After weeks of daily steam discovery queues, here's my 1 rule for steam game trailers

you have five seconds to show me gameplay.

If I'm six seconds into a trailer and I don't know what playing your game looks like

my odds of wishlisting it are PLUMMETING

There's a billion games on steam. Nobody has time for 90 seconds of plot and panning over landscapes

five seconds is p harsh, at least ten,

things I want to see in a trailer from most to least: what is the gameplay like, what does the game look and sound like, what is the plot, who are the characters, what are your character designs devoid of context, what are some vaguely thematic quotes, what game I've never heard of did you also make

me and a small group of friends have made a kind of game of just chaining steam discovery queues, and there are a few, pretty ironclad rules we've seen

1) if your trailer drops below 30FPS, that says very, very bad things about how your game is optimized
2) like quinn said, if you spend more than five to ten seconds hyping up the game and DON'T have a separate gameplay video, you PROBABLY are trying to fleece you

oh and lastly what vaguely positive but otherwise nondescriptive adjective did a game review site use

3) if the game copy mentions a character's gender without any sort of provocation chances are it is incredibly fucking horny to yikes degrees

I have the five second rule but I also don't start the timer in my head until they're done showing logos and shit

But one thing that almost ALWAYS makes me skip the game is if the trailer is narrated by the game developer

Is that entirely fair? Probably not

on the flipside, most game developers don't have, like, voice training

and, uh.

sound bad

yeah

my main thing is when the first trailer is just ALL story and character art

show me your FUCKING game

man that reminds me of when one of my friends got justin mcelroy to voice his game trailer

Yeah, fair.

With an obvious exception for stuff like visual novels, where story and character art essentially is the gameplay.

even then I need at least, like, two seconds of the game actually in motion

so I know what I'm working with

Lightning Bolt : ...100 Foot Robot Golf?

MundersOWundus :

Star Seeker in: the Secret of the Sorcerous Standoff...