Ivx Game Trailer

Game trailer factory

The Content Factory trailer_factory pipeline (under content-factory/pipelines/games/trailer_factory/) is a multi-stage workflow: research → storyboard → animatic → audio direction → final render → quality check → re-shoot loop.

Because it spans 4-8 GPU services and takes 20-90 minutes end-to-end, this skill routes the work through Hermes Kanban so each stage is a durable task that survives Veo / Kling / Beatoven crashes.

When to use this skill

• User asks for a game trailer, gameplay teaser, launch video.
• User wants an iOS/Android App Store preview video.
• Trailer revision: "make the audio darker", "add a 5-second hook before the gameplay", "render at 9:16 too".

Prerequisites

• MCP servers configured: content-factory, content-factory-media, hermes (for kanban orchestration), gastown (for assignment to the right rig).
• Hermes Kanban board exists: hermes kanban board create content-factory (one-time).
• Game context in S3 App Canvas (icon, hero, mascot, sound logo, representative screenshots).

The workflow

1. Gather game context. Confirm with the user:

   • Game name + bundle ID + Steam/Apple/Google URLs (if live).
   • Target trailer length (30s for App Store, 60s for YouTube, 15s for TikTok / Reels / Shorts).
   • Output aspect ratios needed (16:9, 9:16, 1:1 typically).
   • "Tone words" (3-5 adjectives) — feeds the AudioDirector.

2. Create the parent kanban task (use the hermes MCP):

   kanban_create(
     board="content-factory",
     assignee="trailer-director",
     workspace="dir:/Users/<you>/dev/content-factory",
     title="Game trailer: <game_name> (<length>s × <ratios>)",
     body="<paste the gathered context as YAML>"
   )
   

3. Link 5 child tasks (one per stage), each with its own assignee profile so different models can work each stage:

   Stage	Assignee	Toolset
   storyboard	screenwriter	content-factory, firecrawl
   animatic	media-producer	content-factory-media
   audio	audio-director	content-factory-media
   final-render	media-producer	content-factory-media
   qc	reviewer	content-factory (reads quality.py outputs)

   Use kanban_link(parent=..., child=...) for each.

4. Watch the dispatcher spawn workers as parents complete. Tell the user the parent task ID so they can kanban_show <id> anytime to see live progress.

5. On QC failure, the reviewer comments + blocks. The dispatcher re-spawns the matching upstream stage with the reviewer's notes as additional context. Up to 2 retries by default (kanban.failure_limit).

6. On all-done, the parent task's last comment includes:

   • Final video S3 URLs (one per aspect ratio).
   • quality_score per ratio.
   • cost_breakdown (per-model spend).
   • Storyboard HTML link for asset-by-asset review.

Triggering directly (single-shot, no kanban)

For experimentation or short trailers (< 15s), bypass kanban and call the pipeline directly:

trigger_pipeline(
  name="trailer_factory",
  config_path="configs/pipelines/game_visuals.yaml",
  game_context={...}
)

You lose retry + cross-stage visibility but it's faster for iteration.

Variants

• App Store Preview — 30s, 9:16 vertical, mute-friendly (captions burned in). Use configs/pipelines/short_video.yaml.
• YouTube launch trailer — 60-90s, 16:9, music + VO. Use configs/pipelines/long_form_video.yaml.
• Social shorts — 9:16, 6-15s, hook in first 1.5s. Use configs/pipelines/video_shorts.yaml or quiz_shorts.yaml.

Surfacing results

Always show:

• The storyboard.html link first — user can A/B per shot before burning GPU credits on the final render.
• The kanban thread for the parent task — full audit trail.
• The cost_breakdown — game trailers can run $5-50 in compute.

Common failures