Robbie Cooke

So firstly, let’s answer the simplest question: “Why is the ‘gameplay’ not 'pure' gameplay?" Why are the camera angles cinematic? Why are they shoving in cutscenes? Why is there no HUD? Am I being tricked?

There are multiple answers to this - one being the dev/publisher wants to make it look as good as possible (for obvious reasons - see below) - but a key one is dead simple: GAMES LOOK & RUN LIKE CRAP until really close to launch. Like months, weeks, sometimes *days* before.

Framerates, screen tearing, bugs, you name it, it'll be a problem. Pure, unedited, unadulterated gameplay capture of a AAA game, 6+ months from launch (like probably everything during Inside Xbox) will look bad, or at best, not match player expectations (again see below).

“But what about that demo for [insert AAA] I saw at E3 [insert date] - that was [insert years] from launch and THAT was gameplay?” It was. It was also almost certainly from a “vertical slice”.

These are an offshoot developed specifically alongside the game as a proof of concept and for early press access. They are polished far far earlier than the main game, which often goes on to diverge significantly from the slice.

Put simply - a AAA game never looks as polished as its vertical slice right up until launch. And these are EXPENSIVE. They absorb crucial dev resource and can take months, even years to make. Even at Rebellion we can’t make these for PR/marketing in all our projects!

So what happens when your marketing schedule, or a partner - like Xbox - wants a trailer half a year or more before launch? You either stump up for a pre-rendered trailer which is expensive, or you do stuff in-engine, which is hard work, but a nice half-way house.

BUT what if they need gameplay though, like for #InsideXbox? Woah boy. Here be dragos for the video team. How to capture from a broken game to make something both exciting and authentic? IMO that's why you end up with the specific kind of gameplay trailers we saw yesterday.

So let's just *assume* capturing uninterrupted, “lets-play” quality gameplay is not doable so far from launch for most games. There’s a more important question: WHY are these trailers being made and shown at all? Pre-order culture. And expectations.

There's a whole other discussion we could do on WHY pre-order culture drives hype and hype drives pre-orders and why it's so engrained. Let's be frank here: most of us LOVE the thrill of reveals. I can barely think of another medium where people are so open to being marketed to.

I think my games-hating Step-dad put it best when he said: “So your job is to get people excited for something that doesn’t exist yet?” Ouch! (though he is super supportive of my career :) )