A game launch trailer with a difference
Re-writing the traditional game trailer format with an engaging trailer, born out of lockdown.
1 Million+
Video Views
Republished by PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox YouTube Channels
0.02
Cost per view
The brief.
When producing your standard, out of the box, video game launch trailer, the go-to is always gameplay. It’s what the audience wants to see before they buy – it makes sense. But with people’s feeds saturated with similar content and Windbound being a premium indie game, Deep Silver wanted to try something different. And that’s what we delivered.
Windbound is a role-playing survival game, set on a series of islands in a made up land. The main heroine Kara has been shipwrecked, and must find her way home – without getting killed or starving to death.
Whilst the game itself was unique, what made this game so special was the developer team behind it.- 5 Lives Studios. The devs, led by Mitch, Brent and Chris poured their hearts and souls into this game for years – and that was the story we wanted to capture and sell.
The end trailer.
Produced by Sticky Click
"I have had amazing feedback regarding your agency’s output from all levels of the business at both Koch and Deep Silver and directly from the Studio themselves.Your assets have extended beyond social and were used as part of our PR beats and even internal partner pitches for the game to the likes of Nintendo. You have gone above and beyond and I look forward to reviewing our performance in a PCA and elevating it yet again for the next game."
Otisha Sealy, Associate Global Brand Manager, Deep Silver
The Approach.
With a focus on the people behind the game, we wanted to use interview footage of the four key developers talking through how they pieced together Windbound.We wanted to capture their passion and enthusiasm for the game and show how much thought and time went into producing the environment, the sounds, and the story of the game.
While in the depth of a global lock down (April 2020), we had to get creative in the way we produced this asset. In normal circumstances, our team would have filmed on-site, using the highest quality 4k equipment. However, due to COVID-19, we had to instruct the 5 Lives Studios team in Sydney on how to self-film, providing guides and walkthroughs of the camera and sound setup required. We then run several interview sessions via zoom to ensure we got all the soundbites needed for the trailer.
Taking the footage they filmed in their office, we moved to production. With BETA access to the game we worked to collect and record gameplay footage that would be used to overlay and support the narrative of the developers. Over 80 hours of gameplay went into finding the best shots, the most scenic and beautiful angles, and the aspects of the game that showed it in its best light. .
With a hard deadline, the unexpected limitations (pandemic, game build updates), we managed to deliver within a very production window of only 3 weeks. Two rounds of amends and we had the end result – an asset we believe told a story of a game that thousands of people would soon fall in love with.
The spin-offs.
As part of a short series, we also created three further dev diaries. Watch them below.
The result.
A stand-out launch trailer that tells the story of what Windbound is and how it was made from a very human angle inspiring players across the world to purchase the game and experience it for themselves.
The gameplay trailer was initially designed to sit on Windbound’s YouTube channels and social channels. However, we saw huge success post-launch with third-party channels such as PlayStation (12 million subscribers) and Xbox (4 million subscribers), and Nintendo re-publishing the video on their channels as well.
What’s more, both Deep Silver and the studio were extremely pleased with the result as getting dev-focused content on other 3rd party channels is very rare.
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