First Post In The "Game Trailers"-Series - PS3: "Michael"

About one and a half weeks ago the Sony-PR-Invention "Kevin Butler" tweeted the following:

(click image for the teaser)

After I had watched this I couldn't help but watch it several times more. I tried to figure out which games i recognized and after I had identified some read what other people had discovered. Well, I can tell you there's definitely plenty of stuff to find.

Now, while combing through the piles of articles that accumulate every morning in my Google Reader I came across the full Trailer (or however you want to call it):





Well, I think it's pretty awesome. Of course it's overly impassioned, but in an almost ironic way. We have to hand it to the guys at Sony, they definitely have nice ideas.

Despite the fact that I like the trailer and that I like that they do stuff like this, I'm far from a playstation fanboy. With the Sony-Goeorge-Hotz-quarrels in mind (not to mention the PSN-Hack), their console is probably the one I'm most ambivalent about. But I'm sure the other companies aren't really better, they just didn't have to prove themselves in these kinds of circumstances.

I own a PS3, the Wii, a fairly decent Gaming-PC and half of the Xbox 360 that currently resides in my brothers room at my parents house. Every gaming-platform has its pros and cons. I personally probably feel most connected to the PC, first because I grew up playing on it and second because I think that that's the place where there is the highest potential for innovation. But back to topic.

The Trailer. A pretty costly produced Trailer. A Trailer "for all the PS3-Fanboys and those who aspire to be". A Trailer, that exclusively advertises PS3-only games or more precisely: that advertises the PS3-experience. The comment that garnered the most "Tumbs Ups" on YouTube reads like this:

The Trailer will almost exclusively be watched and liked by people who are gamers anyway. Perhaps it will even get many a man to hop in and try the PS3-experience. In my opinion however, it's main effect will be that gamers feel good about themselves - as gamers. That's not too bad either! Those 2 minutes and 13 seconds help gamers grow their confidence. Perhaps they even result in more people listing "Gaming" as a hobby on their résumé.

What also has to be mentioned is the fact, that it's a life-action trailer. That's something we don't see too often in the gaming world. In this particular case the life-action aspect has some interesting-  and in my opinion - positive effects.

•  It brings "our" heroes out of the digital and into the real world. It opens up (in addition to all those hidden clues) the possibility to discover things, to see "the real" Nathan Drake. We watch the trailer and are anxious to see which character is next to enter the stage.

• In a related way this accomplishes that we feel near our heroes. They aren't only polygon-figures anymore - they're "real people"! To top it off we are watching them in their free time, away from all the deadly adventures through which we normally guide them. The feeling of being near them is of course amplified by the punchline: when we slowly get our head around the fact that all those protagonists are celebrating "Michael" (is that the most common name in the US?) and by that us, the gamers, we really feel adressed. How strange that must be if you're name is "Michael"...

• The life-action film also shifts the whole Gaming-Thing closer to the world of "film". It somehow also says: "Look what we can do with games! Why shouldn't they be deemed as worthy as films? Why do we even need this rivalry?" 

At least that's how I see it. Perhaps you could interpret the live-action film completely the other way round, as a hidden surrender to the power of "real" pictures. But at the moment, I wouldn't think that is the case.

Trailers are getting more and more important in the gaming world. The smallest Indie-Game needs one. The Blockbuster-Titles often have dozens of different ones and most of them don't even show gameplay, but use CGI to give us a hint on how setting and mood of the finished game will be. Trailers can boost the publicity of up to that point unknown games (just look at the brilliant Dead Island trailer), they build expectations, they get you to want to play a game. Long since they use all the available resources that are also used in movie trailers. With that, they are also an interesting intermediate product between "movies" and "games", they are - in a sense - movies about games.

So, what do you think? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to use live-action in game-trailers? And this being the first post: what do you think about my english? Is it good enough?