Trailers in between short video forms from digital games to movies and back

Abstract

Promotional trailers represent a significant trend in most entertainment sectors. However, little efforts have been done in enlightening this expressive form when related to video games. This article aims to address such a lack by analyzing game/movie (inspired by digital games) trailers as a crossroad between digital entertainment and films. The main intent is to exploit a comparative lens to uncover leading traits of short videos according to the medium that that they are portraying. Therefore, three case studies – i.e. Assassin’s Creed, Warcraft, and Overwatch – are presented and unpacked with a combination of design and semiotic tools (from Greimas’ narrative program to game heuristics) and the concepts of symmetry, dissymmetry and asymmetry advanced by Roger Caillois. Results point to a cross-media coherence between different types of trailers, and future developments are suggested for exploiting them as an informing research object.