If you look at trending topics on twitter at any given moment you will be forgiven for stabbing yourself in the eye. A list of the most popular topics on twitter is actually an unholy inventory of rage inducing shittery that will make you question the very core of humanity and everything around it. Because what’s “hot” on twitter are fuckwitted inane phrases featuring the likes of Justin Bieber, the Jonas brothers and Lady Gaga. Basically if you’re on MTV 24/7 you’re on twitter 24/7. Twitter can be educational, a much quicker gateway to news and culture than any other means but millions of people aren’t interested in this, no, they just want to proclaim their love or hatred of popular Disney tweens. If you look further into these trending topics you see that most people aren’t actually talking about the topic at all, it’s a long list of morons tweeting “OMG why is Rasputin trending?” or just listing every topic so people will read their tweets and maybe just very maybe will end up following them.
To cut an infinite tangent short, there is one particular thing that is currently trending called Dead Island. I would be right to assume that it’s just another stupid topic, that Justin Bieber has been found dead washed up on an island, or Lady Gaga’s new outfit is of a dead island, but no, this is one of those rare occasions in which twitter has trended something that is worthy of your attention, the problem is that you won’t know that, you’ll assume it isn‘t.
Totally ignoring the trending, and even a few tweets from trusted sources, I eventually stumbled across the trailer for Dead Island this morning (not the show). Dead Island is a forthcoming PS3/Xbox 360 game about an island of zombies, and the trailer at least, is fudging brilliant. It’s pretty rare that a game will appear out of nowhere and get everyone excited, we usually know about them sometimes years before they are released, but like a sex offender lunging at you out of a bush, Dead Island has caught everyone by surprise.
A lot of recent games have been trying to look like movies, fancy cut scenes, big scores, bigger explosions and instead of adverts, they have classy trailers. It’s a concept that works, look at the sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and that looked like several movies! As the game industry is becoming ever more popular, marketing is becoming the most vital aspect of it. The popularity of the Nintendo Wii and DS is not because of the excellence of the games, it’s because of Ant and Dec, Helen Mirren and Sir Patrick fucking Stewart.
Dead Island will further change how games are marketed, it might turn out to be dreadful but publishers will have already arranged meetings to turn out a trailer that makes their game look like the dog’s bollocks and the bee’s knees. We might be given lots of pretty looking videos, but film trailers almost always fool us into thinking a film is better than it actually is. Iron Man 2 and Predators both included footage in their trailers that didn’t feature in the final film and who’s to say game trailers won’t do this? They already do.
Hardcore gamers will be dripping in their pants having seen the Dead Island trailer but if history tells us anything we should prepare for disappointment. If there’s two things I love it’s zombies and islands but we don’t know much about the game as of yet and it may prove to be Dead Rising on an island, which no one wants. Of course what we want is a great game and if the trailer could be considered as an indicator of its quality (which it can’t) then we could have something very special.
There are lots of if’s and but’s and by the time Dead Island is released we might have forgotten all about it. In true cynical fashion I am braced for an anti-climax and a barrage of over the top artsy trailers. All that matters for the publishers is that games look good, and like zombies we buy every single one.
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