Making games isn’t just about having a great idea, or having the funds and resources to make it, but being able to sell it. And even in the age of crowdfunding and social media, the first people developers usually have to sell their vision to are investors and publishers.
In the industry, this is called pitching, which is essentially a sales presentation to introduce the game to investors and publishers that can capture their interest and persuade them to fund it or bring it to market. This can happen at different stages of development too, from before it’s even been announced publicly, to after already having a successful Kickstarter campaign and then needing a publishing deal or additional funds to make it the best product it can be to reach an even wider audience.
The pitch deck is then what’s used to present the pitch, although it isn’t simply a bunch of PowerPoint slides with bullet points. Perhaps the most vital part is being able to see the game in action, ideally as a playable prototype in its most polished form.
"You need at least some sort of video in motion of gameplay," says Tim Garris, publishing producer at Serenity Forge who previously also handled marketing and PR for the narrative game Beacon Pines. "If you’re not at that point, unless you're an extremely well-established name that people know and trust you can create good games and finish them, it's probably too early to be pitching.
"Ideas are easy to come by, execution is the harder part. You see all the time people saying, 'Hey, I have this great idea. I just need someone to make it for me'. That's not quite the same as, 'Hey, we're starting to create this thing. We have proof that we are executing on it in a way that is going to be interesting.'"
Tim Garris
While a polished vertical slice is the most ideal scenario, that situation can vary between developers, especially if they require more funds to reach that stage in the first place.
"If you don't have a really polished vertical slice-level prototype, and it's very much like white box environments and polygonal-looking characters at this point, I will need visual aids like concept art," says Joshua Garrity, head game scout at Secret Mode, the indie publishing arm of Sumo Digital. "Some developers have started doing a 'beautiful corner', an in-engine representation of what the final game could look like but doesn't have any of the gameplay and implementation in there."
Callum Godfrey, nDreams’ head of third party publishing, doesn’t completely rule out a pitch at a paper concept stage but stresses that is only for developers wishing to start building a relationship with a publisher rather than as the proper pitch deck.
"It’s asking a lot of for a publisher to agree to fund a game based on an unproven theory," he says. "Having a playable proof of concept is the best way to show that you can deliver something and that your vision for the game is something solid that a team is aligned behind and able to deliver against.
"If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a playable build speaks a million."
If a game prototype might be lacking in showing the mechanics or features, it might be tempting to include as much of that into the pitch as possible. However, a pitch deck is not a design document. It’s meant to introduce the game to investors and publishers to get their interest, in which case Garris likens it to a written trailer.
"I was really pretty ruthless in trimming down the Beacon Pines pitch deck as low as I felt like I could go so that it's just a very brief document, and there's only one slide that talks about the gameplay," he explains. "It's not designed to give someone a full idea of what the game is, it is there to capture your interest enough that you're going to engage with Beacon Pines. It’s a brief tour of all the reasons that you might want to be interested in the game."
Garrity adds that, for games that may be built primarily around their narrative, "it's a mistake to lead heavily with the world building and storytelling of your world."
He continues: "Reading what is essentially a narrative bible ahead of getting into any of the details of the dev schedule, your budget plan, or just the core principles of the gameplay, is a really good way of sending anyone looking at your pitch to sleep very quickly and is not putting your best foot forward.
Joshua Garrity
"An example I always use is when Vince Gilligan was pitching Breaking Bad to the various TV networks. He said, ‘I'm going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface.’ That’s really simple, but it gets to the core emotion of what that story is. I would say take a similar approach to pitching your story when you're initially approaching publishers. Have the bible ready, but don't lead with it. Get me in the door first, get me excited first."
It’s still important to explore what makes the game appealing, especially if it’s not necessarily gameplay but the art style and narrative, but Godfrey warns devs not to get too bogged down on the details and subtleties. "Consider whether what you’re showing is materially important for a publisher to assess whether you’re onto something, try to balance the weight of the pitch to focus on what matters," he adds.
What’s included in a pitch deck can also vary depending on who the audience is, though that’s more a case of tailoring the pitch rather than having to make another one from scratch. "You can take some of the core building blocks and use them across different pitches, so we were able to repurpose our publisher pitch deck to then pitch the game to influencers or to different Steam events," says Garris. "With that, we would just take the core part of the game that was like the condensed introduction to what Beacon Pines is and then drop off some of the more nitty gritty slides that were about budget and timeline."
Of course, when pitching to investors and publishers, those nitty gritty numbers will be important, since these are the people providing funding and who also want to know if it’s going to be worth the money. These numbers include not just the overall budget, but the target release date, target platforms, and number of territories it can be released for. The latter examples are also a useful hint for porting and localisation that publishers can take on. For games that have already been announced, it’s always strong to include the number of backers and funds raised if it’s been crowdfunded, as well as Steam wishlist numbers.
Garrity however warns that announcing a game on Steam publicly does carry its own risks. "It can be a double-edged sword if you put the game out there publicly, and it hasn't done the numbers and it hasn't gotten traction," he says. "There are plenty of games that we're looking at that are not announced to the public and are progressing through the greenlight process. Evidencing audience engagement I would view as the cherry on the cake rather than the cake itself."
Callum Godfrey
Of course, developers aren’t marketers, so while it doesn’t hurt to do homework on assessing the game market for a particular game or genre, that’s what publishers are for. "Generally, nDreams takes care of the market-facing ‘numbers’ side of things, and we have built extensive tools to be allow us to do a detailed market analysis," says Godfrey. "So the numbers the developers should focus on are the costs and what they need from the publisher."
Indeed, when pitching to a publisher, a common mistake is to only consider the funding and not what else a developer might want to get from them. "There are a lot of people out there who may be good at pitching their game but not at knowing what to ask for or how to ask for it," says Garris. "I've seen indie devs a lot of times say, 'You tell us, we're kind of open to whatever', and that's not really a strong conversation to have versus being really specific about looking for this type of support, and being able to back that up."
Godfrey would view it as a red flag if a developer presents a pitch deck to a publisher that’s only looking for financing. "There are still a lot of developers, particularly smaller and newer ones, that don’t quite understand what a publisher does and view it more as a source of funding rather than a partner helping them to bring the game to market in the best possible state to sell to as many players as possible," he explains. "Publishers offer so much to developers if they’re willing to ask for it: QA support, first-party relationship management, user testing, community management – and yes, of course, game funding and marketing. But those are part of a much bigger package."
That also presents a tricky side of a game pitch deck for a publisher, because while in theory it’s about creating a kind of sales brochure for that presents the team and project in the best possible light, it also needs to indicate their shortcomings that a publisher can help with.
"You have to balance confidence in what you have with knowledge of where you’re lacking the expertise or resources to deliver on your promise," Godfrey adds.
For Garrity, the biggest red flag – relevant for pitching to both investors and publishers – is if the developer asserts there are no problems at all, and where there’s no contingency built into the budget or planning.
"I could make a scarf out of the red flags that 100% confidence would pull up for me. The only explanation for that level of confidence is naivety," he explains. "You just haven't created a project like this before and don't understand the work involved, that mistakes will be made, because it's just the nature of the beast. Or worse, they're a snake oil salesman, and they're lying to me.
"I have to trust that a developer will tell me when things are going wrong. I have to trust that a developer will hold up their hand when they need help, because that's how you solve things smoothly and without anyone else from the outside knowing that these speed bumps even happen. If I'm already getting red flags that they're not going to be honest about that stuff, then it's a no go."
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