Discoverability from Day Zero

welcome everyone to gdc i guess if this is your first day congrats on missing a day of gdc uh if you don't know who i am i am felix i am a scout for fellow traveler and my talk today is discoverability from day zero um we're going to talk a little bit about discoverability in general and what that means to me as a scout specifically and then we're going to go into a few more details i'll do a lot of rambling i'm sure and then hopefully you'll have a takeaway at the end of it so um cool who am i uh this slide is a lot um for me to look at i am currently a producer on neocab tunic and sable those are all indie projects small scale eight people are smaller um and i am producer and marketing npr for both finger and polytron i'm a scout for fellow traveler which is a small publisher located in australia we focus mainly on narrative games and narrative

experiences um i'm also a publishing consultant with panic um with nick suttner who's somewhere in the room i can't see any of you anymore they're waving great there you did it and they're doing untitled goose game which is really lovely as well and it's an honor to work with nick and panic on that um and previously i was on things such as towerfall ascension and oxenfree and i worked with iron galaxy um in a lot of different ways as well so done a lot of stuff but today we're going to focus mainly on my experience as a scout and how discoverability plays into that role and publishing in general and for developers pitching to publishers so okay uh discoverability let's start with a bit of what discoverability is and before i get to my definition even i'll say that a lot of discussion and discourse about discoverability has been focused um on post launch at least in my experience we tend to put it on platforms to solve

discoverability and i'll be really clear i could talk for much much longer than 25 minutes on discoverability on platforms and saturation of market and what all that looks like post launch um but for right now i want to come at this from the perspective of a scout someone who gets to see a lot of pitches uh before launch obviously and then has to determine both the viability of a project to ship and its market potential so what do i mean by discoverability in this context what is the ability of someone who knows nothing about you or your game to find out both that it even exists and also what is it so discoverability is this in the hole but we're going to break it down quite a bit in the next 20 minutes i can't believe i only have 20 minutes to do this wild okay um so phases of discoverability um let's break it down a little bit um

and how i approach the potential of discoverability in a project when i'm looking through a deck this one reach is where i see the most push right now um it can take lots of forms but i think the most common is uh like past success or um public champions with high social media presence for example like you have lots of followers on twitter or you have a big community from a previous game um reach uh is extremely useful um you should think of it as a multiplier on discoverability in general um i think this is a big reason why a lot of developers are looking for publishers again in 2019 compared to uh you know earlier 2011 2012 they know their reach isn't exactly what they could be and they want to hand that off uh to someone who is a better multiplier um final ability so it's a little trickier finability is a little trickier it's the step that

happens after seeing say like a tweet of a super gorgeous game a gif let's say um but then where do i go to find out more um if it's just a gif can i click on a profile or link where where is that info right so that's findability is the access the next step accessibility this one is definitely the scariest of all the uh the points here in my opinion um i define it like this how much info do i need to have enough knowledge to make an informed decision as to whether i like your game and most importantly whether i'm going to buy it or support it and for me as a public as a scout it's whether we're going to sign it right in this context um how do you know when you've informed someone to the point of hooking them have you done it within their attention span that's really big and is the information you've given them clear um and representative of the experience or at least the experience you want

them to have i know that it's a little harder pre-launch to describe a game but we'll go into that in a second um okay so take these and let's talk about some dangerous assumptions that i see a lot uh developers in general um contacting me you know submitting decks submitting pitches the first one is definitely the conflation of reach and discoverability it's super important and it applies to a lot of us whether you've made a game in the past or not reach is just not discoverability um and i would say it actually applies even more to us with social media followings and previous project communities it's not to say it can't help right so like if you've made a game in the past and you have a huge community that is obviously not a downside that's a huge help but it's not one in the same reach is

useful for pushing marketing materials and hopefully means that you'll have people who will champion your game both on the consumer and the business side because you have a reputation how to get champions is a whole other talk that nick sutter is going to give on thursday at 4 pm i highly suggest everybody go to that one if you can it's super super useful so please check that out i won't go into it so that i leave it for you next sorry um but anyway reach doesn't necessarily guarantee that the design of your game and your vision is accessible or discoverable to anyone who matters okay uh the second step is a step in discoverability right and i think it used to be this i think like a lot of discoverability was when there were only a few thousand games on steam say um or you had you know like x many indies you could measurable amount of indies on a platform um putting up a stage a steam page and a

website and a twitter was definitely enough um it's just not enough now it's not it's tough to just end it there so i you'd be surprised how many people check the box now they're like okay i have a steam page i have a website i did it i'm discoverable um but that goes in hand in hand with this next one which is the discoverability is passive this is an assumption that a lot of us make when we work on super super small teams um i think it's i have a lot of sympathy for this one because i think that talking about this kind of stuff takes up an immense amount of mental space even just thinking about when you're making a game by yourself or on a small team what it takes to be seen and how you're going to reach either an audience or a partner such as a publisher it's it's so easy to say well i did everything that i was told in 2011 all these things i checked up

these boxes i have a steam page and i have a twitter and a website why aren't i being seen and i don't have a clear answer for that beyond it's just not enough anymore it really is not passive it needs to be active constantly and you need to be reaching out to people all the time um so again another really dangerous assumption um it's just a piece of the puzzle in general the discoverability uh findability and discoverability aren't the same okay i could talk about the next one for ages but i won't um this one can't be assumed at all and i think i see it a lot you probably have seen pitches like this before it's not the pitch that really worries me anymore i used to do a whole talk on why you shouldn't use an elevator pitch that is like i'm making minecraft meets papers please uh and that was true i think at one point and now i think that it's a little less dangerous on certain levels like i think you can use shorthand quite a bit or depending on who you're speaking to this is not a problem the danger is

uh assuming that you can or already do have their audiences and you might be surprised again in how many pitches i get where they're saying i'm making papers please meets minecraft therefore all the people that play either of those games automatically know about my game or will know about it very easily and that again uh oh boy is it's a whole can of worms that i could go into and i won't um so dangerous assumption uh shorthand okay shorthand can be super super useful but also really dangerous if you're a thousand percent certain that everybody in the room knows the shorthand you're using like i mean common game dev terms or even genres like roguelike or something then you're fine right um but if you're not sure you risk losing people right away uh accessibility is super tricky and shorthand is pretty binary and whether it works or not

um well that's exciting uh but you know when you're using it are you actually communicating why your game is different from every other game that uses the term you're using such as roguelike um or are you just alienating an entire audience off the bat right when you're pitching to say a narrative studio please use all the narrative shorthand you want right but also arm us with context for that shorthand make sure that we know what you're talking about in a larger spectrum and make sure that other people understanding you not all shorthand is useful all i can say there is use shorthand with caution and with an appropriate audience so these are all the don'ts like really common don'ts i see right um the next slide is sort of safer assumptions the reason i wrote it this way uh is that and i'm gonna preface this with a bit of a ramble i'm sorry um i scrapped this talk from this slide forward probably four times last year uh it's

been really really tough um the industry changes all the time right i mean everything is constantly changing and major platforms are making huge announcements and uh the way we experience shipping a game changes all the time and that's super scary right like i in addition to being a scout like i said i'm a developer so i get to see sort of both sides of that coin and it is really terrifying um it's been super hard focusing on this talk in general while so many different announcements are being made especially like the way games are going to be sold in the future and all these like sort of new platform ideas etc so please understand that the next these assumptions are safe or not necessarily a tutorial um if i had more time i might have been able to do more but here we are um i have to say that designing with discoverability in mind is

more important now than it i believe ever has been if you can't start testing your vision and its discoverability potential from day zero the risk of designing a game that is inaccessible and undiscoverable is much much higher than it was in 2011. um what i mean by that is there are tons of developers making games now indie games specifically and in order to know if your design and vision is accessible i don't think we can afford to make the game first and hope that it's accessible later we have to start doing it from day zero we have to communicate visions from the start and testing that communication uh to make sure it's accessible is essential to the process i know this is super vague all i can do right now is try to drive home the takeaway that this stuff is important i'd love to caveat with i'm not you i'm not don't hold your vision uh and if you're already working on a project i'm certainly not your dedicated game designer that you've definitely hired

um so i've come to realize that i can't give much universal advice that applies to every project but i can talk about some things in the abstract so discoverability is proactive it's on us as developers now and to find partners such as publishers it's on scouts to make sure that we are seeking out projects that are close to discoverable but probably need a little bit of help it's all about these partnerships that we can create and and flourish with from we have to use our reach and make sure we're pairing with the right people basically um but it's just not enough right that's a multiplier um so you need to be able to make sure that your design is accessible from the get-go in order to take advantage of that um discoverability is fluid i was told recently that there was definitely i don't remember it but i was told recently that there was a point in time where twitter was an excellent tool for discoverability it probably had

something to do with hashtags back in the day i don't remember ever using those but i know what happened i definitely believe that has changed and that's just an example of how we have to make sure the tools we're using and the multipliers we have are effective so we have to pay attention to how the market's shifting who is looking for what what kind of games and what kind of audiences are platforms seeking and focusing their attention on and that might be different now than it was five or ten years ago right like we all have an idea in our head of what kind of audience comes to a specific platform and what kind of publisher publishes a certain type of game but pay attention to those shifts and do a little bit of research i know that sounds really 101 but it's something that takes a lot of mental space and i think it's deeply deeply worth doing early because if you try to leave it until later it's much much harder um okay i don't think i've just discussed accessibility enough um in general in my life and definitely not in this talk so we can talk about a little bit more here

um your product is accessible if it takes relatively low effort from the listener to understand uh and then be equipped to make a decision on continuing to engage or not of course post launch that gap is pitch think buy but if you're pitching to a publisher it's pitch think learn more right that's all you can hope for um i'm not gonna start uh the i'm going to start sorry that the only way to make sure your game and design are accessible is by pitching it to people and testing the reactions and i definitely don't just mean other game developers it's super super easy for developers in general especially at gdc to get caught in the mindset of but i have so many people who love my id my idea it must be really good and accessible but if all those people are fellow developers and you've never tested the game out on anyone else you're doing yourself and your game a huge disservice so my advice on this one is

i don't know if you have this but i do um that uncle at thanksgiving who approaches you and says i have a great idea for an app it's going to make us a million dollars and it makes me want to shrivel up into a raisin of a human before dinner even happens um that's that's who you have to pitch to and i don't mean he needs to like the game uh and i don't even mean that he has to like deeply understand it he will give you an excellent sense of what sort of attention span someone who isn't already in your dedicated circles or even interested in games has and that's the goal is to know what that attention span is because if you can make your game accessible if you make your pitch forget the game it's not about playing it even your pitch from day zero if you can make it accessible to him during dinner at thanksgiving uh you've done it like that's that's the measure right and i think um

accessibility in general is probably the strongest point that gets you a publisher it's what tells me as a scout okay we can talk to an audience about this game that audience even if it's niche is going to understand and be excited about what you're making um i will say becca saltzman did a talk yesterday i believe or maybe you're wrong on that that covered pitching and how to do that to publishers it was yesterday right yeah thank you john um i highly recommend checking that one out uh she's you know she sees a lot of pitches like i do and i don't want to overlap with her too much so i won't go into pitching to publishers on a detailed level but that talk probably will army with a lot of details on how to how to make an accessible pitch in general i really wish i knew a way to ensure accessibility beyond telling you to talk to annoying uncle jerry and going through or going through each and every one of your pitches right to make sure you're all making products that have accessible cores or even if i could define for you now the so that in two or three years we can all agree the pitch is still accessible

and desirable um i can't but it does bring me to uh my favorite slide that is in all my decks um unpopular opinions uh things i don't say on twitter anymore okay i don't think you're pitching your creative vision so please stop trying to communicate that vision i think that your creative vision is deeply important and it is yours and it's something that not everyone can understand therefore i think you are actually pitching a product inspired by your creative vision and so the thing that has to be discoverable is not your creative vision and i think a lot of people get stuck in that initial loop where they're like but you just don't understand if only you could see my vision you would understand why this is such a good game a really big part of that is not pitching a product inspired by that creative vision um i think that there are lots of people

probably in the world that can help you with that i mean there are people there are pr people and there are designers and there are all sorts of people in the world but if you don't have contact with them this one becomes very very very difficult if you're isolated in some way this one's very difficult you can really get stuck in your own head over it i also believe heavily that publishers and champions are necessary more necessary now than ever i think that a published pairing with a publisher who even sees your creative vision in some way can lead to you having a product you just have to convince them of that and that's where accessibility comes into play um i also strongly believe that well this is math but i strongly believe that multipliers on zero still equal zero it doesn't matter if your reach is a million twitter followers if they don't understand anything and they're not going to champion your game that multiplier is just multiplying zero and it's very frustrating i see a lot of people doing it a lot of the time and it breaks my heart but um so these unpopular opinions i just need to put this in here um

you know i'm okay with it by the way if if you don't want to make money um that's not what i'm talking about here uh i'm saying that your pitch needs to be something that an audience can imagine spending currency on and that currency can be attention money time all three at a high level it's kind of irrelevant you're going to use different language for each of those currencies but the mentality has to stay the same i'm designing with this accessibility in mind so as to communicate it easily and effectively um so pitch a product please please please please pitch a product whether it'll make money or not that's fine okay what is anything that i just said mean um turn your creative vision into a plan for a product not necessarily a product i get that there are steps in between right please try to turn it into a plan this will ensure discoverability at least from a publisher's point of view seeing that you have a plan at all for a vision into a product is going to be

massive for us um take it from day zero outline a plan i can't go over all of this in a talk in this talk i'm already at 20 minutes 21 minutes which is so tragic um but this is why things like design documents even if they're just a stream of consciousness or crucial um you have to hone your vision down until jerry at thanksgiving dinner can understand it or at least can give you 30 seconds of his time and you can retain that right um something oh sorry yes i don't know how to emphasize this enough um jerry isn't it like jerry is good a good start uncle jerry's at thanksgiving is a good start um i just needed you to test it on everyone you know once you get down once you've got like your design you're like okay i have this vision i love it i'm gonna bring it down to something i think i can communicate you have to test it on literally everybody you know and i know that's scary especially with as many games are coming out right now there's a there's like developers are loath to share their

ideas and are really scared about doing that but if you're pitching to people who have nothing to do with games it's much lower risk of like just another fellow designer running off and making your game right i know we all have that worry because we're all trying to make a living but i really do believe that uh we can't afford anymore to not to hold it so precious and then to make the game and then to find out when once we launch it that nobody understands it right um discoverability isn't the end result of who saw your game at launch um it's much more than that and that part feels uh pretty important to me so i'll throw up on the slide of its own sorry i forgot to um put it here but oh no i'm stupid i forgot the most important part of the slide if you're having a tough time communicating how a player interacts with your game you might have a design problem it will feel like a communication problem right but i urge everyone to take a step back again

if you're testing it over and over again and there's a block it might actually be a design problem from day zero not necessarily a problem with just your pitch or someone else understanding your vision that one's super super intense okay in conclusion it's not the end result of who you saw your game at launch discoverability is the quality process and design by which your game holds potential for people to see it at every phase of development um and i believe strongly that this starts at day zero and relies on a plan for a product not just a vision and that gets me in trouble all the time but this is how i feel there we go it's there um i really want you to think about this as making us especially scouts believe in not just you but also your product um and if you can't do that from the

beginning it's just going to be much much harder to do it later on so um kind of the end and i wanted to leave room for questions we're at 25 minutes i believe that only leaves five minutes for questions and 25 minute talk isn't much at the end of the day i would love if the only thing you take away from this is don't be afraid of making a product it'll empower your vision to reach the most people that would be the most discoverability you can possibly get um for sure and i urge you to check out both becca and nick's talk um and i did look at the schedule i'm up against some really amazing people in this slot uh i'm so glad for the vault because i think you should probably check out everybody else's talks today too so um that's it it seemed like it went by really fast but there it is [Applause] cool i can't see any of you so if you have questions i have no idea how i would know no

none i don't know i can't see so oh there's a mic okay perfect no then we're good i'm gonna drink this boxed water it's very weird it tastes like cardboard all the mics went off okay hi no there we go never mind what would be a uh what would good aspects of a elevator talk be elevator pitch uh okay so this is a whole other talk um but and i've done some cool elevator pitches i think there's actually a really good elevator pitch talk this year if i'm not i don't i have to look it up again but um so from a publisher's perspective

an elevator pitch is much more than the consumer pitch that you're going to give is you have a lot more space and time and you really do need a deck like i don't think i've ever signed a game that had just an elevator pitch in my life i've signed plenty of games but they're they're all full decks and so the beauty of talking to a publisher is not that you have to have a one sentence that describes your genre and of course like i can talk about like genre and hook and theme and narrative like whatever it is that you think needs to go in your vision or needs to be communicated from your vision for a publisher a deck is incredibly important there's no way you can communicate to me whether you're designing a discoverability in mind in general or whether you're designing with an audience in mind even except through an entire deck that line outlines your vision and that's where i would say sorry i'm like i'm deferring the the question but that's where i would say definitely go to like or okay you

can't go to it it was yesterday it's the past uh but look up becca's talk because i think that's going to help quite a bit yeah and elevator pitches are we have i mean it feels like now it's a little easier than it used to be and that we have a little more space to talk to consumers there's like a little more you know you can you can gain a following on twitter and you can have a facebook group and stuff like that where you can discuss more but as of right now um from my perspective an elevator pitch just isn't enough so yeah doing a whole deck is what's really important yeah sorry that was kind of a non-answer all right you tweeting things all right oh i got a question so um one thing i want to ask is uh when you're going around to publishers trying to uh get them to see your game and you're sending lots and lots of emails a lot of publishers i know get some like hundreds of emails a day and you can't really sort through them all uh what what would you say your tips are for having your best shot at like getting a response yeah from

publishers awesome question um badger no i mean do do bug right like the thing is when i get hundreds of emails a day oftentimes things do slip through the cracks right following up on an email is like not a bad thing to do i think a lot of us think of it as a bad thing i think many many people are like well i sent an email in october i didn't hear back i sent a new email in december i didn't hear back threading is very powerful responding to your email and following up on it with the same subject line is gonna put it in a thread in my gmail inbox and it's really really powerful um it also is a great indicator as to you know when i was super busy so i can look back and say like oh i did see this right the chances are i did see it or that a scout did see it it's just that at the moment it wasn't the priority right um hearing back is really really tough like it is a difficult thing um but i think that getting involved a lot of publishers have communities now and getting involved in that community is also really awesome

so for example fellow traveler has a discord and they have a whole community of people who are playing their games and if you can show you know any interest in the community that fellow traveler for example or any publisher is cultivating and partake in that it might be a little bit easier for them to take notice i that's not me saying like dm everybody all the time it but it is saying don't be afraid to do it right and i you'd be surprised how many people approach me at a convention and say like oh i emailed you last year but i never heard back so i just didn't think anything of it and i'm i'm i'm mortified first of all right i mean i'm a human and i i miss things but yeah i really do think that if that initial email had all the things in it right which is to say i need some form of hook so if your game is beautiful please send screenshots if your game has a strong narrative hook and you want fellow travel to publish it because it was like other games they've published mention that right make it really easy for me

to just to find out more about your game so that's where that initial find ability comes into play where it's like put up a twitter put up a website send me a bio about you like selling yourself and selling your game are one in the same at that point so you have to be able to package it all so that it takes me less than five minutes to click through things and find things right if it's just a cold email with just text i'm always gonna pass it by right it just won't take precedence over other stuff so i could go into i mean i did a talk recently on literally like everything that needs to go into an email hi sorry yes i am i am finishing right now uh um and i can't i can't unfortunately can't do that one here but email me and i can go over it with you i can send you that slide deck for sure cool all right thank you very much all right be good