Fantasy games pitching

so one of things that we always we often find is that it's difficult to help people understand what it's like to pitch this isn't how to pitch um basically we're gonna try and talk you through a whole bunch of things on I'm going to basically show a series of slides spring grabs of real games obscure real games and I'm gonna ask my lovely panelists to give me an idea of you know what they think that game should be before I reveal to you what the real game was I like to think of this as a bit like Dragon's Den or maybe a pen see pitching deathmatch one of the

nice things about this particular thing is that I managed to arrange normally we have beer but I think I think we have wine today so we are literally going to score this so hopefully we have some rules yes this is a game we have to have rules the games are I'm going to show a screen grab we're gonna get different pictures and they have two minutes that's it just two minutes I will tell them to stop immediately because we don't have enough time to go through them all if we don't and then at the end you vote we're all okay yeah we'll get this right good the voting criteria is as follows number one originality number two innovation and number three should this really be made now actually the real one is what makes you laugh but that's not a subject so let's see it's not quite sure hopefully you'll be awed by the concepts so we'll see where we go with that so this is our

first game who is our first volunteer to pitch let's do a quick introductions first really go back quite quickly Kate do it I mean you've already been on Sage but if you could just quickly introduce yourself okay my name is Kate Edwards I'm a 26 year veteran in the industry I'm a geographer who does culturalization work and I also do a lot of advocacy work as well Syrena hello i'm sterner rhobar i'm CEO of author digital I've 20-plus years in the industry in community community narrative fiction and production hi I'm Laura I got my master's degree from the University of Utah in games a few more years ago that I'm comfortable saying anymore and I currently work at Niantic on Pokemon go my name is Leticia ruh and I'm so far out of my league I don't even know where to start I've been working in games for just over six years at East Side games in Vancouver and I'm the communications management so what you have to really put into context is the amount of talent we have on the stage and the

ridiculousness that I'm going to put them through so let's stop with you here is our game can you please tell us what it is and how it plays in they see they can see the picture behind you you have two minutes starting now a pitch okay so this this is a this is a vampire RPG takes place not the Pacific Northwest's it takes place actually in southern Korea and so near Busan in that area and so basically the whole object of this game is you have to get a vampire to romance you in order to get yourself bitten but the vampires have a reluctance to do that because essentially there is they basically in this world vampires just don't have that desire anymore so so you have to romance the vampire and basically get a bite on the neck that's your goal is to basically join them and and to convince them to do it so you have to go through all of these detailed dialogue trees and

romance trees and everything to get one of them you know to actually do the act and and so then you can be satisfied and join them in the eternal darkness of afterlife so we have love at first bite Serena what's your pitch okay so I'm taking a little different spin on this one this is a narrative fiction RPG and its audience is for every teenager ever and you start out making all the terrible bad decisions and your narrative branches that you do as a young woman he treats you like crap he sleeps with your friend you do all those terrible dumb things and you were only rewarded when you make smart emotional decisions that benefit you and your self-esteem as you move forward so the only way you win is when you recognize that that bad boy is only ever going to sleep on your couch and suck all the money out of you as he rates a Great American Novel and you choose the beta male who's awesome and nerdy and treats you well and that's

how you win the game beats a better boyfriend you get the worst jokes for me okay I'm gonna take a slightly different approach I'm gonna say that you actually as a character we're trained to be an undercover detective and you're getting ready for the mean streets so you've been working on your combat training you've been working you know on I'm tough guy talk and then you get your assignment and you're actually going into this very highfalutin society and you're gonna have to deal with people that you have no skills to deal with and they're they're trying to relate to you on a social level and you just kind of want to throw a punch in the wall but you're gonna have to work on your soft skills and learn learn on the job all with with the end goal of figuring out whodunit the spy who the spy who did it will come up with a better phrase by the time we go through there I have notes because I

was really nervous this game is called Cupid's arrow it's a nonlinear narrative idol game you choose your own adventure where you play as keep it and you control these wayward lovers they're super awkward and the narrative trolls you as it spirals out of control this makes you feel better about how hard it is to find love IRL so I think we have cupidity there I gotta do something in this job anyway so we have to obviously take that to the audience let's go start with a summary so we have a vampire RPG set in Korea with the title currently of love at first bite we have Serena's narrative RPG young girl learning about emotional decisions trying to decide between the the bad boy or the beta and it's currently called beta better boyfriend we have Laura's spy high-society the spy

who didn't and then we have the cupids non-linear dona my brains gone on which we're currently called in cupidity so can I please have your votes for love at first bite oh okay where's growing anymore next can we have votes for beat a better boyfriend oh that's strong next spy who didn't come up with a better name that's my fault and then we have cupidity little closer but I think we have a winner I think the winner was he says getting up in drama beat a better boyfriend

probably would like to know what this was hey it wasn't far off actually it was actually game proposed by a demon lord seriously this is a real game store this is the URL credit resources yeah you basically have to choose a demon of a selection to marry literally oh you're wrong it's so close to what you were say anyway so that was the first game fun let's see what the second game is going to be so the same game is based on this image who wants to go first picks it up okay so this is tentatively called hell on a high rise it's a nonlinear RPG where your high res window cleaner who must scavenge materials to help you climb to higher levels find unlocked windows to get more items ever made every improvement makes your scaffold more rickety and dangerous see how high you can get

the coop version is that other players can send you items or sabotage you it's an amazing title okay so I'm gonna say that for the in this game you are a painter who's losing your sight so for the first half of the game you're trying to beat the clock and go see as much of the world as you can before you lose your sight and then the second part of the game you're actually going to be trying to learn how to paint without your vision with the help of your very passive-aggressive assistant who will do things like oh oh that's a choice and you know try to try to reroute your vision of the world with their help ssam be pigeons that's right it's a flight fin that you didn't ask for but you get it anyway zombie pigeon starts out where

the avian flu has gone crazy crazily wrong you're being attacked as a pigeon but you are attacking as a pigeon and dive-bombing it's important that you infect the human population some will try to solve your zombie nacido want that you want to go out and you want to poop on everything to spread your disease and as you get low on health as people start to figure you out you got to eat the french fries from the inside out that's right zombie pigeon attacks memes eats your stomach and succeeds and eventually hopefully zombie packaged and takes over the world and you as a human as a co-op you try to stop it so zombie pitches of it okay oh those are hard to follow I think for me this is going to be the the anti spider-man so this is basically where you know somebody tries to follow the footsteps of the Spider Man a Peter Parker and whether you say what they did was take their their dad's spool of

Kevlar string and they're trying to mimic swinging around the the city and they're not doing such a great job of it and basically you know that you get just successively damaged over and over again and so it's a it's a survival game you will die many many times but it's basically how long can you stay alive as you're trying to swing from building to building and you're not going to go very far but you can try we have spied it can't we have the hell on high wire so head on high rice sorry I got a room we have unseen vision to thing unseen vision is a bit better title for us and then we have these zombie pigeon pooper-scooper so let's have votes four votes four spider can't anybody for spider counts Oh looking out there then we have zombie

pigeon super pooper that's you can't vote twice okay that's that's a pretty strong one now we have unseen visions that's tough crowd isn't it right Rhys oh I think that's a bit of a tie okay gonna do it another revote okay so it's between Helena high-rise and zombie pigeon super pooper so first one Helena high rise okay which one was that yet and then zombie pigeon superb uber I think it just wins I think zombie Sarina you're running away with this not allowed so we're gonna go and try and work out what a nurse what's that game well that game was solid oh it is on steam ready for a

sensational unforgettable experience slightly escaped skyscrapers of a city almost eight clumps is big with total freedom breathtaking routines experimental acrophobia and freefall and much more Toby's my tongue twice Kate's basically get nailed there yeah shut up again all real games next one next one up I love this one this root this one makes me smile I'll explain why later so who wants to be first this time dog I'll go first on this one okay so this is a this is good you're gonna be playing lyft or uber except for you're trying to pay off your daily fee on this expensive car you're renting so your cars about $10,000 a day so you've got to fit in enough lift rides to pay off your $10,000 a day super fancy car that everyone thinks you look super fly in its uber lift it's a billionaires edition so next okay I took a different

stance on this one and this is Peggy Sue got married 2019 literally just a game you give your family that you don't want to talk to on the holidays with multiple pictures of interracial couples religious freedom things like that for people who watch fox news all the time to make them more comfortable with the world we live today and so as they get more comfortable there's a meter of comfort when the pictures come on am I scared am I not scared and then do you slowly acclimate them to society so Peggy Sue got married 2019 it is it is the game that America needs right now so tell me to a console near you so this game is called goodbye Dubai and so basically this this takes place in Dubai but it's it's a section of Dubai like they're prone to do where it makes it look like American sub suburb and so basically you're pretending to be in an American suburb and you have to act

American and you have to do American things and and even try and talk at an American accent and and yet you're constantly challenged by your own cultural values and your own cultural barriers to doing that and you're getting scored on that and there's people monitors in the environment who are watching to see how American you really are there's like a police state that's a lot of armies show in there okay I don't have a cool name for this yet this is a puzzle game with decoration elements like home escapes you complete puzzles to earn money to upgrade your wardrobe cars Client List and apparently blowup dolls to learn the story of how you became a real estate mogul expand to advertising wining and dining clients etc in the next version possible IP Tyne with the Netflix show selling sunset or something of that nature selling sunset is a good starting name let's let's leave it for that for now right so we have our four titles we're

starting off with uber lyft billionaire Edition and and then we have Serena's Peggy Sue got married 2016 with its own built in unique trademarked comfort meter we have Kate's goodbye Dubai which is the sort of pseudo American suburb and then we have selling sunset which is puzzles to basically show off your real estate magnate status so let's start with uber lyft okay and then Peggy Sue got married you're getting a bit yeah yeah you've got people in the audience you're paying okay goodbye Dubai oh and selling sunset oh that's tough yeah I'm torn with that that's right you just want to try votes again on Peggy Sue got married and selling sunset oh I think

I'm afraid you don't get me to concentrate that's fine don't right we're nearly there so what do we got next let's find out what that game was that game was virtual happy family billionaire edition 2019 meet the richest family in Dubai and have fun and enjoy the family adventure with Dubai cars like in like in all Arab games meet virtual dad Abdul Aziz and virtual princess wife Ruby now what's really fascinating about this is the woman in the car is not the same as the woman in the screen with the family oh no she's not quite confused by this obviously not anyway so yes that was a real game go get it there if you Realty

now we're into our next game we're ruffling through this fast aren't we so it wants me first I think Sarina is it your turn I didn't have a title for this one so we're just gonna call this robot skate but the premise is that it's the future it's 2050 robots are doing everything for us but they're on the cusp of self-awareness and they're depressed as hell so you have to send them to robot amusement park because as soon as they become self-aware they're gonna know how you treated them and then that will just decide if you survive if they become benevolent overlords or if they wipe out the human race so you send them on minigames and stuff and then the meter of happiness needs to go higher because they need to know that you're not a douche and that you actually care about them so singular depression come up with who's gonna go okay okay this is called Trump's brain and so basically this is

this is just a simulator to show what's going on inside that mind at any given time it looks just like what the hell's going on there's all kinds of stuff happening in here there's robots falling apart running into each other there's a rocket that shoots out to go make a declaration on Twitter for some reason there's just a lot of stuff going on in here and there's no real rhyme or reason to it and so it's pretty accurate sound all right Trump's brain that was okay this is called boats burgers this is a co-op simulation like overcooked where it's a robot takeout restaurant for boats and offers a rocket delivery for food as well they also do boat mechanics so sometimes you have to prepare food and fix boats at the same time so it's extremely challenging I love that boats and burgers that was okay so I'm gonna go with it's a combination of ratatouille meets the goose game so you're a rat living in the building and at night you're going through and trying

to steal as many lug nuts as possible without getting caught by the janitorial staff and the automated robots I yeah I'm talking about make mechanic to me oh yeah that's me all right you don't get quality here right so we have with us Serena's robot game which I've I've taken the liberty of calling a singular depression where we got to keep our robots happy or they will destroy us all when they become self-aware we have capes Trump's brain well it's happening but it's basically like you're a reflection of what's happening in a certain president next we have Lydia's boats and burgers a co-op of boat delivering food services with rockets and we have mechana to e a escapades in of robots running around and trying to get various mortals associated items so with that in mind let's have a vote who wants to vote for a singular depression

who wants to vote for Trump's brain who wants to vote for boats and burgers that's looking quite strong and mechana 2e pumps right so we have anyone want to guess what it is or study well let's just find out that Dame was secondhand have you you she knew what the game was yeah well I couldn't remember the game now I do now you do know it was another I'm sure right so Frankie's revenge is though one two four player co-op action game with badass robots built from household appliances players use chainsaws disco balls tennis ball launchers and various other things yes basically what's going on in Trump's brain yeah

next we were basically we do have time I put this as a bonus references sometimes we've run out of time but I think we can basically get away with it this time let's do the bonus round which is here we go sir I loved it this is going to make me laugh I don't know if it upset you guys so who wants to kick off this is called all man mischief and it's a roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as old man mischief as he tries to escape from his nursing home to go to Coachella he dies a lot as he takes the wrong drugs including acid and makes poor decisions constantly I have no words okay so similar thing mines mines Basin nursing home but you're actually playing the horse so you weren't able to get a traditional horse job you know pulling

carts and eating grass so you've been forced to take a job at a nursing home and you're just trying to help this old man but like you don't have hands you've got to use your hooves you don't understand them half the time so it's your job to make sure that he survived the day so whole thing about sorry Serena mine is where's uncle buddy it is a time management hahaha roguelike game in which uncle buddy has retired and he's moved on to assisted living and then to nursing home you don't get a stop dementia is taking over and so he forgets that he's not at Woodstock and as you continuously go through making decisions the idea is that you want to keep uncle buddy alive as long as possible before his kids spend all of here and his inheritance and then he spends the very last dime on the day he dies and no one ever puts them in a release at home so his buddy and and mine game is called Chronos seed and basically your job is to conceive

yourself and so it is a time-travel adventure in which you are going forward and backward in time and yes you are playing a male character because I wouldn't want to put a female character through this so basically you are trying to conceive of yourself and yet you as you jump you you basically find that you're at different ages as you go and so that's part of the problem too you have to actually be able to conceive at the certain time where you were there so yeah there you go that that's a time challenge and a half so I mean how do you follow that okay so we have Lily's old man mischief adventures in a social home but trying to memorize your past at various music festivals etc etc in a dungeon crawl stylee we have Laura's horse horsing about where you're you've got a horse who has to take a job in a nursing home and you have all the challenges of control systems is it you know that's

basically any VR game really in Serena's where is buddy could another variation of the idea of exploring that nursing homes theme but again where the character is basically doing all sorts of crazy stuff and then we have Kate's chronal seed can you conceive of yourself there are there are our answers so let's have a vote for those of you who want to vote for old man mischief please put your hands up oh that's good it's good how about for horsing about okay okay and where is buddy yes or no and then chrono seed oh say I I think it went - was it horsing about I think yeah I think horsing about gets lower you get a vote oh it's the first one let me just you want me was it all my mischief hands

up okay and horsing about okay so let's have a brain working out whether they don't hold up as the seedings my brain doesn't cope so we have a draw that has been basically where we are but listen let's just find out what that game was again it was a real game it's a hospital yeah yeah that is a pun and a half I would love to come up with that I've been so proud your best buddy has been kidnapped by a mysterious hospital doctor and you're going to save him the only problem is you're a horse actually kind of Laurie hey I swear that one I didn't you nailed that one real game obviously feel free to go play it that's us done or on the on the fantasy pitching um what I hope you get out this

is a lot of fun but also you know it takes a lot to think about what games should be and they're not always what they you think there you are thank you very much [Applause]