I've noticed over the past couple of years that the bar has been raised considerably in terms of video game marketing. Bigger titles are being teased like blockbuster movies and rolled out with some pretty impressive creative leading the way (see last year's mega-launch of Halo 3, which surpassed even Spiderman 3 at the cash register).
There are loads of great campaigns out there for games and gaming systems, and I've decided to highlight a bunch of my favorites. Because I'm a huge dork.
If I were doing a top ten list, I'd screw it up, because I'm leading off with my number one pick. It's the spot that really set the new gold standard in my book; the original launch spot for 2006's Gears of War.
Built from the ground up with the Unreal 3 Game Engine by director Joseph Kosinski and the fine folks at Digital Domain, this promo broke new emotional ground with the beautifully mis-matched use of Gary Jules' "Mad World" cover (available on the Donnie Darko soundtrack). Not only were the visuals amazing, but this creative seemed to open everyone's eyes to the possibility that a game about blowing shit up might actually have some depth to it. It was a ballsy choice, and it totally worked... the knock-offs are still coming.
For this year's Gears of War 2 campaign, Kosinski and Digital Domain followed the same formula and went for the heart strings, but didn't quite pack the same punch as their first effort.
While both "Rendezvous" (featuring Alan Seeger's WWI poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Death") and "Last Day" (using DeVotchKa's "How It Ends") are killer spots on their own, the original is still the one that set the bar (although "Last Day" looks better and better once you're familiar with GOW2's story).
Good spots, good games... good times.
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"Good spots, good games, good times."
I hope that was ironic because otherwise CHRIST is that a weak wrap-up.
Anyway.
I, too was really blown away by the effect on the Gears trailer, (and moreso with the UNKLE "Lonely Soul" track on the Assassin's Creed trailer,) but Gears really brought to the forefront something sort of sad about these - the song indicates an emotional depth that you wouldn't expect from a shooter, which is thought provoking, but...play the game, and...you turn out to be right not to expect it.
There was a New Yorker piece that was really a bio of the Gears creator, and you could see them really working hard to be seen to take the game seriously as an artistic (not just creative) endeavor - but the result was embarrassing and patronizing, like they were trying to give a high school play credit for trying.
Let's face it - until most games grow up quite a bit, a matchup of an evocative song with a game's trailer will end up unintentionally pointing up the shallowness of the latter.
(Or maybe I'm just worried about the inevitable trajectory here - the half-assed imitators, then the parodies...though before that happens, there is still some ass to be kicked - see for instance the trailer for theMirror's Edge time trial levels.)
I'm not going to claim that GoW2 reaches the emotional depth of, say, Schindler's List, but I don't think you've played quite far enough in the campaign to make a call just yet. This one gets pretty heavy.
Hey, it's Wednesday! Maybe we'll get there tonight.
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