The most haunting trailer ever...
 

Okay...

I just saw some crazy messed up crap that I don't believe a lot of people are truly ready to see. You might not like this stuff but in context, it would make sense. With that said, there's some games that make a statement with just a trailer...

Official trailer

A guy watches Dead Island trailer

Did a little research... the game's been in development for three years and just got a LOT of discussion about it. This might be one for the record books...

Oh another zombie game. Woo, hoo. Also no game gets more than a passing "meh" from me if it's purely pre-rendered. Show me gameplay or don't bother.

It has its faults as a trailer as Hawk points out, but it certainly shows a kind of mood and attitude on the parts of the developers that seem interesting. Basically it's a sweet ass-video and a cool self-contained story.

PS. The reaction video is priceless. The guy gets through what, two seconds of the events of the trailer and then swears and insults the developers' personal lives for two minutes?

It tells me nothing of the game beyond an "We are in for shock value!"

Maybe... MAYBE... they will have a compeling story, i mean, the trailer is well put together... but still, the only thing it did for me was a slight taste of disconfort.

What is the gameplay like? A more Sandbox take on Dead Rising? Is the Dramatic affect of the trailer annuled in gameplay if i dress my character in a bunny suit and ride a tricicle with a chainsaw in hand?

Man I hate zombie games And I hate this trailor. I mean I don't have anything to project on the little girl but I can tell people are going to project on this game. The outcry about the trailer just proves it.

This also shows the line that gamers are not willing to cross. Killing nameless zombies is fine...killing a little girl who just turned into a zombie that YOUR RELATED TOO is terrible.
THIS IS WHY I HAVE KINEMORTOPHOBIA because I project that every zombie is a PERSON.

Its seems that this will be a MELEE ONLY L4D on a open world. and will have a plot (that may or may not contain that family)

i think this is what they were trying to project... that behind every zombie there is a story of Love and Sorrow, tragedy and such...

That's why i won't write this game off just yet... but i don't like game-by-shock-value. It's the same Reason i refuse to call Dead Space and Resident Evil 3 and later as "Horror"

I don't know, guys. Isn't this like the point of that whole video games as art bullshit thing that we all tend to side with? That video games can make us feel things? Can move us?

Just because it's uncomfortable doesn't make it bad. In fact, the ability to make it uncomfortable from just that little bit shows that the developers are good at manipulating emotions and might be capable of breathing new life into an over played genre by actually making it feel like horror instead of mowing down zombies with a gatling gun.

Edit: And Bells, that's not shock. Shock is the Dead Rising 2 bullshit. This is emotional manipulation. That they used a child to get past the ridiculous amount of desensitization in most people these days might be shocking, but that doesn't relegate the trailer to shock value.

Thats the thing that scares me. I love how the trailer plays with emotions but then again...It's a fantastic trailer but I can't handle it. I have enough problems with zombies already. I can Handle L4D only because of versus mode (Zombies are not scary when its a friend THAT IS PERFECTLY FINE playing with you) and this just embodies my fear of zombies. I just know my brother is going to have to strap in into a chair and play it in front of me if this happens in the game...

Here is the thing about "games are art"... this is not a game. This is a CG promo. a "Short Movie" if you will... Games should convey emotions and motivations through gameplay and via their storytelling. This is just a brush over the Tematics of the game, we don't even know if it relates to the actual game and it's story.

So far the only thing i know is that i'll kill Zombies in bikinis and Kid zombies in this game... so the Manipulation is a bit skew right now, because this is not yet presented in game form.

EDIT: Character profile from the main site

EDIT 2:

Game profile

games are art, movies are art, books are art, but thats their secondary objective as far as I'm concerned. You can make the most well put together artistic master piece, but if it fails to entertain then it fails its primary purpose. If this is just another shock value "horror" game, with repetitive dull gameplay, it sucks no matter how "artsy" it is.

ITT: Abuse of the word "Shock"
 

Looks interesting.

I'm just here for the art debate
 

Most fine art classes would reject this statement. After all- if the purpose of the piece was to make you uncomfortable then it has succeeded. (See: Vito Acconci and every damn thing that creeper has done) (Disclaimer: I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that mindset, but I've sat through plenty of terrible art pieces and had to listen to why they're such great pieces of crap art.

About the trailer: Hmm, it did make me uncomfortable, but I liked how they turned my expectations on it's ear- I wasn't expecting the little girl to be a zombie. Watching her attacked by zombies was probably the most disturbing part though. I'm intrigued! As if I'd ever play it.

I wouldn't say this goes against my earlier statement. If people didn't find creepy and disturbing things entertaining then horror genre wouldn't exist

No, he doesn't do anything but stare at the camera and talk softly.
 

I think you misunderstand.

I think the whole confusion with the "games are art" thing is that while games ARE art, people who call themselves the art community have a totally different view of what art is and should be.

For more on this, please watch this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...e-Kings-Speech

Or, less kindly, the "art community" has thus far given art contest awards to a monkey, a bear, and an old dropcloth used by house painters.



That said, I bring everyone back to VAVE - Viewer-driven Audio Visual Experience. Applied to the right titles, it can do for video games what "graphic novel" did for comics.



In all seriousness, though, games, despite being art, also do need to be entertainment. Like MovieBob demonstrated with The King's Speech there, just because something is artistic does not make it good or even worthwhile. There's a game either in production or already out where you're literally in a desert full of nothing with the only object being a distant mountain and maybe another player if you're lucky enough to meet one, which is artistic as hell, but doesn't sound particularly engaging. More like if they took Desert Bus, removed the bus, removed the story, removed any explicit goal in favor of simply putting in nothing better to do, put it online, and tried to market it as a standalone title.

I'm seeing a lot of commentary elsewhere that this trailer was so super sad. I don't know. The music was sad. If Left 4 Dead panic event music had been playing, it would have just been "Hey cool Left 4 Dead, now with kid zombies!"

Edit: Unless you have the sensitivity like that Geoff guy from the OP video. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, but at the same time I don't like his criticism ad hominem of Techland either.