Opinion// Dead Island: A Trailer Success Story

Well, it was inevitable wasn’t it? Dead Island, despite being a bit crap*, has won the hearts and minds of consumers across the country and is now No.1 in the UK Video Game Chart. Which means Deep Silver owes an awful lot to the marketing company that created that initial teaser trailer.

Because let’s face it, gamers weren’t going to be interested in the game’s stunningly dull premise, hackneyed combat or troublesome glitches (if they read many previews, that is). It is more than fair to say that the hype generated back in February was the major motivator in people’s buying decisions here, coupled with the fact that it looked a little bit like a poor man's Left 4 Dead. And everyone quite rightly loves Left 4 Dead.

Knowing how important that initial trailer has been in sustaining interest in Dead Island has brought me back to an opinion article I wrote several months ago, arguing that there was no controversy in the whole ‘turned kid getting chucked out of a window’ shtick. Reading it back now, my opinions are no different - it’s still a brilliant piece of filmwork, even if it ended up being solely for the purpose of marketing.

To recap: the trailer implied a deep, meaningful story about the anguish of family loss in the context of a zombie thriller. Was it wrong for Deep Silver to do this, considering the final product failed to live up to it? Not really. Publishers want to ensure you buy their games. As long as it’s not blatantly engaging in false advertising, anything goes when trying to creatively turn heads.

And as I said back in February, movie companies do this all the time - teaser spots that aim to sell a ‘concept’ to the audience, rather than an actual film premise. Almost every gamer has seen this before in another form, in fact. Alternate Reality Games were all the rage several years ago - the most high-profile of these being Halo 2’s “I Love Bees” campaign back in 2004.

I don’t think anyone was angry about the fact that Melissa’s story had barely anything to do with the Halo canon. Similarly, I wasn’t the least bit annoyed or surprised that the heart-tugging teaser was a completely separate entity from the final Dead Island product. On the contrary, I was utterly disappointed.



Here was a concept that could have truly evolved the zombie survival horror genre. As games race to become more sophisticated in terms of graphics, sound and gameplay, there are only a select few that truly have the ability to tell a good story and engage the player. For a genre that typically involves throwaway arcade action, Dead Island could have been the opportunity to have done something different.

Techland, for whatever reason, didn’t deliver on those expectations by critics and players, however realistic in the context of a marketing trailer. And what’s really interesting here is just how powerful that trailer was in creating those expectations. Game critics had knocked points off of their reviews because the game wasn’t like the trailer - while some consumers took to flaming critics because they were getting hyper about Heavy Rain With Zombies.

I highly doubt Deep Silver is really giving a hoot, however - such expectation, regardless of whether it was delivered or not, has awarded it with a No.1 in the UK Video Game Chart, and unmitigated commercial success. From a marketing standpoint, however, it does make for a most interesting case study on how to effectively turn consumers to your product, quality be damned. Almost like zombies, really.

* Naturally the opinion of the game being crap is entirely my own - SPOnG officially scored the game with an utterly not-crap 75%.