Often, a player’s relationship with a game begins before they actually get their hands on it. In some cases, it can start several years before: publishers can use long hype cycles to nurture fanbases, subsections of which are eager to fervently defend those games against any perceived slight. Early Access periods and crowdfunding campaigns, meanwhile, encourage communities to build around games, giving players a vested interest in – and in some cases direct input toward – their subsequent development.
But there’s no neat, one-size-fits-all approach for how best to announce a game, nor how to talk about it thereafter. Granted, two of the titles here adopted a similar tactic, both introduced via short trailers at The Game Awards. Don’t Nod Montreal isn’t yet prepared to reveal too much about Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, but we’re able to truffle out some key details during a Zoom chat with the core creative team. The same goes for Thrasher, the latest from Thumper artist and composer Brian Gibson, in collaboration with former Harmonix alum Mike Mandel. Both seem anxious about their one-minute teaser. “Do we want to show a lot of gameplay or do we just want to get people hyped?” Mandel frowns. “It’s hard to convey mood and scale in a trailer,” Gibson adds. But, again over Zoom, we find out enough to whet the appetite for this psychedelic VR odyssey.
