You always want a play button. The idea that the video is so important that people should be watching it before they discover what page they are seeing or read any contextualizing text is absurd.
If you don't have a play button, nobody will watch the full video. This is ok for doomscrolling social media, but I am quite sure it's not ok for your use-case.
I generally agree, but there are valid cases where play buttons aren’t needed for an animation in every case as you’re saying.
We literally have seconds if that to communicate enough for the user to decide their needs are represented in the screen, to stick around and read and click some more.
Let’s look at gifs and videos as something much simpler - an animation of frames that either auto plays or not.
Having a short, looping, auto playing animation showing a showing a feature or overview with a progress bar can be a positive implementation of negative doom scrolling patterns. Have seen this implemented very well in documentation in addition to text and videos.
The user can pay attention to a looping animation quite well because they’re used to it, including waiting for the loop to restart like they’re already used to. This in turn can accidentally feed some reinforcement learning mechanisms, especially where the primacy effect is involved. Watch the short loop a few times before diving into the full video.
Another use that work well is automated and timed flash cards where clicking, no JavaScript or being offline can be a consideration. Good for hands free, or limited hand use availability. Yes it can be scripted too.
Animations can also be useful within a carousel on a hero component where the resistance to press play on a video might be occurring.
Gifs and their ability to animate frames is just a capability, how we’ve seen them used should not define the limits of what they’re good for.
You always want a play button. The idea that the video is so important that people should be watching it before they discover what page they are seeing or read any contextualizing text is absurd.
If you don't have a play button, nobody will watch the full video. This is ok for doomscrolling social media, but I am quite sure it's not ok for your use-case.