the trailer because like I said context and effect matters a lot for trailers like if you want people to talk about your trailer or talk about the game then you need to sort of hit certain beats for it to make sense so once we've figured out like the purpose or know why we're making this trailer or yada yada yada we start concepting sort of uh and start coming up with ideas as to like what will happen in the trailer and like what is the format of the trailer

And yeah, like based on the purpose of the trailer, that really dictates what happens in it.

If we're making a trailer where we want people to sort of see something cool and be blown away, we might do it in one way.

And if we want to make a trailer where we're like explaining the game and, you know, talking about the game, it's one thing.

For instance, we made a trailer a long time ago where it's basically me just explaining the game from start to finish in like a goofy way.

That was one way to make that trailer and that trailer was developed in a certain way because we wanted to do that.

And it's up to you to utilize all the resources you can find on that planet to create multi-story factories and connect those suckers with conveyables to create tasty conveyable spaghetti so that you can produce all these cool items like that thing and that thing and whatever that is.

And some other trailers, which are more cinematic, like the Update 3 trailer, for instance, that one we really wanted to evoke a feeling and bring the hype in, but also to sort of showcase it in a real setting.

So yeah, based on all these parameters and whatnot, that sort of drives the ideation and the conceptualization of your trailer.

And sometimes these ideas come immediately.

Sometimes it takes a long time to figure some of these things out.

And we usually sit down and brainstorm these ideas and discuss this a lot.

And sometimes it's external people coming in and pitching to us for certain ideas.

So this varies a lot for us, but usually we just sit down and talk about the purpose and talk about what could we make.

And sometimes it stays in the ideation phase, and sometimes that brings into the next step.

So in the case of the announcement trailer, the purpose was obviously we wanted to announce the release date for Satisfactory.

we actually also originally were going to announce console in this trailer but here's the thing too that also kind of affected the trailer a bit um we didn't know 100 if we could announce console at when we made this trailer uh because of various different factors so we needed to design a trailer where we 100 were announcing the release date and we were like potentially announcing console so we really need to fit the trailer in such a way where

if we needed to cut the console part portion of it then it wouldn't really affect the trailer that much and for the announcement trailer we originally were going to have it at an event we were originally pitching to have this trailer be showcased at an event the reason why we wanted to have an event is because we wanted to catch people that may have heard of satisfactory but didn't want to play it because they were waiting for 1.0

So we really wanted to like hit the old drum and let everyone know that like, hey, 1.0 is coming out soon and it's coming out at this time.

So get your shit together.

And when you have a trailer at an event, it's really important to think about the context here, right?

Because we're showcasing this trailer in a block of many trailers.

So there's a ton of other games that are doing sort of the same thing that you're doing.

And some games are really, really big.

Like if

Call of Duty was at the same event that we were, you know, most people would probably talk about Call of Duty or maybe not, but like, you know, some other big game, you know, if Naughty Dog announces their new game, then who will remember the satisfactory date reveal trailer, you know?

So it was really important for us to like hook people in a block of other trailers to make, you know, this trailer kind of memorable.

So for this event, we pitched two trailers, actually.

We pitched the regular 1.0 trailer that we released with 1.0, and we pitched this announcement trailer.

And we made this pitch for the release, the one we actually made with the toilet flush, after the event was like,

It's too generic.

Like, it's a cool trailer and all that, but there's no exciting new, you know, unveil or anything like that.

So they didn't think it was too interesting for us to have that there.

So that's why we sort of came back with them with this pitch where like, hey, but what about this stupid

trailer?

And in the end, we didn't end up having the trailer at that event, but we really liked this idea of this trailer, so we decided to pursue it on our own instead.

And the idea for the announcement trailer came like that.

Actually, so me and Linus, Linus is like our main trailer guy, and I'm just sort of the stand-in trailer guy that comes in here and there and makes trailers.

We basically came to each other at the same time with the same idea, and we were like, we should do this.

So, like, for the announcement trailer, like, the idea of this trailer, you know, came to be immediately.

Like, the thing with the announcement trailer that we thought would make it stand out was the fact that we're kind of spoofing and parodying how other trailers were made.

And that's sort of how we wanted to stick out or stand out at this event.

Because, like...

The whole sort of premise of this trailer was really that, like, we wanted to highlight something really, really stupid, which is the toilet flush functionality in the game, right?

We wanted to highlight something really, really dumb and then have, like, all this cool stuff in the background.

If you know Satisfactory, you will know that, like, you're not really interested in the toilet flush.

You're interested in everything else around, surrounding the toilet flush announcement, right?

And for people who don't know about Satisfactory, they will just go like,

What the shit was that?

So like that was really the goal with this trailer is like we we had this running joke with our community and you can argue that like, yeah, but only people in your community will get this joke.

But I really thought that like

No, people will see the trailer and be confused.

And if people don't know about Satisfactory, they will be interested in learning more about Satisfactory.

And it will be easy to write about this because it will make dumb headlines because it'd be like, Satisfactory's adding toilet flush.

It's like that's easy to write about.

It will make for sensational news and it will draw people in and make people interested and everybody will know that 1.0 is coming out and all these like other implications that come with that.

The announcement trailer, in my opinion, was such a good like instigator of the path to come for 1.0 because it was

it had all these elements that really played into it.

The other thing with this trailer is that we had a really short amount of time to make it.

So we had to sort of reallocate resources that were really already working on a lot of other stuff for the main trailer and also the game itself.

So it was...

It was rough making this trailer.

I basically made this trailer in full-time, in two months' time, while doing everything else at the same time.

Don't recommend doing this, but sometimes there's opportunities in Game Dev constantly, and we really like this idea.

And in the end, it was really worth it because it really paid off the amount of interest we got from this trailer.

And it was the fastest YouTube video in terms of views we've ever had on the YouTube channel.

And I think there were over 150 articles written about this announcement trailer.

So it really paid off making this trailer, but I do not recommend doing it the way we did it because holy shit, it was rough.

We got it done.

So yeah, for us, the trailer would convey the release date for Satisfactory.

We would show new content with the joke being that we're highlighting something that's kind of useless, which was the toilet flush.

But everyone would know about all the cool stuff behind it.

All the new parts and all the new buildings, and people would be really excited about that.

You know, our community is really, really good at, you know, picking up the pieces and figuring things out.

So we didn't feel that we needed to really explain too much with this trailer because people were gonna see, you know, the new buildings and see the new parts and being able to piece things together.

And they really did.

There was so many videos made from community based on that trailer.

where people were figuring things out.

And it came in waves too.

People figured some things out and they were like, wait a second.

And then they made follow-up videos on those follow-up videos.

And it was one of my favorite times working in this game ever, seeing just how people were unpacking this trailer and creating all these conversation pieces.

And it sparked so much joy and so much interest in the community for this trailer.

So that was really, really cool.