Pitching games to investors at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2016

how are we doing this afternoon me okay yep so are we okay though we're alive that's good I just just check-in so what we're doing now is something a bit experimental so could be pudding I could get horribly wrong either way just be patient with us so um what we're going to do is we kind of no pressure no pressure for everybody here so what we can do is we'll do some kind of live pitches so these the principles essentially these very brave developers social lined up ahead of us look at them they look happy and not all nervous though these guys are going to basically a pitch to this power the lust just people a salute I'll introduce in a second and they will give that kind of feedback so it's kind of like being inside inside a pitching session really I guess um and then we might have chance for some questions back and forward but it's just really to try and help those guys out and help us all pitching or speaking in my case um so yeah I'm Chris James on the Mt of still media I'll sit

down here but I'm not very useful um I'd like to do wanna cover my can you just say hello this is on my phone right here is it's lovely Kadri who runs game founders does every note game founders this one does explain game families briefly what you do is hi i'm cadry and i'm one of the cofounders of game founders so game founders is games accelerators so basically what Keith tells in Canada we do in Europe and Asia but not really so it's a proceed investment fund coupled with a three-month mentoring program and we have run since 2012 and we have 38 companies in our portfolio currently she just looked you just come back from looking at 70 pitches last week so she's feeling fresh if he's a bit harsh that's why and she um yeah so Agni shows really primarily an investment bank but we've been focused on the games industry for probably far too long for me to actually admit but it's been over ten years and

unlike a lot of advisors actually have invested personally in six mobile gaming Studios for my sins but you know I wouldn't be an effective Anker if i didn't actually put my money where my mouth is and last buddies Lisa thanks Chris my name is Keith Katz I'm co-founder of his execution labs we were based in Montreal my offices in San Francisco and we're also a games accelerator and early stage investor in game studios okay so let's just crack pictures up so cool our first pitch you could you come up and do your ting okay go for it introduce off off you go working is working yes yes hello my name is Neil O'Brien I'm presenting sample games and our mission is to help mobile game players to have meaningful strategic challenges in short game sessions new bit about our team in

contrast to some other Finnish companies we are not from Rovio not from wargaming not from EA we're not Rockstar developers we're a small team of entrepreneurs who believe that we are able to make world-class gaming company in lapa Ronda when we were works not and just learn quicker than the rest of the guys in our industry we have all of the main disciplines or skills presented in our forming team quite well but also we are of course looking for the investment to our team and repeats so we have been operational for years since then we have been released three mobile game titles gathered a little bit over two million downloads and in overall have entertained there's a little bit over 12

20 years of experience in developing mobile games so I think you all know this mobile gaming is huge it's still accelerating quite well in the coming years China and let em all the all the emerging markets are posting posting mobile games X or even even to a higher higher States but what is important for us is the collectible card game sector which which is growing quite well in in the two days in this year it's about 500 million in revenue the collectible card games and it's accelerating quite well in the coming couple of years and that's where we are tapping our our skills so here's a few of our competitors like you know khaliqul card games have emerged as a like main mainstream genre for mobile

games and we think that the mobile games are emerging so that people don't want to the tasties of mobile gamers are maturing to more meet core titles but we still have to offer the create gaming experiences in short times so basically players don't have more time compared to the previous years but we as a developers we have to bring the best experiences just at the same same amount of time what we used to have with the casual games our vision is going to be that will be in ten years of time the leading cultural card game developer in the world punching about 15% of the revenue share from the whole markets of course the main challenge is how to get how to get discovered by the

users for games we have some aces in our sleeves which I mean of course not going to present here you're free to come to talk if you want if you're interested in investing our company but let's say that it's it's involves more about creative creative marketing than just pouring the money into the paid user acquisition shortly about our roadmap our first game premier doors which we are currently doing will pay soft loans in end of mods much this year which will be focusing on the practical and of the spectrum and the next game will be focusing on the strategic challenges of the gamers we are looking for 250k ok euros in exchange of 14% of our equity the our company will be developed for good MA target for Asian casual

publishers in next 5 years of time with a valuation of 100 million US dollars thank you should I go ok thank you so just some some high-level thoughts first one is so you're pitching to professional game investors right so there's a lot of sort of superfluous stuff at the beginning that you could just cut out I mean we don't need to see sort of the global market opportunity from our games and all that stuff your slides are super text-heavy so you know like it's a game so like show some cool stuff and like show me the game you're working on it took probably halfway through the deck before I even knew what you were working on the there's nothing about the team that you

listed that indicates you know how to run at mid core TCG or CCG so I think that that's lacking you also I think could do a better job of showing sort of insight into that particular market we actually have an investment in a studio doing this kind of game it's incredibly complex to do that game is live service acquiring users is super expensive it's one of the most expensive genres out there so I would sort of show you know if you have some plans for how you're going to tackle that issue because the amount of money you're asking for is not going to solve that problem yeah so I think you could the main thing is sort of know your target audience a bit and sort of you know really refine it because if you're doing an investor pitch just assume that sort of there's that baseline knowledge and sort of assume that we have some some pre-existing knowledge of this of this genre and help us understand how you're gonna solve that that problem yeah well Keith kind

of stole everybody's thunder so you know you know you know next time I'm going first Keith so so no I mean yeah echo what Keith said Yuka I mean I think I think yeah it's really important I mean because you guys haven't even launched a title that you really have to hone in on your team and what makes you you know how can you distinguish yourself from all the people lots of lots of other developers that have significantly more experience that have raised a lot of money that have failed with titles that have a lot of experience from multiple years and multiple titles that might have failed or succeeded so how do you compete against that so an investor is gonna be thinking why should I invest in you when there's all these other players out there that I could take a look at that have you know this kind of a team that I'm aware of that have these kinds of experience these kinds of titles this kinds of knowledge so to get over that hump especially if you're going to target gaming investors right then I think you really need to hone in on what

is the key distinguishing characteristic of your studio everything I agree with everything said before maybe one more thing that I would point out you said that you have already published some games and you had only over 2 million downloads so like what are the numbers behind these games like show us that you know we could do this with our own games and this is why we should believe that you are going to do even even like better numbers with the next games so if even if you don't have like you know you have to be clever about what you present I mean maybe your retention is not good or maybe you are monetizing well or maybe the either no session lengths are better than average or like give us something that sort of statistically shows us that we should invest in you and I do agree like 250 is not going to make you better than hearthstone in 10 years so you somehow have to make us believe that I just want to make one quick point this is sort of general for everyone I think it's dangerous as a company any company to

like build a game for an exit strategy like two specific types of companies and I mean I think this is something we can talk about offline but sort of saying that we're gonna exit to one of four companies is this sort of secondary or tertiary it's actually building a great game that then those problems sort of go away so anyway something something to keep them that useful yes you do very well right handshake applause please you got three three minutes you ready you ready give it a go give it a go hello everybody um well done my name is Ted Bay but and I am the nd of movie suite which is a an addictive film connections game my background is filmmaking so I'm we're in a war I'm I run an award-winning film production company in Greenwich in

London and we were the only film production company to be selected by the Tribeca Film Festival Robert De Niro so I'm a filmmaker first and then got into development of apps about to two years ago ten years ago item2 brilliant idea for an app two years ago I said to try to convince the team to do it we're looking for four hundred thousand at a 1.25 million pre-money valuation because the partners that I work with are phenomenal and they've been helping us very closely every week for two years that translates is four hundred thousand for 32 percent of the business the film connections starts when actor ends with an actor and it tests how well you know your films it's it's primarily for film geeks all over the world it's a clever it the sales affiliation isn't is important because you can if you see a film that you like you can buy it and we've got a clever database and algorithm to help to help that what you know what is the game round one you do you fill out your film connections around one you are a runner around to

production assistant around three editor you complete the game when you hit studio head we're seeking es es advanced assurance which I know some of the some of the speakers before talked about the tax relief entrepreneurial relief I mentioned the key partnerships which I'll do on the second slide so I got to press this green button for and and we weren't we wish to be part of the ten billion dollar mobile games market is so saturated we've got to find a way of of really making a name for ourselves movie sweep is gamifying movie purchasing in an interesting way so we've over two years we've developed a pattern of the trademark to do that it the connections as I mentioned the narrative are briefly mentioned which is the the end of every suite we have the and end-of-round film which you just have to find by by immersion when Android our partners the Samsung immersion in Google immersion does haptics so that is the vibration feedback and I know that that they're

representatives of those three companies here today iTunes Connect as well who we're closely working with and the sale on the sales side it's it's basically that the game would find the movie purchasing using our connections with studio film libraries and back catalogs we're not competing with Netflix or Amazon Prime we we're not doing that we we are we have another or a different a different a different plan social media and our camp are excellent marketing campaign which is so key to movie seek working which we've developed over two years and movie super legacy which is creating this film geek universe so that people will play and movies you can keep playing it and hopefully buy a few things through it I don't know if I'm I'm I'm I don't know I don't know I know how close I am but that's that's that's it if you if you look us up on Twitter and you follow us on Twitter I'll send you a film

so I think you know everything that kid said about the last presentation about being text-heavy also applies to you so I feel that you were giving us like a lot of categories about stuff that you should sort of do but you didn't really say what you did in them so I mean you know Android has Samsung but like what are your connections do you already have something have you talked to somebody so like all of that remained a bit unclear so I think it was more of like you know this is my dream thing and these are the things that I should do this is my to-do list like that's that's sort of like the feel I think you should actually start with some visuals like graphics like you know do you want to do this like make us make us go inside the product and somehow like feel the difference cuz I mean you felt yourself you have to say like we're

not Netflix we're not this we're not that but show us like don't don't sort of try to explain stuff it's it's sometimes really difficult to explain these kinds of things and another thing you should never I mean I think you should not give 32 percent for 400 because if you get like two more rounds of investors coming in then you'll end up with 5% and actually like we never invest into Studios that we're the founders already own less than half so I mean you are sort of setting yourself up to not getting further investments and probably the investors not gonna invest as well so try to get your product a bit further presented better and then ask for you can ask for the same amount but just for less how much do you recommend what percentage haven't seen your product it's too difficult to say right now yeah I mean I think I think those are all really you know valid points that Qadri made so I think that for fraud everybody else that's gonna be pitching I think you know if you guys

can focus on the product first your UI your navigation how you're gonna run live ops I think I think that's gonna be really crucial to to getting even gaming investors to believe what what you're trying to achieve so I think it's I think it's novel I think that what you're trying to do is novel I think it's tricky because when you're dealing with movie studios particularly that own IP they can be absolutely ruthless when it comes to revenue and royalties so again I don't know how you know if you kind of showed us maybe a very kind of you know basic diagram as to how much kind of rep share they're gonna take or you know if it's gonna be an affiliate marketing deal because someone's obviously come through movie sweep and they're gonna ultimately you know the remm commerce decide to buy a movie then you know sort of what are the economics right because then either either then you're gonna have to spend millions on marketing and then you're gonna have to you know kind of distill it down or figure out how you know where's the break-even point for you so this this to me was quite unclear but but I did think that it was a novel

idea thank you I have to me and maybe I'm the only one I don't know what the product is like after having seen the deck I'm not sure what the product is I just I needed some pictures or something which was Simon Cowell here I made something special today it's a difficult exercise don't launch it now Glenn back up a second you can go so kick your life I'm Pierre from kicker life we're their studio based in Paris we're currently seven full-time developers and we make games for people so that they create living worlds our first mobile game is dedicated to women of all ages it's called kawaii and in

Kauai you take care of cute little creatures and the retention loop is centered on caring very important Kauai is a time management builder game players produce several resources in many different ways they fulfill missions and NPCs propose requests players create their world they can fully customize it they have to embellish it with numerous furnitures and decorations and also they have to tweak many parameters like each humidity wind smell music when key aspect is believability that's why the camera is in the right together with or without you just as in the physical world in fact the whole world is kind of a sandbox where you can test anything and anything will happen our content strategy provides long-term objectives where for instance your little cars will learn seduction love and family life we're very proud with our early testers they usually start with oh my god and finish with an old

legend let me play more but now I is not a game it is your daily dose of tenderness and caring it's the most important thing for a lot of people an audience that is massively underserved today and why is it so important for you developers investors and publishers because we are on the bloody battlefield where everyone is struggling in a red ocean called meat core to our core and yes it is a very great market with great after use but many people many many people don't get what they want no one really delivers tenderness no one it's a shame because it's calling to you yes it is calling to you what up just betadine

just let it in we have a vision we have a great product we have a great team a secret sauce where the first results show great results and we're looking for partners to make it a massive success thank you yeah so firstly great presentation I really enjoyed it it kind of showed very very clearly exactly what you're working on product wise you kind of told and spelled out your vision exactly you know who you wanted what kind of demo you want to go for and what kind of game so I liked all of that I guess if you could have showed some more retention metrics if you could have showed some more kind of monetization mechanics that you're going to employ because tenderness as I agree with you is probably highly underserved but probably one of the reasons is underserved is because there isn't a

demonstrable product that makes a lot of money in there so everybody's going to MIT to hardcore because guess what you got very very high ARP Dow users in there right and there's kind of a tried and tested methodology and long-term plan multiple year plan on how you can monetize those users once you get them in obviously I guess here the cost for acquiring users will be a lot less hopefully you know but but I guess yeah that was the thing that was missing for me was retention if you have some results and then also a monetization and just excuse me just to answer we have not gone soft launch yet so no real results just focus test the soft launch is coming in the coming weeks do you agree with everything I said before one thing would like just a technical note I would not have people watch a video during that long of a time of the pitch like you can show the video but like just the top just speak yourself because

right now it was like we all came here to watch a movie with you so it's not really what you want but I I do want to compliment the new you for being the first one that really got emotions out of us because like previously you really got us into the whole like game mood and it was like fun and and actually the goal of the first pitch is to get the interest enough for people to come to talk to you so it's never like the first time you know you pitch and then people start writing checks and throwing them at you you'll you always reach only for the next meeting so I think that in in that sense it was a very good one but I do agree I would like to see more numbers and I'm not a hundred percent sure if like 100 percent of female is your target like I would disagree with that not only represent of the women and so females need tenderness of all ages and like so sort of like was it yeah thank you it's very impressive

you sign the deal with Star Wars as well oh I'm pretty happy to be here in London and one fine is Gamemakers celebrates our passion for game craft and today I'm gonna show you our game traps that is basically combination of city builder and through the runner that our players tends to call temple run + clash of clans where you build your coastal in the sky you fill it up and protect it with combination of traps and rate other players fortresses in the 3d random mode

we've been testing our game on Android and iOS recently we've got some nice app store editor notes and actually that has been so nice to us they've already featured us in Australia and we got to talk time strategy games there as well as some pretty nice comments from the players and the initial metrics that helps us to prioritize the goals and plan the further versions of the game so as well have some pretty nice publishing opportunities now open that I can cover

next few months with you this is our team and I want to thank all these guys that helps us during the journey of crazing this nice game so me traps building run a combination of city builder and 3d runner thank you well full disclosure I've seen the game before and I've played it so I know it's fun it's a fun game and you know I think your presentation was a little bit disjointed at times sort of that the team at the end of a sort of weird and I

don't you can talk over a trailer when it's playing because you have limited time but just a couple of things to think about if you've already been featured in Australia there's some weirdness there if you've already gotten a feature and what that means for featuring when you go global could be potentially saying you need to sort that out I did I didn't really have time see all the stats but you put up a point six conversion rate for paying users it was point six I believe no no I believe it's like between point three and point two and point three as usual I will point three not one point three anyway the point is it's less than one it's not it's not a number that you necessarily want to be bragging about at this point so if you're going to show real metrics like make sure you're at least showing the ones that are sexy like retention and stuff like that if you have a number that's subpar you shouldn't be sort of like putting it out there to sort of

brag about I'll let these guys comment is the first time they've seen it okay I only have one question and actually was the same for the previous one what do you want good job thank you very not you thank you well well well actually we've been looking for money before but now we have a nice publishing deal with the upfront so we'll have some money to finish the game and to make it hit so you don't want anything well maybe for the future projects I believe thank you I got nothing to say

hi I'm Sergio Netherlands based in the gaming studio since 2009 so we have a new IP which is algo No and it's a very unique fighting puzzle game based in spite my tic-tac-toe so what the game is offering the game is built using cosa TX energy so our main target platforms are Android on iOS the gameplay is basically tic-tac-toe but with a lot of extra dynamic gameplay so you place your marks and when you complete the mark you attack the opposite player however you are not limited to only three marks or four but to all possible combinations and why should what makes it even more fun is the immediate pickups so you have this real fighting mechanics on each cell of tic-tac-toe you have also an item of sword shield and hilt and then you select a cell to place your mark also

immediately get something which which masks a game very active and a continuous action there is the multiplayer which is the best part because you can play online with other friends there is also the arcade mode but you can play against the AI which is very incredible good playing AI and you can unlock all of characters in a story mode which is and which is a really good fairytale well the game is very unique so basically it's based on tic-tac-toe so it's very inviting for all the players everybody knows how to play tic-tac-toe you can just get into the game and it's also provides real-time fighting mechanics which makes it unique because if in a puzzle game you have to wait to get to the results but this case provides real-time fighting mechanics which has continuous action and doing the puzzle game if you have

already we have already finished part of the game it's complete but today's market requires nothing but the best so we need investment for the development and we want to improve the art and animation and reach the story and most of most of all provide a rich multiplayer so the next iteration is going to take about five months and for that we are looking looking for an investment of 250,000 years part of it will go to development and the rest of it will go into marketing user acquisition promotion and visiting exhibitions because this is a new port and like master against all kind of they have died out so this is a new board game that can provide and be like kind of the same as mastery games but it provides something new and something refreshing for the players and we can build a series of games based based on

this new IP the stories they follow the story and you start really having no help if your confidence and story it sounds like a bit clever new dynamic game unique to the story mode but when you unlock all of the troika's are you going to the arcade mode you got also to playing on environments

I guess for me I mean I I think it's gonna be tough for you to compete with a lot of match 3 games that's my personal opinion and I'd rather be honest with you up front and you mentioned that match 3 games are dying actually on the contrary I think that they're very stable and it's just that more and more revenue is being well really ascribed to fewer players so the problem even if I mean you have a new sort of dynamic sort of mechanic to play you're still gonna need a huge amount in marketing spent to actually make it meaningful so I mean that's that's just my comment yeah I mean you half of what you're asking for Moore's for user acquisition investors don't really want

to see that like want to see you spending money on production and figuring out to you a later but just don't spend another six more months trying to polish this thing because it's probably still not gonna be as polished as some of the top match 3 games out there I don't know how many games you shipped as a studio if you mentioned that but it might be a best opportunity to get this thing shipped learn some stuff and then move on to the next project thank you very much thanks Bret applause please for all publishers are very develops very game it's very straight talking I thought it was going to be um and a big round pause well please for that for our experts on the on stage here for Cadbury Sean thank you