This is not fun.

Quite apart from the basic time-wasting of “Wait a minute, I’m watching other people playing games instead of playing my games“, multiple generations of trailers are the worst thing to happen to shooters since index-finger-amputation. They drain attention away from real gameplay, focusing both customers and developers on whizzzbang effects instead of actual depth, while while damaging your enjoyment when you can actually play it.

Big budget shooters are now extremely serious business, with budgets approaching Hollywood levels and more fanatically intense supporters than the average nation at war.  Even those crazy Marvel ones with brainwashing dictators.  These spectacular stresses make propaganda paramount, so they expend much more effort on revolutionary graphics than any other aspect of the game.  That was fun as we ascended from blocky demons in Doom to the super-slick Crysis graphics, but now it’s like grinding a wedding ring to make it more shiny: there isn’t actually much more you can do, and spending extra time is actively damaging the object.  Games are already as near photo-quality as anyone other than the Terminator could possibly care about, and the focus on realism means we have multiple entries in major series with almost identical weaponry and effects.

The vast M16-toting wasteland of green and grey makes any attempt to stand out the most precious thing since the Amulet of Yendor: each game announces their “twist” approximately a full year before it’s ever been programmed into the game, advertising it in press releases, rendered cut scenes, early trailers at E3 and so many other sources that by the time you get to play it - even if it’s a cancer-curing Famethrower (turning enemies into hopeful young musical stars* which you can then set on fire) - you’re already bored of it.

The best bit of any game is those first few hours, where you’re inundated with new experiences and options (unless you’re playing an EA sports game, obviously).  Watching every trailer before playing the game is like reading a book with the last page stapled to the cover, it’s eating the frosting off the cake a week before your birthday, it’s That Hollywood Voice That Sounds Like It’s Been Chewing Gravel (”It Was A Time Of Darkness, And Repetitious Clichés….”) sneaking into your room and spoiling the ending of every movie the night before you see it.

So it’s simple.  Watch good trailers, truly cinematic ones which understand the medium - creating new content to attract and appeal, like the TF2 “Meet the Team” - and leave the “watch us play it instead” idiots

alone while you go play Counter-Strike.

It hasn’t been advertised for years.  And it’s fun.