Developing a New Major

gonna make a lot of different types of pitches – to venture capitalists, to the IP holders, to assistant producers who act as screeners, to marketing guys who need just a low level pitch with a little detail, inside your own company to get a greenlight for your idea…

need an “elevator pitch that’s a minute or two long and convenys the high level macro concept and is designed to pique their interest and hope thatt hey extend the conversation

to publishers

• most don’t accept unsolicited pitches because of potential lawsuits down the road
• you can ask them to sin an NDA to protect your idea – most will refuse
• they’re gonna ask you to sign an NDA in case they mention any of their future projects that they have underway
• GDC Austin used to have a Live Pitch session where new developers could pitch to a varieety of publishers
• GDC SF and France also have the “Game Connection” – get 1/2 hour with each publisher
• look for new publishing companies – ask them what kind of games they’re interested in
• have 3 things for the pitch – a treatment, prototype and a trailer
• treatment – high concept description, art, competitive analysis, relevant industry trends, key features, complete budget, schedule – all this shows you know what you’re doing
• include a game tralier along with the prototype so anyone can watch and play and get a feel for the game
• publishers very involved in the development process – they assign a publisher producer – as the studio’s producer you need to manage this relationship to keep them out of your team’s way so be sure to keep open communication lines
• publishers wants to make sure you’re are spending the publisher’s money wisely
• ask them for stuff they can help with – a lot of publishers have their own testing dept that you can take advantage of for instance
• got marketing involved early so they understand game and you can act on any feedback they give ya
• marketing can do focus group, help with industry analysis and sales figures
• anticipate marketing needs and put them into the schedule. send them key milestone builds and build notes, demo builds and notes, story overview, character descriptions, main features, control overview, walk thru’s they can use for demos that illustrat ewhat you want them to highlight in their marketing

some notes from the vgexpo game pitch session

gotta be able to say who’s your main competition, know what’s gonna make your game spcial/what makes it different from other existing games (might be price, feature sets, IP, way weapons work, input device…)

pitch meeting is a time to develop an internal champion at hte publishers – try to make a connection with someone at hte meeting

have to give the impression that you can get the job done – on time, no budget

know clearly who’s your intended audiance (sometimes you know and it’s just not an audience the publisher is interested in reaching

at first you’ll pitch to screeners – they’re someone you can make a connection with, they’re on their way up in the company and your game might help them advance. don’t piss them off

internally you’ll have to pitcha the game and the feature set to members of your team, to other teams

most ideas get thrown away originally – they might already have a game like yours in projection, might not have a team available right now

need a narrative for your game, the when and why of hte game, majority of games the actual story isn’t that important – it’s the core mechanics, but you need to put the game in a narrative for the pitch

if you’re going to pitch an MMO – need lots of detail when talking to the developers; need to show how you can beat WOW if you’re talking to the suits especially if you’re leaving off features that WOW players are used to, be able to tell them how you’re going to make non-stupid NPCs – MMOs becoming very specialized right now – need to work with MMO expert to help you develop your pitch

gotta know what topics are hot and play up your games topic if it’s popular right now – pop culture trends, community features, ugc, microtransactions – hot right now

hard to sell a game with a content driven pitch – don’t start with the long backstory – if they just don’t like your content you’re screwed because that’s all they hear. better to talk mechanics, short content pitch

pitch goal – get listeners excited about something right from the beginning

remember – game is entertainment product – going to take liberties wiht content to be more entertaining and be cooler

if yo’re making a cell phone game – you have to understand mobile play habits (short bursts of time, text updates) know your competition on that platform, in US SMS costs money

some catchy terminology gives the audience something to ask you about

gotta show you have worked thru and analyzed problems/industry issues and have some solutions

think about using different technology for different parts of your idea – maybe some on the console version, some on the mobile game

create little widget games (??not sure what they meant – prototypes im thinking) to test ideas

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