Assassin's Creed

David Hesmondhalgh: it is essential for media industries to minimise risk, and to maximise profit

This trailer does this! Intertextuality, clear and recognisable narrative, high production values (more info below)

Valhalla

• Triple A game
• It is huge and expensive to make
• It is expensive to buy, it costs £59 to preorder (right now), but this is the RRP. This is fairly significant, particularly when any gamer knows that this will decrease in value straight after. Do you play it straight away? Or wait and play for cheaper?
• You can also get the ultimate edition for £99.99, not sure what this includes, but it should justify the price. We are looking at a commercial industry, which makes it's money off of the core target audience.
• UBI-SOFT will use a really good marketing campaign to sell their game.
• In this unit, we only look at industry and audience
• INDUSTRY - How it's made, how much money did it make, marketing material - facts
• AUDIENCE - Who buy and use media products. For example; 'how is the audience targeted?'
• This means that we don't need to look at media language or representation in this unit. We have to look at it a little, but not too much.

Trailer:

• Looks and sounds great, it has high production values. It is not an independent video game, it is a massive video game, which appeals to a massive audience because of it's high production values.
• Highly produced score (music), epic battle scenes, good animations, use of fur and hair. This is hard to animate. When we see this, we know the effort which has gone in to make it.
• It is NOT gameplay footage, it is footage which has been specifically created for the trailer. 
• It uses computer generated graphics. It's pre-rendered graphics and looks better than the actual game.
• Regardless, the point has been made that by paying £60, you can expect high production values as it is clear for the target audience.
• To the regular audience, it could appear like a film trailer. This helps to target a larger audience, it uses paradigmatic features (genre conventions of a film trailer). Some of these features include; a narration/voice over which explains the story, multiple scenes, interesting camera shots. 
• Why do they do this? It works! A few people may see this and believe it is exciting as it mimics a film trailer style. It allows the trailer to target a wider audience in new and exciting ways.
• This trailer has a clear story and narrative. At this stage, it does seem that deep, but that's probably because they can't give it all away. Establishment of equilibrium, disruption and possibly even restoration? Because who will win this battle? This will be familiar to the mass audience, as it presents a story with depth, but a clear narrative.
• This trailer also demonstrates intertextuality.
• It makes references to other assassin's creed series - the name, high production values, battles, exciting historical settings.
• It could be reminiscent of lord of the rings, I'd also argue Game Of Thrones. Lord Of The Rings focuses on battles, as does AC. GOT's iconography is recognisable in this trailer too, the dark and gritty story telling. Both of these have huge fanbases, and therefore this will appeal to a large, mass audience who will feel familiar with the tone of the game and the narrative which accompanies it.

Some people are angry at the trailer because they expected 'gameplay', when it's clearly not. People were expecting an actual gameplay trailer, not a stylised trailer which uses paradigmatic features of a film trailer.

By including popular music within trailers, Assassin's Creed manages to appeal to a mass audience yet again, as fans from the performers will flock to the video, and therefore watch it. This will intrigue them, and possibly make them purchase the game, just to support their faves.