Keeping the surprises in games out of trailer videos

There has been a somewhat depressing trend happening in Hollywood for some time now. Many theatrical trailers often give the majority of the story for an upcoming movie in the trailer, pretty much spoiling the story of the movie before it's even released. Unfortunately, the game industry has been following this trend somewhat, by revealing much of the game in the trailer and spoiling some of the surprises.

The creator of the Metal Gear series, Hideo Kojima, thinks that "it's important to mislead people with hints because I think if something's too predictable then it's no longer fun." I honestly have to agree, though I wonder how much of his intended message was lost in translation; this can be a double-edged sword if we, as developers, aren't careful. I think there's a balancing act between giving players a taste of what to expect, and keeping enough hidden to give the players surprises that they will enjoy. If we reveal too much, then people who play will end up losing interest sooner. If we mislead too much, players could feel they didn't get what they thought they were paying for.

The balancing act is also not going to be universal. Rather than straight out misleading, we need to be able to keep some aspects of the game's story and mechanics just simply hidden, while revealing just enough to get their interest. Not an easy task, overall. It also depends on the type of game you're trying to sell – if you're selling an action-filled shooter game, you need players to know what makes it different from all the other action-filled shooter games, and there's little room for being mysterious. If you're making a deep story-based RPG with detailed crafting, enhancement, and customization, you have a lot more room to maneuver.

Still, there's lots of ways to keep some of the really good surprises in games hidden until people actually get to play them, without spoiling surprises through the trailers. We shouldn't need to stoop to Hollywood's laziness just to make preorder sales.

~Peter J.T. Langdon

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/kojima-on-why-misleading-trailers-are-important-6405309