HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER TRAILER...
...AND EMPOWER IT WITH SOCIAL WEIRDNESS
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Liquid Crimson aims to take your incredible game and make an incredible first impression. We caught up with Lauran Carter, head of comms, to discuss its work during the pandemic, the new demands of next-gen titles, and bringing the Guildford Games Festival to the masses
ames are inherently interactive experiences, but practically every first look for a potential player is a video trailer. While content around the game, such as developer diaries and influencer campaigns, can be essential in explaining a title’s USPs. Liquid Crimson has been creating just such content for over eight years, with the team’s experience stretching back over two decades. Which all came in handy when 2020 stating throwing curveballs. 2020 WAS A YEAR LIKE NO OTHER, HOW DID THE PANDEMIC AFFECT THE STUDIO’S OUTPUT... One of the few good things (from the games industry’s point-ofview) about lockdown was that people needed to be entertained more than ever, so both die-hard and casual players were picking up their controllers in their droves. This meant that we were called upon by many games studios to announce and tease their games, as well as produce developer video diaries to keep their audiences entertained. 2020 saw us work with studios such as Supermassive Games, Criterion, Natural Motion, UsTwo Games, Outright Games as well as many, many more! It’s been a very busy year for us! … PRACTICALLY IN TERMS OF PRODUCTIONS? It’s been tricky, but thankfully not impossible, in part thanks to the (sometimes Herculean!) efforts of the games studios that we’ve worked with. With teasers and trailers, most of our work can be done remotely without the need to set foot in a studio, all thanks to modern day, highspeed broadband. The greatest challenge for us was how we would be able to safely film face-to-face interviews and dev diaries during a pandemic.
Prior to lockdown, we had many interviews lined up for the year for various projects, the planning for which we had to quickly adapt as the situation changed. We have been very fortunate to have worked with teams that inhabit large, but currently empty, studios so we have been able to use that to our advantage to set up a socially-distanced crew for some of the interviews. Also, Guildford has a fantastic venue, The Boileroom, that offers ample space for a socially-distanced ‘set’ so we’ve filmed interviews there as well. We’re very passionate about supporting and curating the local game dev scene. Liquid Crimson helps run the regular Guildford Game Dev evenings, the game awards and the festival – and being ‘detached’ from the community due to lockdown has been tough. We’re really keen to get back to IRL events once we’re clear of the pandemic! … AND CREATIVELY IN TERMS OF HAVING TO THINK UP NEW APPROACHES TO CAMPAIGNS? As far as creative approaches go, we haven’t found a huge amount has changed. We’ve always worked collaboratively with our clients to bring their vision to life, and as our clients are spread across the world as well as all over the UK, we’re very used to a portion of the process being ‘long distance’. Each of our clients bring a unique element for us to work with – from the colourful, squishy world of Alba, to the downright terrifying landscape of Little Hope, to the fast-paced, all-out action of CSR2. The games we work with have such depth that additional creative ‘angles’ haven’t really been required. We’ve just continued to work collaboratively and have carefully adapted to meet any challenges that presented themselves along the way. Communication and collaboration
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