/gets coat…

That’s the problem. Gamers are generally unforgiving of production values, so unless you make it as good as Valve or Blizzard, you risk creating a negative vibe around your game. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“Then again I guess it’s a question of what audience you’re making a teaser for.”

Yeah, they aren’t always for gamers. These work on retail more than a straight gameplay video, and you need to start that dog and pony show with them quite early to convince them to take your game.

Also, it’s easy to forget that it’s a teaser trailer. It isn’t designed to tell you everything you need to know about Demigod. That info will come later.

I hope so, because the art direction and concept looks interesting!

In any case, I think it’s mostly the fact that E3 week (and quite a lot of teasers/trailers released in the weeks before) served up loads and loads of cutscenesque and cinematic snippets with very little gameplay. Every time people go through the same motions of “Yes, it looks nice, but what will it play like?” and after a few weeks of that you’ll be getting a bit tired of it ;)

edit: Oh and also, there’s been plenty of low-budgety gameplay teasers, Stalker managed lots of them. Certainly not Valve/Blizzard quality but still interesting. Then again I guess it’s a question of what audience you’re making a teaser for.

The cost with producing a straight gameplay video like the Diablo 3 one is that you’d need a team polishing that part of the game to 100% showable form. With a virtually infinite budget and development schedule, you can pull all of your artists and animators and scripters and such on to that specific project. (It’s what everyone had to do back in the E3 days.)

You can argue that it’s worth the cost, but it’s not an insignificant issue for a small team like the one making Demigod. With a smaller team, you’re looking at:

*Make a flashy video that hides where development ends, or parts that are unfinished or non-final. This can be done relatively quickly with a small number of people.

*Pull more people from your main team off the core game development to produce a release-quality video, possibly causing delays to the entire project.

*Go silent, with no PR or marketing or video until it’s finished, though that might be a few weeks or a month before launch. Good luck getting it pre-sold to retail with zero hype or interest.

There are other options here, but most are between “no video/do nothing” and “any video/do something.”

Also, it’s easy to forget that it’s a teaser trailer. It isn’t designed to tell you everything you need to know about Demigod. That info will come later. (Or at least can be found in the various articles floating around.)

As far as teasers go, I think it was pretty effective in that a lot of people are more interested in the game today—or at least more aware of it—than they were yesterday.

Blizzard has specially scripted stuff that’s fairly well directed, but at least they have the sense to release both cool cinematics as well as gameplay videos that give an idea of how it’ll play. Valve’s HL2 bink videos were also awesome (I still think they’re amazing after having played the actual game).

There’s no excuse for releasing only cinematic or cutscene(ish) shots of your game, although I tend to enjoy those as well.

See Pattom’s link above.

I haven’t followed this game. i don’t even know if it’s an RPG or RTS. And despite pending millions on their movie clip, I still don’t know.
Great job PR team!

Go team Demigod! If this turns out great, and sells accordingly, then that’ll give those DRM-heavy publishers yet another kick in the pants.

Too bad those bastards all wear steel codpieces.