The Art & Art of Video Game Trailers, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

So here's a strange little one. Anna, for instance, is routinely aggrieved and offended whenever she's forced to watch video game trailers at the beginning of a film – which is pretty much everytime we see a film now. What she's resisting is that, as of several years ago, the video game business is actually bigger (in dollar terms) than the movie business. What she really doesn't want to hear is that video games are now fairly widely recognised to be an art form.

And, perhaps in the same way that a movie trailer can condense a lot of emotion and adrenaline down into a 90-second speedball, video game trailers seem to have gotten pretty damned good while no one was looking. Here are a few I've been boggling at lately.

Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2

According to Wikipedia, "total revenue from first day sales in the U.S. and the UK was $310 million, making Modern Warfare 2 the biggest entertainment launch in history." Read that again. Or don't, just watch the trailer, like I did many times, obsessively. It's gorgeous.

As a side note, I recently got to play this game all the way through, due to the outrageous generosity of one Alex Heublein, and which I never get to do because I never have a machine powerful enough to run new games. And the game is completely jaw-dropping. You literally don't know where to look. Actually, there were several MW2 trailers, and that one was so awesome, here's another one:

(One more here if you're yet unsated.)

Dead Island

This is just about the most disturbing thing I've ever seen in my life. Watch it carefully the first time – because you'll never get to see it for the first time again. (I've probably watched it about eight times now.)

The hook obviously, is the reversed time sequence. Inevitably, some sharpshooter undertook to edit it back in order. Check it out.

Gears of War

This one's kind of a classic – the first to use totally incongruous music (Tears for Fears!) to ramp up the overall dramatic effect.

The new Gears of War 3 trailer is, inevitably, even cooler.

Crysis 2

The Crysis franchise is another jaw-hanger. It's just amazing what goes into these things these days – production staffs in the hundreds, budgets in the millions, schedules in years. Crysis 2 has like a dozen trailers. I show you this trailer because it's stunning:

And this one because it's set to NIN "Just Like You Imagined," which always wins. (And it's pretty stunning.)

In closing, here's the teaser for the forthcoming Modern Warfare 3. It all just keeps getting better.

Obviously, I've favoured shooters. Gotta favourite game trailer? Link or embed it in the comments section. (Full HTML allowed. I think.)

vidding alex anna art

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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