to cause controversy like they do, when the game is so much more than just controversy. If Dead Space 2 hadn't done that whole"Your Mom Hates This" marketing campaign, maybe the marketing people at Visceral would have my respect, but instead they earned my disrespect, because they couldn't do something better than what they did to get hype around their game(although I was already excited for it, so it didn't get me any more excited for Dead Space 2 than I already was). If your game is good, and has good things going for it, don't go for the controversial game trailer, because it just makes you defending the game, and you'll have to admit anyways that the trailer was just made to get hype around your game.
Tell me in the comments below what you think about controversial game trailers, whether they should exist or not, or just what you guys thought of the new blog. Hope you guys really enjoyed this blog, and hopefully it also really let you guys know how I feel about controversial trailers. Have a nice day!