The Art of Game Trailers

I have been trying to decide what to write about for my return to this platform. I have been considering expanding the scope of this blog to other personal interests of mine: television, music, etc. While I still plan to do this, in the end, I decided that my first post in years should be a return to form. However, I do apologize for the length.

A week or so ago, someone reminded me of the SuckerPunch game, Infamous. In an instant, I was suddenly back in school, sitting on my couch watching an ad break on tv when a trailer for Infamous started playing. It was understated at first. Just some simple guitar notes with an out of focus Dutch angle shot of bolts of lighting striking the ground near a truck.

Then a rewound shot of a power transformer being struck by lighting. The music picks up, getting louder and adding instruments in as you see people bound to the ground with bonds made of lightning and a reversed shot of a man crashing through a glass ceiling with electricity coursing over his body. Each new shot grew more and more epic.

Silent, slow motion explosions, massive lightning storms and then suddenly the music changes. Some light cymbal crashes lead into a heavy guitar chord matched with this incredible shot of a man in some kind of machine surging with electricity, his back arching as the power rushed through him. The simple guitar notes have turned into grungy power chords as the screen shows speed ramped combat with amazing electric powers, big explosions, parkour, etc. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen and it matched perfectly with the music (which I later learned is “If Trees Could Talk” by Malabar Front) such that punches and explosions landed on down beats.

The trailer ended with a prolonged guitar chord and an electric grenade blowing up a giant golem made of trash behind the character as he walked like a badass away from it. In that instant I knew I had to get the game. The trailer gave me chills then and still does today, eleven years later. That whole experience flashed through my mind the moment someone even mentioned the game.

I immediately went back and searched up the trailer on youtube and thought about how well that experience has stuck with me after all these years. I started thinking about other game trailers that were similarly memorable and why. There are lots of ways that an advertisement can gain attention and that’s no different for video games.

Empowerment

The Infamous trailer shows one of the most effective ways to draw in players. Showing exciting gameplay-ish footage with effective music to make you think you’ll feel like a total badass when playing. I knew almost nothing about the game except that it had some electric powers and I was sold. Another good example of this is the trailer for Call of Duty Black Ops. Set in the Vietnam war, the trailer is matched with “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones. This trailer also does a good job of editing to match explosions, gunshots, and glass shattering with drum beats, which heighten the experience of watching the crazy action on screen. The shots are almost all taken from cutscenes in the single player campaign and so not representative of the main gameplay experience at all, but the rush of the action mixed with the nostalgia of a beloved classic rock song will create an emotional connection that would be very effective at drawing in new players. Similarly to Infamous, there isn’t a ton of immediate info on what the game is about, what kind of story or setting to expect, or how it might be similar or different to previous entries in the series. The draw is all based on making the viewer feel like an action hero.

A slightly different case of this kind of emotional draw is Shadow of the Colossus. The trailer takes a few seconds to show Wander carrying the woman’s body and that is the only “story” context we have. The rest of the trailer is shots of various Colossi battles set to very PS2 era adventure music. It is awe inspiring to see these massive foes with this bombastic, triumphant, heroic score in the background. More than making the viewer feel like they will be fighting in David vs Goliath esque battles, this trailer does a good job of pushing the false narrative of a brave hero fighting massive evil monsters to save a damsel and doesn’t hint at all at the true somber tone of the game. It’s a simple trailer, but emotionally engaging and quite representative of the gameplay.

Visual Storytelling

Making you feel like a badass, isn’t the only way that a game trailer can capture your attention with thematic music and striking visuals. The trailer for That Game Company’s Journey relies almost entirely on Austin Wintory’s gorgeous score. It starts with a fade in to sand. Pretty sand, but just sand. But it doesn’t matter because all you need are the beautiful deep cello notes evoking a sad solitude, a sorrowful desolation. It’s over 30 seconds, 1/4 of the trailer before you see anything but logos or sand. As the player character appears, the cello fades out for a harp and oboe to take over. The next 30 seconds are taken up by shots of the character running through abandoned, desolate landscapes accompanied by the same sorrowful melody.

And then three things happen at once. A second character appears, the light at the top of the mountain is glimpsed and a viola comes in with a rising, hopeful melody. You are no longer alone and without hope. There is something more. Something new.

There are now scenes the characters flying and glowing, traveling upwards and forwards together. This trailer perfectly fits Journey for me. It is a game with no dialog, and yet it tells a complete story both through visual storytelling and unmistakable emotional language. This trailer is a microcosm of that. What else is capable of filling me with emotion while staring at sand?

A similarly subtle, yet meaningful trailer is for the recent game Draugen, a beautiful and mysterious exploration of the dark side of a picturesque Norwegian village. On a casual viewing of the trailer, it just seems to be beautiful glamour shots of the game set to dramatic strings music. But on a closer viewing, there are a lot of details that hint at the nature of the game. It opens on a closeup shot of a young girl looking searchingly into the camera, as if into the viewers eyes, looking for something only she knows. She looks away briefly and then with a brief smile, turns away and runs off. Immediately, this tells us that there’s something that we don’t know but she does. Here is the mystery.

This is confirmed twice more, by the light, tentative piano keys playing over a high, shrill violin note: hesitancy hiding tension. Then in case you hadn’t caught on yet, words appear on screen saying “A Story About What Lies Beneath”, stating outright that things are not as they seem. The trailer goes on to depict an empty village on an empty fjord. A knocked over bucket sitting next to what seems to be old laundry hanging from a tree. A flag at half mast signifying that someone is dead. And scattered pieces of clothing left abandoned: a red hat, a pair of white gloves, and a blue coat. We are left wondering who those belong to. The video ends with the same girl dancing and humming along to the melody (the song that is evoking the feeling of mystery and tension) looking out of the window expectantly. In a few shots we know that there is an empty village that has known death, an absent person who has left their belongings, specifically clothing that they would travel with, strewn about, and a mysterious girl who knows something we do not. This is the kind of trailer I wish I saw more often. One that sets the tone emotionally and thematically without saying anything explicit. It’s the opposite of a trailer like that of Nier Automata, which while emotionally intriguing and exciting, is chock full of spoilers and significant moments from the game.

Emotion

Not all trailers are as cryptic as these two, however. Two fantastic examples of trailers that tell their stories simply through music and visuals are Dead Island and my personal favorite game trailer, Halo 3. Both of these are not subtle at all about what they want the viewer to take away from watching. Dead Island’s trailer shockingly opens on a closeup shot of the horrified face of a dead little girl. The camera zooms out with sad, minimalist piano music playing to set the mood. There is a man running around on fire behind the girl, suddenly there is a quick cut to the same girl running for her life, gasping for air. Then we are back to the girl dead on the ground. Suddenly her body lifts off the ground with a collection of broken glass, revealing that the scene we are watching is being played in reverse. We cut back and forth between the silent, except for music, reversed scene and the other, normal one as they slowly come together in the middle. The girl is running from zombies but gets caught and bitten. Her parents find her and carry her away from the zombies but it’s too late. As they try to get her away from the horde, she turns and jumps on her father, biting him in the neck, as her mother watches in horror and the horde of zombies spills into the room. In the chaos, the girl gets tossed out the several story window of a hotel and lands on the ground. Told through both the forwards and reversed scenes, the trailer cuts to a simple logo and then handheld camera footage of the happy family arriving at the hotel for their vacation before everything went to hell. The trailer tells a simple and sad story of a family destroyed by zombies. It’s not subtle. It’s not mysterious. But it’s very effective, evocative, and memorable.

Halo’s is similar and yet different. The trailer starts with minimalist piano music by Chopin. It sets the tone well by evoking loneliness and nostalgia. The camera starts panning up from a shot of the ground to a plastic toy soldier sitting dejectedly on a fallen tree. Then a cut to a row of shellshocked and traumatized toy soldiers staring into space.

The trailer moves on to show a still life of an active battlefield populated by plastic soldiers and plastic aliens. Explosions are tossing bodies. Alien brutes are decimating the human forces, clearly winning the battle as they tower over fleeing soldiers, throwing them around like they are nothing. This is also clearly evident on the faces. The humans are consumed by fear, despair, pain and hopelessness while the aliens are roaring in savage triumph.

As the shots grow grander and show more of the battlefield, we see hundreds on both sides swarming in a chaotic mess over this mountainous, alien environment. It is a sobering image of a desperate war and unimaginable death. And at the center of it is an alien displaying the limp body of Master Chief and roaring in victory. This is the darkest moment. The symbol of the humans’ hope is defeated.

That image is still so powerful to me and I’m not invested in the Halo story in the least. The pathos built up through the shots of death and despair on the soldiers faces to then see that their ultimate hope is gone is really effective. However, just when all hope seems lost, Master Chief’s looks up and straight into the camera. This is the first moving object in the entire trailer. His visor is reflective. A mirror, as if to say that we, the viewers, are the hope that he symbolizes. The final shot is a black screen with the word “BELIEVE” on it. At the moment of ultimate defeat, we are told to believe that we can be the ones to bring hope back to the battle and save the day. It’s an immediate and powerful change in tone that really struck me emotionally. It is, to this day, one of the most powerful trailers I have seen.

Setting

Neither the Dead Island nor Halo trailers actually say anything about the gameplay, story or even much about the setting other than zombies and alien war. There are some other trailers that use similar artistic methods to draw in players but rather than pure emotional appeal, they want the viewers to be attracted to the setting. One of my favorites is Dishonored, a gritty, steampunk assassin game by Arkane Studios. This trailer uses a very creepy cover of an old sea shanty called “Drunken Sailor”. This cover, “Drunken Whaler” uses a chorus of children’s voices, deep bass and guitar instrumentation, eerie sound effects like a squeaky swing and heart beats, and far darker lyrics (Instead of “Throw him in the brig until he’s sober”, they might use “Feed him to the hungry rats for dinner”). This music is accompanied by shots of a Victorian London-esque city full of tall, old fashioned buildings intermingled with advanced technology like stilt walking mechs, electric force fields, big mechanical towers, etc.

This is an impressive and intriguing enough setting on its own, but the city is clearly not doing well. It is dirty, dark and empty, there are signs about a plague all over the streets, dozens of corpses being tossed unceremoniously into the ocean as a kind of mass grave. In addition to this, however, there are also scenes of grand cathedrals, palaces, and parties to show that there is a great class divide in the city and the rich are not suffering the plague like the poor. These establishing shots are mixed in with small sections of gameplay, usually a second or two to show that the player can use powers like time manipulation or teleportation. These not only serve to hype the player for combat abilities, but to show that the setting also has a mystical element to it.

About half way through, the trailer shifts to a montage of the player executing and assassinating people brutally while the song goes into a repeated refrain of “Slice his throat with a rusty cleaver” which very clearly shows the brutality and violence of the world and the player character. The trailer ends on a shot of a little girl reading a book, while the child vocalist hums the melody and it fades out to a title screen. The viewers get so much information about the world: class divides, advanced technology, a deadly plague, magical abilities, brutal violence, and the notion that even a child’s innocence has been corrupted by this horrible world. That was enough for me to be extremely interested even without very much knowledge of the gameplay or story. Another Arkane game, Prey, does a similar thing with it’s trailer. It introduces important themes, while showing off some of the setting without giving too much away about the story (though still a bit more than I’d like).

The Witcher 3 is a fantastic game that has been talked about to death, but I do want to quickly mention that CDPR did something interesting, and quite smart, in releasing several very different trailers that will draw in people for different reasons. They had, of course, their cinematic trailers: A Night to Remember, an intense fight scene between Geralt and a vampire that introduces viewers to the life of a professional monster hunter and the extreme danger of it. And Killing Monsters, a short scene where Geralt, and his mentor Vesemir, come across some soldiers about to lynch a peasant woman. Geralt kills the men despite Vesemir’s desire to stay neutral. This is to introduce one of the main themes of the entire Witcher story. While witchers are supposed to stay neutral and professional, Geralt cannot and routinely gets personally involved despite what he claims he wants. They also released a fairly comprehensive trailer called The Sword of Destiny that briefly outlines the main plot, Geralt’s unique status among witchers, the moral ambiguity of choices, and shows a bunch of shots of Geralt fighting monsters, killing men, and bedding women. This is a very good trailer for showing the viewer exactly what the game is about.

My personal favorite Witcher 3 trailer, though, is the launch trailer. It includes no dialogue or narration, but still imparts a lot of information. It opens on a shot of a tree from which several people are hanged, showing the brutality of this world. Set to “Oats in the Water” by Ben Howard, a song written while feverish and ill about death and the cruel ironies of life, the trailers shows the world as both Ciri and Geralt travel it, telling the viewer of Geralt’s search for her. This is interspersed with shots of the past showing Geralt, Ciri, and Yennifer’s bond, further emphasizing their drive. Towards the end, the trailer shifts to a collection of epic landscape shots to show the beautiful world and a whirlwind of colorful characters that all impact Geralt’s quest.

There are probably hundreds of trailers that could fit into the setting category and as much as I would love to talk about them all, I’ve been on this for long enough, but here are a few other notable examples that I couldn’t help but mention. Horizon Zero Dawn had an incredible E3 presentation in 2015 that sold me immediately just on the concept of a post-post apocalyptic world inhabited by primitive tribes and robot dinosaurs even before the astounding game play section started. Dark Souls 3 released a very tonally powerful trailer that I would actually only recommend to people who have finished the game because it spoils all but a handful of bosses. It combines powerful visuals with cryptic NPC dialog and matches big downbeats in the song to epic boss attack moves. Control is a game about a federal agency that handles SCP-like objects and events. Unexplainable phenomena that affect our world in almost paranormal ways. The trailer for the game shows haunting and amazing imagery of forboding and often impossible rooms with floating people and disturbing monsters while a narrator explains the premise. It immediately hooked me when I saw it as I have long wanted to play an SCP game. Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture depicts an empty town full of mysterious golden balls of light while a conversation about some emergency is played over a radio. It is heightened even more by a hauntingly beautiful choir song. The less I say about the trailer for Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice the better, but rest assured, it’s powerful.

Cinematic

Many people don’t like cinematic trailers because they tell you absolutely nothing about what the game experience will be, and they aren’t wrong, but a cinematic trailer can do a ton to get viewers into the conceit of the narrative or world. Overwatch and League of Legends are famous for their short films and music videos that expand on lore or simply get people attached to characters. The Dragons short for Overwatch is one of my favorites and rewatching it today makes nostalgic and gives me an urge to get back into the game. Hanzo and Genji’s story is emotionally powerful and just plain cool. I haven’t really played League in seven years and yet this terrifying trailer for the champion Fiddlesticks gives me chills and the K/DA Popstars music video got me to actually download the game again and try a few matches. Some cinematic trailers can do a lot more than just get you invested in lore or pull on your heartstrings. The original Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos trailer actually manages to be cool, emotionally engaging, and introduces the viewer to the themes and premise of the game world.

The trailer opens on a tattered flag and a duel between a human knight and an orc. Their fight is desperate and they are both panting and exhausted, but their hatred keeps pulling them back into another attempt to kill the other. A narrator explains that they have been fighting for generations without heed to the prophecies. This very succinctly sums up the whole setting: orcs and humans locked in a forever war, perpetuated by nothing but their mutual hatred. Both sides suffer and nobody wins. The things that were important and sacred before the war are now ignored. In the trailer, a storm intensifies around the combatants and suddenly, green meteors come raining down around them. One lands nearby and a large, monstrous demon rises from the crater. The last shot is of a puddle being polluted with both orc and human blood as both corpses lie next to each other, killed by the demon. This is the premise of the game. Orc and human must learn to put aside their hatred because for all their differences, neither can survive the Chaos alone.

Assassins Creed lives and dies by its’ setting. They are perfectly aware of this and their trailers capitalize on it really well. AC trailers are short, action packed films that are love letters to fans of the setting. Two examples I want to mention are Assassins Creed Black Flag and Assassins Creed Syndicate. I am a huge fan of the romanticized Pirate concept and the trailer delivers that in spades. The legendary Edward Teach proclaiming the virtues (or lack thereof) of Edward Kenway cut with shots of chaotic ship battles, seedy taverns, and buried treasure told me everything I needed to know. I wanted a Pirate game and here it was. Syndicate is set in Victorian London where you build up a gang of commoners to overthrow the oppressive elite. After a gorgeous aerial view of London, we see the cartoonishly evil templars putting kidnapped children to work in a factory, immediately setting the tone for the player to be the champion of the people. The trailer follows various actions of one of the playable assassins, Jacob Frye as he gets in a gunfight/carriage chase, liberates a factory from its oppressive Templar overseer, and uses a bar fight to gain new recruits for his gang. It’s fun, action packed, and full of Victorian flavor. My only complaint is that Syndicate has a gorgeous score composed by the great Austin Wintory and the trailer just features a modern pop rock song.

The last cinematic trailer I want to mention is the one for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Civilization is a hard game to hype with a trailer. The gameplay itself is hardly exciting to watch and the changes between mainline games are significant but hard to see in a 3 minute trailer. So instead of trying to capture the specifics, Civilization trailers tend to try to capture the soul of the franchise. It’s about trying to build something that will last the test of time. Do we as players measure up to the great leaders in our history? But it’s also about how our civilizations have evolved over time. Humanity’s endless ambition, ingenuity, creativity and even greed. The trailer depicts great scientific achievements, daring adventures, cultural wonders, and terrible wars but all with this hopeful music driving us forward to the next landmark era. It inspires me. Even if it isn’t representative of the game in the least, Civilization’s brand is tied to these kinds of cinematic trailers that make people feel the call to adventure and progress.

Art

There are some games that don’t need to hook you with the story, the setting, or emotional appeals. All they need is to show you what they look like. The beautiful and unique art on display to capture and retain the audience’s attention. The original Okami trailer is a good example of this. It’s all in Japanese and I have no idea what it’s about or what is being said, but the art is so unique and interesting that I want to try the game. This section will be more brief, as I think the trailers can and should speak for themselves.

One of my absolutely favorites, Supergiant Games is a studio that has mastered this. All of their games are gorgeous, but Transistor, in particular, is notable for its trailer. It’s a simple presentation, but it doesn’t need any more because it lets the strengths of the game speak for themselves.

Transistor has an almost stained glass look to its multi layered, isometric backgrounds with bright colors and varied shapes. The trailer includes a short section outlining the basic premise of Transistor, but all that is needed is the amazing haunting music by Darren Korb and sung by Ashley Barrett providing emotional texture to the mixture of incredible stills and Supergiant’s unique combat. It tells you all you need to know about the game: good music, breathtaking visuals, and signature gameplay.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a game that tells the entirety of its story through visuals and music. It’s very emotional and the music is so distinctive that when a live pianist played a few notes before the sequel’s E3 announcement, the whole audience knew what it was. The trailer explains the entire story conceit of the game in just a two minute video. The animation has so much character that no words are needed.

Another of my favorite studios, Thunder Lotus Games, released one of my favorite roguelikes in 2017. Sundered has possibly the most frenetic and intense combat I’ve ever experienced. What seems like unending hordes hell bent on dragging you into the darkness with them. All of it in this eldritch, horrifying artwork. This is one of my favorite uses of Lovecraftian imagery. The entire experience is very unique.

The final game I want to mention is Hyper Light Drifter, a deeply personal game that I don’t have the words to describe. The visuals and music say more than I ever could, but it has my highest recommendation.

In conclusion, I clearly think about these trailers too much and am really bad at trimming. This ended up being far longer than I intended it to and I fully do not expect anyone to read the whole thing, but I just hope that everyone might find some example here that they can identify with. If I had an overarching point, it’s that there is so much variety in art that appeals to different people for different reasons and it should all be celebrated.

Player Empowerment

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One of the great things about gaming is that it can provide an escape from everyday life. Many gamers seek a feeling of being powerful and important. They want to feel badass and strong, often in contrast to their real life. Games often provide a power progression to give players a sense of improvement as they play. Even if the goal isn’t to provide a power fantasy for the player, having a tangible way to track progression, in the form of avatar skill, is a popular feature. Not every game uses or needs power progression (Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice and Overwatch, specifically, come to mind), but most games do have one. There are good and bad ways to do this, though.

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A problem I often see in power progression systems is making the player so powerful in the end game that the challenge disappears and the game becomes trivial. Bethesda is pretty bad at this. I encountered this in Skyrim and Fallout, but the worst I have experienced is Prey. It is a shame, because Prey is one of my favorite games of 2017 and by far my favorite horror game. Unfortunately, the suspense and uncertainly is trivialized by how powerful the player becomes at the end. When Mimics can be detected with a spectroscope and even the most powerful of Typhon melt underneath the Q-Beam, some of the suspense is gone. The Witcher 3 does this as well. There are so many side quests and optional content that is worth completing. If you complete even half of it, you will likely be far over leveled for the end game. Also, enemies do not scale with the player’s level, so after a while, most mobs littered around the map are trivial and not even worth the time to get off of Roach to fight them.

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Conversely, I would say that Divinity Original Sin 2 handles progressive challenge really well. As you level up, there is always an area or quest that is perfectly suited to be just barely within your ability. The only real walls that block off content, are simply difficulty walls. If you want to charge into the Blackpits at level 6, the game will let you, but you will certainly die. There are encounters and areas beyond your level that, if you are clever, you can access early to get some good higher level rewards, but it also doesn’t break the game, either. If you pick up a sword far above your level, you can use it, but your accuracy is much lower. You never feel too powerful or too weak.

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The ideal system, in my opinion, is to allow players to control their own difficulty, and I don’t mean game-wide, menu difficulty levels, but rather in-game mechanics that allow players to change their own difficulty. There are several excellent examples of this. Super Giant Games do this better than anyone else I have seen. There is an incredible amount of avatar and play style customization in their games, including ways to make the game more difficult. In Transistor, for example, there are limiters that you can install into your transistor. A limiter might increase the health of enemies, decrease Red’s speed, increase the number of bad cells created from enemies, etc. There is so much replayability in these games, partially because the player can make the game as difficult or easy as they wish. Dark Souls 2 has a few good player-controlled difficulty features as well. The Covenant of Champions allows you to play the game as New Game + difficulty. There are rings that limit the number of souls you receive. You can use Bonfire Aesthetics to fight bosses again at a higher difficulty, as well as repopulate the level with enemies.

Ultimately, I want everybody to get the kind of experience they want in games. Some want to feel powerful as they clear rooms of aliens in Doom. Some want to feel desperate, fearful and in danger as they creep through Prey or Resident Evil. I think that some games benefit from players feeling over or under powered, and that most benefit from being balanced. I have a lot of respect for games that can allow the player to customize a game to their own desires. I definitely support any game that increases player choice, especially on a matter where every player would have a different preference.

I Miss Couch Co-op

I grew up with games like Halo 3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and Star Wars Battlefront. I would spend entire nights with my friends eating junk food and playing games together on the couch. I loved being able to hang out with my friends and family and all get to play a game together on the same screen. I have played hours of Little Big Planet, Towerfall, and Rock Band with my family. This new generation of consoles has seen a departure from local multiplayer, and a complete focus on online multiplayer, and I think it’s a shame.

Some of my favorite memories from my teens were of playing Zombies in Halo 3 and battling for the sniper roost on the Rust map of Modern Warfare 2. It was great to get together in person, lock ourselves in a basement and stay up all night eating pizza and gaming. As I’ve grown older, I still enjoy getting together with my friends and gaming all night occasionally, but now if we want to play together, each person has to bring their own PS4 and screen. While still fun, it’s inconvenient and a lot more work. It also loses a little sense of intimacy, it feels more like we’re playing next to each other and not together.

Don’t get me wrong. I love online multiplayer too. I have lots of friends who now live all over the country, and it’s fantastic to be able to get on discord and play with my friends all over the country. I’ve also met several great people in Overwatch and Fortnite chat that I enjoy playing with. I also understand that local multiplayer isn’t important to many people because they don’t have friends locally or they don’t have the time to organize a larger get together. It’s just easier to play with everyone online. I do understand this, but I also think that there is something more that you can get by having in person contact, drinking and eating together. It’s, at least, important to me.

Ideally, games would have both local and online multiplayer. All of the games I mentioned before have that feature. I could play Battlefront with my friends or online, or the single player. I want every player to be able to play the way that they want. It’s such a shame that Halo, once the pinnacle of local multiplayer, has abandoned it entirely. I know that this is more of a personal nostalgic complaint, and that this isn’t an issue for everyone, but I do care about it and that’s enough for me.

DLC: Good or Bad?

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DLC is an important issue in the industry that gamers tend to be very split on. Some think that new features are always a good thing, even if it costs more money and some think that DLC is anti-consumer and unacceptable in any form. Like most issues, my opinion is somewhere in the middle. Some DLC is good, some DLC is bad. I think that intent, cost, timeline, and type of game are all relevant when deciding if a piece of Downloadable Content is bad or not.

I think that the biggest problem with DLC in games is when a game is released, has a $60 price tag, and then has paid DLC a week later. When a game has extra content for sale so soon after release, it means that the content was ready and always intended to be part of the game. The devs simply released an incomplete game at full price and then offered the rest of it for more money. The complete game is not $60, but $70, $80, $100, or more, depending on how much DLC there is. Marketing an incomplete game as a finished product while holding the rest hostage under an additional pay wall is anti-consumer and unacceptable. One of my absolute favorite series is terrible about this and I have been forced to stop purchasing their products: Total War.

I have been playing the Total War games since Medieval Total War in 2002. I have hundreds of hours in Rome, Shogun II, and Empire Total War and dozens in the others. These games are incredibly fun and appeal to my strategic and gameplay sensibilities on almost every level, but a month after each game is released there’s $20-$40 of DLC. Usually a game will launch with 5 or 6 playable factions in a map of 25+ AI factions. In a couple months after release, they will often add 5 or so more. These were obviously in the works at launch, but unfinished. They were always intended to be in the game and charging more money for them as if they were simply extra features is dishonest and unethical. If the game is unfinished, they should either delay the release or publish the rest of the content for free. Creative Assembly, though amazing at creating games, has business practices that I can no longer support.

In shooter games like Call of Duty, the devs will release new map packs as paid DLC. Fighting games like Injustice will also do this with new playable characters. I don’t see this as quite as awful as the Total War system, but it’s still not great either. While the extra content is not necessary to play or enjoy the full product, but it splits the player base. Since only some people will be able to play on all of the maps or as all of the characters, matchmaking becomes more complicated, separating players into those who can play with the extra content and those who can’t. This becomes worse and worse with every added piece of DLC. Companies try to solve this by offering a Season Pass, which guarantees access to future DLC for a one time price. This concept, while seemingly practical and will probably save you money, is not a good idea as a consumer. You are paying for content that doesn’t exist yet. There is no guarantee that future DLC will be of acceptable quality or that there even will be more DLC. It is the same issue as pre-orders, which I will get into in more detail another time.

I think that a game that does this well is Overwatch. The game is a one-time purchase, $40 for PC and $60 for Console, and you get access to all current and future content. Every new character, map, balance fix, event skin, etc is available to you. You never have to spend another cent. The way that Blizzard can do this and continually create new content for the game is through the optional loot box purchases. The loot box system is one that is controversial and some see it as anti-consumer. I covered this topic in my post about loot boxes. Essentially, as long as the contents of the loot box are only cosmetic, I am fine with the system existing and I much prefer it to being charged for each new character or map.

Another situation that is worth considering is free-to-play games. While I don’t like a system where parts of the game are locked behind a pay wall, but as long as the game isn’t pay-to-win, I suppose it is acceptable. I think that a good middle ground here is a game like League of Legends or Paladins, where most of the characters are unavailable initially. You have to either purchase them or unlock them eventually by playing the game. Each week, there is a rotation of characters that are playable for free, that week. The game is free, it is all unlockable by playing the game, and there is a way to experience all of the content if you play long enough.

Now on to examples of DLC that I think is specifically done well. First, I want to talk about From Software and the Soulsborne Series. Every game, other than Demons’ Souls, has had at least one piece of DLC. Every single one, in my opinion, has been an excellent addition to the game. They usually release the base game with plans to add DLC later, but the content in the DLC never feels like it should have been included in the base game. They all are clearly additions to the world and story and each one has added several hours of content. Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters expansion included my favorite boss fight in the series. For a paid DLC on a fully priced base game to be acceptable, I think that the added content needs to be high quality, solid quantity, and should feel transformative or at least additive to the base game.

Firaxis, the makers of Civilization and XCOM, is an interesting case. I find that each game they release is excellent on launch and feels complete. Their major expansions have all be amazing and worth every penny, but they sometimes have smaller DLC packs which, while not necessary for the game, don’t merit their own price tag. XCOM 2 had a collection of additional soldier customization options called Anarchy’s Children. This should have either been included in one of the later DLC’s or added for free. Civilization VI adds new playable civilizations to the already plentiful list every few months. I think that these are often over priced. They are always good, but should be priced reasonably. On the other hand, XCOM Enemy Within improved on Enemy Unknown exponentially. It completely transformed the game and added tons of new content. Civilization V Gods and Kings, Brave New World, etc were all massive overhauls of the game, adding new features and changing mechanics. XCOM 2 War of the Chosen could have been marketed as a separate game. It completely changed how the game is played and added hours of new content. Overall, Firaxis has a few lackluster but not terrible DLC’s and arguably some of the best DLC ever made.

The last example I want to mention is The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3 is often held up as an amazing example of DLC done right. I just want to add my voice to this. Hearts of Stone, as an expansion was excellent. The story, new characters, new monsters, new part of the map to explore, new crafting mechanics were all excellent. The missions for Von Everic were quite different and very fun. I also loved how well it fit into the post game of Witcher 3. You didn’t need to start an entirely new playthrough of this massive game to play the new content at a satisfying level. I was blown away by Hearts of Stone and it was probably my favorite DLC in any game…until Blood and Wine. Blood and Wine was bigger and more saturated than most other AAA games. If I had to pick my least favorite thing about the base game of Witcher 3, it was that many of the Witcher Contracts and side missions felt pretty similar to each other. This was not a problem at all in Blood and Wine. Every mission, was unique, hilarious, evocative and fun. Posing for a painting with a dead griffin, winning a grand tourney, helping a love struck knight woo a cursed woman, enduring the bureaucracy of Beauclaire banking, and my favorite quest in the whole game: entering a land of corrupted fairy tales. When people say that DLC is unacceptable, I can understand that, but then I point to Blood and Wine and realize that DLC can sometimes be amazing and absolutely worth it.

Loadouts in Multiplayer Games

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Until around a year ago, I wasn’t much of an online multiplayer person. I played some here and there. Uncharted 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, classic Star Wars Battlefront and Battlefront 2. I did love local multiplayer. Modern Warfare 2, Battlefront, and Halo 3 I would play for hours on split screen with my friends. I also played some Warcraft 3 and Starcraft online as well. In the spring of 2016, a friend of mine sat me down and made me play Overwatch for a few hours. I almost instantly fell in love with it. The art style, the eccentric characters, the gun play all felt amazing. I was converted to multiplayer games and bought Overwatch for myself the next day. Since then, I have put some time into several games I never would have touched before: Lawbreakers and Ghost in the Shell betas, Paladins, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, and Fortnite Battle Royale.

I found that I preferred the games where everyone enters the battlefield equal. I liked Uncharted 2 multiplayer more than Call of Duty partially because Call of Duty had loadouts and Uncharted did not. In CoD, each player selects which guns, attachments, explosives, etc their character would start the match with. In Uncharted 2, every player would start with an AK47 and a grenade, but better weapons would spawn in specific locations around each map. The beginning of the game was a rush to get to the weapon you wanted before anyone else. It was simple, but equal. The only things that distinguished one player from another were skill and map awareness. In CoD, I never knew what kind of loadout a player I would encounter would have. Maybe they had been grinding for hours and have unlocked amazing weapons and would have an advantage over me in gear. I would gladly sacrifice gear customization for balance.

I do want to quickly mention how much I appreciate Modern Warfare 2 and its merit based progression. Instead of earning credits to buy gun upgrades and such, you have to play with a gun and accomplish tasks to earn the right to upgrade it. I just would prefer it to be in a single player game(Wolfenstein does this well) rather than a competitive multiplayer game.

One of my absolute favorite things about Overwatch is that every Genji is the same. I know exactly how much health he has, how much damage I can risk from him, what his abilities and cool downs are. There is no advantage one Genji might have over another except skill. I feel similarly about Fortnite BR and PUBG. Every player starts off equal and only skill, map awareness and luck will lead to victory.

I quite liked Paladins, and will talk about it more at a later time, but I don’t like the loadout system, especially because you have to get the loadout items in loot boxes. I think the mid-match upgrades you can purchase are interesting, but it makes it difficult to know what I’m going up against when I see a Kinessa. She could have different health, damage, etc than a Kinessa in a different game.

I understand that this is a matter of personal opinion and it’s a pretty minor issue, but I like to analyze the games I play. I know that many people like loadouts because they are a clear representation of game progression, but the only progression in multiplayer games that I care about is personal skill.

Loot Boxes: Gambling or Nah?

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Similarly to the Battlefront 2 situation, the subject of the ethics of loot boxes has been discussed a lot lately. Are they gambling, should you be able to buy them with money, what contents should they contain, what kind of games should be allowed to have them, etc. My view on this is mixed.

Simple Answer? Yes, loot boxes are gambling. You are expending a resource for the chance to gain something of greater personal value. Some people argue that in cases where you can earn loot boxes without buying them invalidates the gambling argument. I disagree. I think that time is also a valuable resource. “Time is money” as the saying goes. If I spend time grinding a game to earn loot boxes or the credits to purchase loot boxes, I am taking time out of other activities to earn the chance to gain something I want. I am gambling time for in game items.

Recently the ESRB ruled that loot boxes are not gambling because you are guaranteed something, even if it’s not what you want, unlike a slot machine where you may come away with nothing. I also think this is a bad argument because if you take it to its logical conclusion, I could create a slot machine that guarantees at least a penny every time you insert a token and place them in locations where gambling is illegal. This is obviously ridiculous.

I also want to briefly mention some similarities between something like a slot machine and a loot box. Every loot box system I have seen is colorful, has exciting sound effects, shiny color coding, etc. You press the button, the box shakes for a moment then explodes into a pile of loot. Often, they don’t even show you what you have immediately until you click on each item to reveal it. When you pull a lever on a slot machine, it plays exciting sound effects as the moving parts spin and flash. They reveal one by one so the anticipation builds with each revelation. Each of these elements come together to trigger dopamine centers and can easily be addicting.

If you agree with me so far, what is the solution? Should randomized reward systems be outlawed in games? Personally, I don’t think that is necessarily the only solution. I think the real problem is that most people don’t see loot boxes as gambling and so don’t know what they’re getting into with them. At the least, any game that has a system like this should declare it on the cover inside the ESRB rating. For example: T for Teen, Violence, Language, Gambling. Then people should be aware of what they are getting. Especially parents who might not want their kids to be engaging in a gambling system.

Some argue that because people can get addicted and self destructive, the system should not be allowed in any game. I can understand this, but I also believe in personal responsibility. As long as an individual knows what they are getting, they should be trusted to make their own decisions. Developers shouldn’t have to treat every member of their audience like a child that needs protecting.

The next question is whether players should be able purchase loot boxes with money or just through in-game actions. This also ties into the question of the loot box contents. In my opinion, purchasable loot boxes can only contain cosmetic items without becoming pay-to-win. If loot boxes can only be earned through in game actions, then it is tolerable that they contain gameplay-altering items, though I, personally, believe that gameplay advantages should only be awarded based on merit and nothing else. I have said before that gaming should be the ultimate meritocracy where every player enters equal and only skill can give you victory.

I think that an important thing to consider when looking at microtransactions in games is why a game might include them. I will use three games to illustrate my view of this: Overwatch, Battlefront 2, and Fortnite Battle Royale.

Fortnite BR is free to play, doesn’t contain advertisements, and all new content that has been added has been free. In late October, Epic Games added a microtransaction system where you purchase V-bucks and use V-bucks to purchase cosmetics. At the moment, this is the only way the game can make money. While it is true that this system is not a loot box system, but instead paying money for currency to buy items directly. It should also be noted that you can earn V-bucks by grinding in the paid PvE mode Save the World, but most players only have the free Battle Royale mode. I think this system is fine because the microtransactions can only lead to cosmetic items and I believe that developers should be able to profit from games they make.

Battlefront 2 is more complicated at the moment since the future of their microtransaction system is uncertain. Currently it is not enabled, so players can only get loot boxes through in game actions. This was not originally true. Previously players could purchase crystals which can be spent for loot boxes. Furthermore, loot boxes in Battlefront 2 contain not just cosmetics, but also gameplay-affecting items. The system, as it was before, was not tolerable. Since players could purchase loot boxes with money which contain gameplay progression items, it was a pay-to-win system on top of a fully priced AAA game.

Overwatch is one of my favorite games, so I will try to be as objective as possible. Overwatch is $60 on Console and $40 on PC. The game includes a loot box system that you can either earn in game or by buying them with money. The boxes only contain cosmetic items but some consider having a microtransaction system in a pay-to-play AAA game is unnecessary and greedy. I can understand that, but since the Overwatch devs are consistently adding content every few months which is free for everyone. I would prefer cosmetic loot boxes that people spend money on to paying for new maps and heroes. Ultimately, I am fine with this system as long as Blizzard continues to support the game.

My thoughts boil down to pay-to-win is never acceptable, but cosmetic purchases are tolerable in games that are either free or are continually supported without paid dlc.