Pitch Level Up 2023 in Review: Hamburg

Gamecity Hamburg's second Pitch Level Up, held on April 13, 2023 at the Hamburger Ding Cross Community Space on the Reeperbahn, aimed to help developers, founders, and students understand what makes a pitch deck convincing and how to present it to publishers, investors, and funding institutions. The event follows a first edition in 2022 and is positioned as a practical support offering for the Hamburg games scene.

The program combined a talk track with individual feedback. Five expert talks covered securing public funding, choosing the right publishing strategy, and pitching to a publisher. Speakers came from astragon Entertainment, DLR, Curvature Games, an independent business development consultancy, and Gamecity Hamburg, whose representative also outlined the organization's developer support services.

The core of the event was a series of 1:1 sessions in which participants presented their decks to ten industry experts and received candid, hands-on feedback. The experts represented Super Crowd Entertainment and Indie Arena Booth, Ubisoft, astragon, Daedalic Entertainment, IFB Innovationsstarter, Bytro, games journalism, independent consulting, and Gamecity Hamburg. The organizers stress that sincere feedback matters because rejected or unanswered pitches often leave teams unsure what to improve. Participants were expected to continue refining their decks and game concepts afterward.

Attendance included local developers, game makers, and a notable number of students from regional educational institutions. Networking was an additional benefit. Bytro sponsored the event. No attendance figures or quantitative outcomes are given, and the coverage is a qualitative event recap supported by a photo gallery.