Prepare to Pitch - PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

okay I think we're just about ready to get started everybody is here and we are now live and streaming on YouTube so oh no and I have the video on in my own background that was a horrifying echo hello good afternoon and welcome to the Pocket

Gamer dobby's roundtable session this week we will be talking about preparing to pitch and we have a panel of experts with us who will help discuss pitching and the current market what you should do what investors are looking for and all this kind of wonderful stuff if everybody who is now joining in could please unmute your cells reveal yourselves for the world to see we have a fine group of people all joining us today I do not know how to work zoom anymore it's very warm in this room so my name is Rick Carelli I am the editor of pocket gamers and I'll be moderating this discussion and I will now introduce or allow everybody else to introduce themselves I'll start with Sofia hi so yeah I'm Sofia Robbie Drake I know a number of people will know me and but so those are the you that don't I run the big in deep it right here at still media Pocket Gamer which is our indie pitching

competition where indie developers bring their games along to a meet some judges expert judges three of which we've got here today get feedback on their games hopefully win a prize or to get some editorial coverage but yeah just an opportunity to pitch a game and showcase it to the world if there's one person who knows just anything about pitches and what makes a good one it's probably Sofia cuz I'm sure you've seen thousands of them at this point thank you next let's go to Becca yeah hi so I'm Becca I'm currently I'm the CEO of landfall which is a pretty small indie developer from Sweden but we were the developer behind stuff like stick fight class attract AB G which was supposed to be a April Fool's joke Kanaan tax currently and have a bunch of other projects in the loop as well but we also started funding a while back because we're lucky enough you know to be stable financially and now we're just trying to give back to the in the

community and before I don't landfall I was head of ball and ball technology is an initiative that is funded by the European Union and I was basically connecting the games industry from Berlin with the Baltic Sea in Nordic countries and you know pretty much everywhere else and building up the network of publishers investors service providers and connecting them with each other thank you you could say you can go next hello my name is Jupiter I do a lot of stuff in the indie sphere I judge a lot of things I do a lot of Game Jam coverage my official titles are um the games wizard at armor games which means I'm the Licensing Manager it's just a fun title and I run a couple of review websites so I go to pitches and I hear a lot of pitches like the big indie pitch for example um basically to find games that I think are interested in that I think are interesting enough to be covered and also look for games for armor games excellent and Steven everyone I'm Steven from deca Games also

based in Berlin Germany we are what we like to call a live ops publisher which means essentially that we help developers to basically take care upper 8th or acquire their older games the ones that have been out in the market for some time but perhaps are not able to be fully supported anymore because you know resources are limited and people need to focus so yeah prior to that I was head of publishing at six waves which is one of the back in the day one of the largest publishers are free to play games in the social gaming space on Facebook and they're also one of the top publishers in Asia in particular in Japan happy to be here happy to have you thank you very much so we'll get down to questions and we will be talking about as I said at the top of the discussion talk about pitching and that's kind of the main sort of aim here but first of all just a nice little taster set a question very big one that you can also jump in on how competitive would you say the indie

zyne is right now at this moment very I knew someone would immediately say very thank you does anyone have any further thoughts on that yeah I mean it's always been competitive but now since everyone is like kind of stuck at home a lot of them these have a lot more time to focus on developing their game and I think that's a very strong how do you say that in English I mean that's very strong case for how competitive the the Indians right now it's just so much time to work on whatever you're doing yeah I think it's it's competitive in two different ways I think and and some of those can be positives and some of those can be negatives I think on the one hand as platform holders whether that be the the App Store or Google Play Steam or even as far as the place they should store and switch have embraced self-publishing more and more over the years we've seen

more and more indie developers enter the scene which is amazing and that's great but it's so it's encouraged more and more people to step out from the studios and make their own game which is up the number of developers making games independently and that's amazing but on the other hand what that's done is seen a massive swarm of games on two different platforms which is obviously in some cases made visibility lower which is up the competitiveness again because obviously now you're competing with so many different people at one time you were competing with fewer but the opportunities to be seen with are less and now we've got where you know there's loads of people competing but there's also loads of people trying to be seen at the same time so it's a competitive in a different way but obviously it's a much more positive position we're in because it's been democratized much more yeah that's a really excellent point I think one one note that I'll add to that is the larger industry players if you look at sort of the the market intelligence they're coming out with less launches every year bigger budget titles longer development

window so that opens it up for more Indies to release more games but by nature of that you know it's much more competitive they're competing against each other now so you know there's definitely opportunities out there yeah I think that's something we like especially seen on switch recently is the way that yeah especially with Nintendo's launch is being you know spaced out considerably at times and obviously third parties like you say doing much the same because we're is you know especially with the current situation we have in the world that that's obviously seen progress slow in some major studios but seen progress speed up Indies in a lot of cases yeah you're right you know they're relying more and more on Indies to fill a lot of gaps which is yeah great it's very it's kind of an obvious question really but always good to start with something easy and so sort of move on to our main kind

of topic of pitching there are a lot of Indies the you know you're working as a small team and there's only a handful of you to do a lot of tasks and build a whole game and market and everything like that pitching a game events to publishers to investors that would you could see that sort of as being like valuable time spent on something where they should be spending more time just working on the gaming and that kind of thing so why is it so important to spend this time and get a good pitch and pitch this pitch your game to investors and the events and this kind of thing I mean obviously this there's a ton of reasons you know from gaining exposure to you know gaming publishing if that's what you're looking for or investment or or anything else like that and connections and I'll see I'm sure we'll delve into all of those but I think from top to bottom like one I'm actually the most fundamental aspects from an indie developer when you saw big nor all the

external aspects and just look at the person who's sitting there or the team that's sitting there developing the game it actually can help you understand your game far better not just from the feedback element but when you're required to drum down something into key essential parts it allows you to focus on what it is that's essential and unique and interesting about your game and sort of hone in on these elements and really give greater focus and understanding to your you know your development cycle I think yeah so yeah I mean that's that's one thing and but obviously you know beyond that that also feeds in from a feedback relation as well you know when you're pitching I think a lot of people get a bit too beat up about whether the feedback is gonna be positive or negative but ultimately positive on negative feedback is positive I know that sounds are but the point is it's all useful you know and it's all gonna help you in your development in in various different ways

yes I mean I'm sure the rest of the panel have a lot of different opinions as well yeah I think you know there's a very kind of romantic image of an indie just focusing on making games and and certainly that's fine and and people should feel free to do that but I think it's just a good skill set to have if you're if you care about sort of the health and long-term longevity of your studio you have to be able to talk to publishers investors what have you unless you think you you're perfectly fine to survive with you know the level that you're at so I think everyone whether or not they're in Indy or not should kind of develop this habit of being able to pitch and generate interest whether or not you need a deal or not it doesn't doesn't hurt to get other people excited about your game also doesn't take that long to sit down and work on a pitch deck and then pitch a game it might seem like a daunting task you might not know where to start but there's enough resources out there that Indies can find and they can set up

a pitch quite easily because it's just talking about your game at the end of the day isn't it and that's something that you should be able to do if you're making a game you should be able to talk about it um so when you go out and do it if you're at events because a lot of pitching does happen at events it's taking more advantage of the event which is something that you should be doing if you're taking the time to go anyway you should be getting the most out of that event yeah exactly I think it all depends on what you're looking for I mean I've had it like so many times that I was offering when I was still at Berlin but ignoring offering showcasing for free the conference and we would cover them both just not the travel costs and still so many any but just refused to do that because they think yeah they have to focus on actually developing their game which makes sense but at some point if you don't know what to do what you're gonna do afterwards in terms of the business plan like do you have your marketing and distribution figured out and if you don't have that then it's always good to go to a conference and then start pitching and get to know what's out there and how you should be prepared for for the long run yeah and the one thing I always think as well is ultimately if

you don't have a big team of people working got marketing and PR and all those sorts of other elements and you're doing it yourself ultimately even if you're not planning on doing any of that even if you're you know the complete auntie you know I'm not going to conferences or anything like that ultimately you're still gonna pitch your game because that's if you're doing your marketing yourself on Twitter or sending that email to the journalists you might not think you are but ultimately you're still pitching your game and all those skills you've learnt from doing it before all feed into that later cycle but when you're trying to get editorial coverage or you're just trying to get people to pay attention to your game on store listings or social media helps no sorry sorry I was gonna say if you end up pitching to publishers and pitching to investors you'll end up being able to spend more time on your game if you get the investors and the publishers that you do need so that you can then focus and if you're not into marketing if you just want to be a developer who just works in your game you're gonna need to find these people that can do the roles that need to be filled yeah yeah that

actually feeds into my next question quite handily which is do you actually think that developers need a publisher or an investor in this current market or is there still room for going on completely on your own like what do people think Jupiter you seem quite keen on people I just feel like if you're gonna do it on your own you need to wear a lot of hats and a lot of people aren't good at wearing a lot of hats and it becomes a problem so some developers don't know how to market and they don't know how to like cut together a good trailer and these are things that you do need they're not things that you can in this market go out without and there are the the few games that pop up here and there that like this is one person and they did zero marketing and they have breakthrough success but that's not everyone a lot of it is doing these other roles a lot of it is the the additional support that a publisher can give to you and lots of people need investors because they need money which

is a pretty basic thing that you do need as a developer so if you think that you can juggle that many hats a lot of people can't I mean it also depends on do you have the money to even focus on your game and you know finishing it to get into a state where someone wants to play it and for that sometimes you just need a publisher or an investor to make that even happen but I think it also depends on is it your first game because there's a lot of Indies they're just working on their first title and they have no idea about the business part of it which is perfectly fine and then you need someone to advise you desperately and they you know either you go to conferences and you find those contacts yourself or you work with a publisher or an investor and they kind of make that happen and support you with that I don't know you know depends I don't necessarily think that you need a publisher right you can do it yourself but I you need the context and you need the expertise and experience and that feel to do it yourself and then it's

still gonna be a lot of work no cost even yeah I mean I can't tell you how many developers that I've met over the years that have kind of presented a game with with the budget but you know only factoring in the budget for the actual game development and nothing beyond that right and and you know sometimes you can get lucky as some of you guys just mentioned but that's really really rare and and almost certainly the exception I mean most of the time you need to think about distribution about scale and even if you are have a lot of cash on hand to do that do you have the expertise to do that it's a full-time undertaking publishers are able to help you not only with that expertise but also to absorb the risk by funding that funding that user acquisition or that marketing doing all this stuff that you haven't thought of as an indie studio so and even if you decide not to work with a publisher it never hurts to talk to publishers anyway just to get their thoughts and

how to position the game the market what would their strategy be and then ultimately you can you can decide what's best for your studio but I think the good thing about these days in our industry is that publishing itself is becoming much more specialized and it really depends on what the needs of your studio are it can be you know someone to fund the development someone to actually just do you a you know that kind of thing so you really have to see like you know what what are the immediate needs for you this project and for your studio and then chances are you can probably find a player in the industry that can address those needs yeah I think this this obviously tremendous value in publishing Studios taking your game and you know you know working with you to publish your game I think that's not massively you know a controversial opinion and it's literally you know I would reiterate what all of the other panelists have said I suppose there are always exceptions just like there will always be exceptions you know we see every now and again at the pitch you

know student developers coming along or you know and people create an arthouse projects that aren't there to make necessarily a financial program you know financial gain from it there there just may be as a portfolio piece would go and up getting work these are unique situations where you may not be concerned ultimately in the financial side of it and and that's totally fine but as Steven says getting opinions from publishers is never ever going to harm you know any feedback is always good and always useful for you and I think the other thing is to you know add to what Becca was saying you know it's having that unless you and Jupiter and everyone really I think it's having everything is hard for one person to have so even if it's not a publishing house but it might be a consultancy firm or a specialist marketing firm or something like that you know having that help there's nothing wrong with saying my specialization is in this area or I know how to do these areas but I might need a bit of help in this area I mean the

amount of Indies who come along and say you know well I built the nuts and bolts but I had someone help me with sound because it's a very unique specialization you know so you know again I think don't try to do too much yourself unless you you have to all you you desperately want you know it's just there's nothing wrong with saying I you know I want to get a sound person in I want to get someone to help with the graphics or the marketing course I want a publishing house to help me take it to the next level yeah but having said that I think it's also you know sometimes it's in either a bit foolish and I don't mean that offensive but you know it's like come on you're being like okay I'm in India I made this game and now necessarily what I need to do because everyone does it is find a publisher and then sometimes you know I see Indies getting pressured into a deal because they think this is like the best thing that ever happened to me that someone wants to sign my game and I don't think that's necessarily always the best option as I said you know it

depends on what you're looking for but I think if you're an Indian you have to write a contact you can do it yourself you don't need to you know have a publisher and that sounds wrong but you don't need to have a publisher and is that really taking all the credit for a game that you develop and sharing a lot of your revenue if you could do it yourself you know I think there is like sometimes you should just motivate in these two maybe you find another game or look into other options instead of just finally the easy solution and the one that's just next to me was like okay guess I need a publisher yeah I couldn't agree more and then you know that's partly why I say things like PR firms consultancy firms cuz they can offer help in various different ways but his interest knows you know I won't i won't say with who for obvious reasons but i was only having that conversation with an indie developer earlier in the week and i was saying you know like if you've got interest from publishers you know that means you got something so you know definitely you know goes round the the different publishing houses get some a pc which one works for you if any of

them do that's not to say you can dawdle and act like you know you're royalty it's nothing like that it's just you know have a you know you shouldn't rush into something just like you shouldn't do it with anything yeah and one of the things that everyone sort of mentioned is you know getting feedback from publishers and that kind of thing and and you know obviously the big thing is getting in the market making a game that pits gonna sell is standing out do anybody in the panel have any tips to help developers like stand out in the market and make a publisher or or someone look at their game and go oh yeah I need to work with these guys I mean the thing I start every single pitch by saying is be unique and that sounds very vague I get that people are gonna want a little bit more information as to what what I mean by that but it's work out what your game offers that no one else does that doesn't necessarily mean you have to create a brand new genre you know for example you know we had the range of battle royale games came out now we've got a range of

different hyper casual titles and that's great and you can say I'm taking Popular Mechanics but what are you doing extra because especially if you're going into a competitive market it's not good enough to just do what the market leaders doing because what they're the market leader you need to try and find something to help differential self differentiate you from the from the rest of the crowd you shouldn't spend all your time comparing yourself to games that are already successful you should focus on what you do better or what you do most unique then the games that you're trying to compare yourself to yeah things I do and I think it always helps you know to have very early on to build a community and have a social media presence and I can only speak for landfall but for us sometimes you know that we're finding game was on Twitter or reddit or somewhere you know we think like this game looks dope and then we're just reaching out to the developer ourselves you know you just start talking further because they have a

presence already there and that helps I couldn't but I can put it more eloquently than what you guys just did what is your USP your unique selling point let us know and that's the best way to get our attention yeah I mean and the USP is gonna help you in in in so many different ways it's not gonna help it's not just gonna help you stand out from the crowd which obviously helps your on store listings which helps you on social media with consumers with all of that but it's also gonna help you tighten and focus your development and help you refine what you're doing into a sort of cohesive tight controlled experience cool and so you know we've gone on about sorry we've spoken about the USP and that being very key thing and you know from what I've heard from from publishers and investors and stuff like that something that they're usually looking for is looking at the team and track records and that kind of thing because they want to work with a team and not necessarily just the game but do

you have any advice for like first-time developers who are who are going out and pitching to publishers and investors who might not necessarily have this this notable background and track record of things Steven you seem to be nodding your head so I'm gonna turn to you for this one sure yeah I mean I think the things that stand out whenever I'm meeting a developer the first time developer usually it's how well they understand the market for one you know whether or not the the idea that they're trying to pitch me is is viable or if they're just you know completely um you know not understanding the way things work the other thing I would say is probably passion so does this developer have a really clear vision of what they're trying to create and and you know are they communicating that effectively those are two things for first-time developers that that can help to win publishers over is just you know really convince

them that I have a very very clear vision I care a lot about this project and I'm gonna make you believe it so that you know we can hopefully do some business together yeah I was gonna say pammi passion was one of the main things I was gonna add on top of the obvious I think another thing that people don't necessarily always think of and it's sometimes hard when you get constructive criticism rather than positivity but I suppose one thing I always look for is the receptiveness to feedback and flexibility that's not just to say that you'll roll over and do whatever anyone wants to do because obviously you have a vision and it's your project but you know being open to feedback and open to saying maybe that bit isn't quite working the way I I thought it would so now I want you know let's take different feedback from whether it be from experts whether it be from you know the market from a soft knowledge for example be able to you know be willing and able to adapt to the market needs and demands as development goes I would say is something you should

be willing to do especially after a pitch if you plan on you know pitching your game and then taking it to another pitch in another pitch which you more than likely would be yeah I think it's also it's kind of important to know the publisher investor that you want to reach out to in terms of their portfolio because if you're just reaching out to just anyone this is not for me this is just for I'm trying to find just someone to publish my game or just sign me to make this happen and that just it helps if you have a clear picture and you know why you're reaching out to that person specifically yeah and I think right now it's kind of it's an easy thing to participate in online conferences informants because you don't have to spend a lot of money I'm traveling because that's insanely expensive for an indie developer and now there's just so much happening which is not really expensive at all and if it's things you

know like the indie picture or PC pitch and so many other things so I think that's the first good step in just reaching out to publishers and even if it's just for the first contact are you know getting to know other Indies that are working in the same field and just exchanging experience and see how they did it because this industry is so happy to share yeah cool we've got a comment in the in the chat if any anybody in the attendees if you want to talk into the chat please feel free sending questions for the panel we'll be asking them later but just wanted to raise this one from Jason who says the USP is secondary what is your opportunity is the primary factor I think this sort of lens into what Becca would say each publisher investor cetera sees each opportunity differently based on who they are as a business or the platform genre market scale whatever and if they don't understand if you don't understand the business of the person sitting across from you you're banging on about us piece will get you nowhere which see sorry no I was just gonna say I think on that point it's I suppose that depends I mean it's kind of the

same point it just depends on who's mindset you're looking from I mean in you know if you're looking from a you know a publishing company I'd mindset then that would be the overriding opinion but if you're looking at it from an indie point of view I suppose to me the USP probably is still the number one if not joint number one the the difference is you shouldn't be doing a shot shotgun approach to pitching it's not necessarily gonna work you should be targeting people who resonate with you I mean we say that all the time on the editorial side of things in the you know sending your message out to just random journalists or just to everyone is not really going to help you with your coverage you need to work out which of the journalists are receptive to your type of experience or are you looking for news you're looking for reviews are you looking for feature you know and so you know if you are rather than the pitching competitions which is a little bit different if you are looking at meetings with publishers you probably

shouldn't be just clicking trying to get a meeting with every single publisher you should be working out what your game is which a pitch will help inform that to see that that you know information and then going out to those specific publishers a lot of the time you also want to publisher an investor that cares more about your resonates more with your game or your studio because then they'll be better for you yeah I think it's a good point yeah great okay I think we've got a good idea of the market and what people should be looking for now let's get to the actual like the meeting boat meeting potatoes of this whole discussion pitching so nice general opener for us for this what is the key to a perfect elevator pitch if I was coming to you with my new game and I was you had five minutes to tell you what do I need to tell you in that elevator pitch style yeah I mean it's pretty easy um you just need needs to be very clear to who you're talking to what what type

of game this is and and it's kind of shocking to say this but a lot of times when you're sitting down with the developer especially during the big indie pitch where the format is so short and condensed that you're they're kind of nervous and they're hoping to unload all this information in a short amount of time it's surprising how many developers don't make that you know the basics very clear from the get-go so you know what for example what type of game is it is it a free-to-play game is it a premium game what platform are you developing for is it mobile PC console I'd say you know we just did a big indie pitch last week more than half of the developers that pitch did not make this clear from the get-go and so the whole time they're talking I'm thinking in the back of my mind what kind of game is this they haven't made it clear yet and I'm just I'm just a little bit distracted and so I think it really helps to be able to communicate you know what is the executive summary the the the literally if you're in an elevator by the time you

get out of the elevator will you be able to communicate that clearly to your target that's something that you cannot just do willy-nilly you have to rehearse it and I think the secret to a really really strong pitch is just practicing until it's very clear to everyone there's a lot we can dive into in the details but I think clarity is a number one I mean if you're not counting passion which we spoke about earlier but just being clear with the publisher what it is so that they understand it like for example if you're talking about you know what type of game make it super easy to understand it's a battle royale game in space or it's a card battle game for women or it's I don't know educational shooter you know something like that I don't know those are just ideas off the top of my head but you know that will already help to steer your your your audience into a specific frame of reference what they can say okay all right here's where they're going let's see what what they have to

say about this and and that will kind of lead to to sort of better results I would say yeah I think it's interesting you say that because I always use that as in one of my examples which I even used last week in the pitch in the briefing room is that you know references and comparisons really help you don't want to overload it with that because obviously the focus should always be on your game but especially in a digital format where it's actually quite difficult to like normally I say if you have a build with you a bespoke build and hand for that build let people play it if possible now that advice stands true in the normal times but right now we're not in normal times and so it's a little bit more difficult so those comparisons and references can just help a lot more so anything that's like X meats y is kind of a good idea so like the one I always say is just it sounds stupid but it gives you an idea is if you have like fast and furious meats jaws well now you've got an idea of some wacky you know high space shark game or some you know but you've got an idea and then

there's something to go from there I mean I think one of the other things I would say as well is whilst obviously and publishers investors anyone else wants to know that you can fulfill the project and believe in you I all I personally always think it's best to focus on the game first because you know all those other things can come after you know if they're interested in the game but ultimately the genesis of your collaboration or whether that's with the journalist or your audience or with you know a publishing house is going to be the game itself so I always say focus on the game and you know everyone says well like let's take the pitch for minutes isn't long enough and or it's it's very short but I think ultimately you need to be able to in any which way you can get down your key points of your game the essential points down to about much less than that actually about two three minutes at absolute most because especially if you attend shows a lot of

the pictures you do showcase in your game and a lot of the important meetings we always talk about in the industry or the impromptu wants when you're at a party or when you're just walking around the show floor or you're sitting in the lunch area so you need to be able to do that because you never know when the opportunity might arise I mean you know just look at Twitter it only allows so many characters and it's the same sort of premise really I mean I told you sorry Jupiter you can go yeah no I think I really agree it's about the key fact you know I was like first I want to know what kind of game is it and obviously if you do something like the bake and you pitch then you have a very limited time and you have to get it all done if you're you know somewhere at a conference that you might be able to talk for him longer but when it comes to a situation like this then I first want to know what kind of game is that then I want to see tiny bit of the game if possible and then I also want some room for questions that I might have and I think it's important to be passionate about your game but also be kind of rational at the

same time because if you're just too passionate we just had that at the beginning perhaps to me this is like wow an explosion of passion and it was really fun to watch but I still had no idea what was going on at the end so that makes it kind of complicated to understand I'm gonna go back and just slightly disagree with Sophia about the comparing your game to two other games it's X meets y I think that sometimes that can be a very negative experience if people if the person you're pitching to doesn't like x and y that you've picked or they focus on an aspect when we were out the pitch last week the person that was judging with me person came in and said my game is this and this and we got halfway through the pitch and I hadn't heard of the first game and I said okay how do you attack and the other judge answered for the developer going oh if it's like this you attack like this and that that development went no actually it's a completely unique like attacking for you

that's not at all like that game I meant that it's just a mobile game like that game is an action game like that game so you do need to also explain like how it is like x and y and what's different from x and y if you are going to make that sort of comparison because people will assume the aspects that they like were the aspects that they dislike or the aspects in your game when they might not be I totally I just think it's more having reference point skin a lot of the time help I mean a lot of the time when we think of games you know triple A's or something we think of brands we think of identities and if you're coming at this is a first time developer I think even if you have a completely totally unique sort of title it helps not only give reference points but I think it also helps understanding of market as well because I think one of the things I was going to say is that like it's organ well to talk about what you value in a game but what's fundamental is talking about what the audience and the market will value like why this will

appeal to the market you know a lot of the time we hear well you know I like this I like that I like the other and that as you just explained within the specific pitch that might not resonate with specific individual people but ultimately everyone has individual tastes and experiences so if you can explain why it will resonate with the market that kind of mitigates personal preferences to an extent when it comes to business not obviously it doesn't invalidate individual preferences right one thing I'll add on top of what you guys just mentioned which I think thought was always super helpful you know even if you're preparing to pitch at the the big indie pitch words to form for minutes and really brief I would recommend to every developer out there to have everything ready regardless so you know there's been a lot of times where I was not able to have a meeting with a developer but I happened to judge them during the beginning pitch and was so interested that uh that was like hey let's find some time later to dit later

today let's look through what you have right and and especially if you are looking for investment or funding of some kind you need to have your financials in order your business models all you know all set and you know things that you can sort of defend and talk about intelligently to potential partners so don't just think in that necessarily think in that context of the beginni pitch although that is an unbelievable tool for for visibility for all developers but you should always have everything ready just in case because you know you never know what may happen these organic things that occur at events you know chance favors the prepared mind as they say right so if you don't have your elevator pitch get your elevator pitch ready if you do have your elevator pitch ready and you don't have the other stuff ready get all that stuff ready as well because it's only gonna help you you know when you talk to other people yeah and one last thing I was gonna say is I suppose and it's not necessarily as relevant to the pitch but it is relevant to your spot meetings or

anything like that is you know always have visuals or video sort of on you I would say you know they say you know like a picture paints a thousand words and I think it kind of is true in this regard you know you can tell someone but ultimately they'll make their own image but if you've actually got something you can physically show to people and say oh look here's like a one-minute bit of gameplay footage I think that's very very powerful to sort of always have on you just like you know you might have know an umbrella or something like on top of that I mean I would say preferably have to build a playable build on you if you don't have that have the trailer if you have the trailer have it saved locally to your device so you're not relying on the Wi-Fi of the conference if that doesn't run have screenshots of the game just handy in an easy to search kind of ways and and that way you have all your bases covered right just in case you know one thing doesn't work you have backups and screenshots will work just fine for most publishers and on top of that as well

make sure your device is actually charged because I've been in a few pictures where I finally it finally got my hands on the game and then two seconds in it just died I can't play and sorry I'm gonna have to mark you down for that one and we've spoken a lot about things that people should be doing are there any other sort of common mistakes that you've seen developers do in pitching and things that they really shouldn't be doing that you've seen a lot happen yeah I mean it's pretty much all that we already said the others already said now just be prepared and know who you're talking to and especially if you're scheduling a meeting at a conference or an online conference wherever and you schedule it because you're asking for something then it would be nice if you know who you're talking to and who that company is because I have had it a bunch of times you know that I'm just sitting at a meeting and that person's like so uh so I'm looking for money what exactly do you do there's a way to be better prepared and then if you're asking for something no what you're asking for and

I've had but also way too many times that people just it was probably you know the first attempt to to find a publisher or an investor for that matter but just if you're getting asked for your ticket size and you have no idea then it you should probably take a bit more time and things about that and then started talking to a potential partner yeah I mean one of the things I see every now and again when I'm you know observing or being pitch to actually which is quite surprising and it can come in both the sort of well I wouldn't say positive but you know it can come in a very negative way in a sort of more sympathetic ways I find you know sometimes there can be a lot of self negativity I find some of the people I meet can be very beat themselves up quite quickly and and so they'll come in like straight off the bat super apologetic and I notice it because it's something I can be guilty or too and it's like you know come in and go oh well you know the graphics aren't very good because it's an alpha build and you know in this doesn't work

and that doesn't work and I'm going to change that because I know that's not very good and the thing is actually all of that all of those faults can just be encompassed in the one sentence it's an alpha belt I mean we all know what an alpha build is it's it's that's fine that's completely understandable so whilst it's good at times to point out things that you're definitely going to fix you know it's like oh well we haven't got around to doing that the graphics are going to be changed this is placeholder you don't have to be overtly you know negative or beat yourself up about it add too much and also and I think this just comes down to preparedness but sometimes when we see when I see teams one person will say something and then the other person will kind of argue with what they've said and then you'll have like they love like a mini debate between themselves before they've agreed on it and it you know I think it's so awkward yeah it's very yeah it's actually not so much the fact that you know the competent side and not know and it's just yeah kind of awkward when you're sitting there going okay you know so I think that comes down to preparedness but I think also everyone

in the industry know no one's there to really beat Indies up you know everyone even if they haven't done it themselves respects that it's difficult and this challenge is and so yeah just saying it's an alpha build and we're working on this is fine you know it sometimes it can be a little too self-deprecating I think the only thing that hasn't been mentioned that I would say is that when you're doing pitches there's question time and sometimes if it's your first pitch you might be given a question that you weren't prepared for and you don't know the answer to and it's important to pretend that you definitely have thought about this before and it's definitely something that just hasn't been ironed out and have a good response that is that I haven't ever thought of that or I haven't ever looked at just like a good default response that's like I'll actually get back to you that's something we're looking at just something like that that you can say because often when people have a question that's asked to them and they don't have a very good response so they just sit there and look at their game and are like ah yeah maybe or maybe this

or whatever and start having a conversation around that instead of answering that's remembered and it's remembered sometimes more than positive stuff that said during the pitch yeah I mean it's maybe not the best thing but it is you know like fake it till you make it so I think you know and and I suppose that the last thing on that is which again we've mentioned about letting people play it I mean it's one thing to not have it but hey the worst thing for me actually I think arguably the worst thing is when people try to control the situation way too much so the games actually there it's actually playable and you're like oh can I have a go oh no no no no no no we'll show you how it plays I'm like well it's one thing to say well we haven't got a playable build yeah here's a video I'm like that's cool but to actually have it there and not let me have a go of it that instantly it's a bit like you know dictatorship propaganda I suppose a little bit easily do you know what I mean it's like I don't be Magnus suppose what I'm trying to say by that is sometimes you're telling you think

you're giving the right message but you're actually giving a completely wrong message because all I'm saying is why won't you let me play it what's wrong with it you know so I think just let people if they want to have a go on it of course not everyone needs feels the needs planet but if someone says can I have a go on it let them have a go on a you know if you've explained it's an early build it doesn't matter if it goes wrong yeah I mean I still you know going back into bitter and also Sofia you know with the if you don't have the right answer then just fake it till you make it I you know I don't think there is anything wrong with just admitting that you have you know figured it out completely at that point that means that you're open to feedback you know like okay we're still looking into that and to you that you mentioned in an easy way that they can do that is just to say I'm actually I would love your opinion about right and asked the publisher what they think that's a really you know easy hack one thing I wanted to add on top of what

you guys mentioned I mean I think publishers always like seeing confidence in developers but I think I would say there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance and overconfidence one of my biggest pet peeves is when you're talking to a developer and the game looks pretty good and and you know they're pretty far along and then you ask them you know how is this how do you plan on monetizing the game and oh you know it's it's premium but you know we could always change it to free-to-play or vice versa and and that just is one of those things that drives me really crazy because it's oversimplification of how how game development works and and I think it kind of tells me as a publisher that okay you haven't really thought about this and that's not necessarily a bad thing but it's a it's something that I'm filing away when I'm scoring your pitch that okay maybe not the most business savvy or hasn't considered the the monetization aspect of the game so

yeah try not to try not to do that I have to say okay so the key thing I think we're all sort of getting at is be prepared you know for every every eventualities and you know if you can if you get stuck with a question you don't know Wingate and it'll probably be okay you say we obviously had two different opinions there but ultimately I think there is one underlying thing whether it's you sort of just say oh yeah yeah and then you go and look at it and do it or whether you say oh we haven't thought about that what your opinions I think the ultimate point on that is be receptive you know you're listening and you know whether you're gonna go inserts or air search our external advice whether you're gonna get that internally and consider it yourself or whether you're just gonna ask directly it's just being open to to the feedback and to listen you agree with but with all this preparedness I just wanted to like raise the question like is it better to have a script and to know exactly what you're gonna say

exactly this point and hit all these points and then open for questions or is it better to just sort of go in and be conversational about it and be more a bit more loose with with how you're presenting your game I think that depends completely depends on on the presenter and what type of person what their style is I think you know different approaches work for different people there are some people that are really really not great at improvising and handling questions and and being able to roll with the punches and in that type of situation I would recommend for you to rehearse the pitch and and if you can get it out in one minute in a very in a way that's very clear and shows me that you put time to you know into this rehearsal that makes a huge difference but there are some other people that are totally fine with with winging it they have the key bullet points that they want to get across and the rest of it is just you know utilizing their own personality and that kind of thing that's also okay I think if you're not sure and your developer I

would recommend trying both with friends and family or other people in the studio or even if I was sure if you're not if you're if you guys are already friendly but there's no right or wrong answer here it really depends on who's giving who's actually delivering the pitch themselves I think what you say about bullet points is critical not necessarily having them in front of you but like even if you are the kind of person that just goes with the flow like that I do and that's that's the kind of way I approach a lot of presenting things even though I do that I will prepare like here are my key notes that I want to hit and I need to hit these these areas so you know I will prepare in my own way I prepare for like a talk or a you know a speech or a panel or something by knowing you know researching what I'm gonna be talking about unknown different key points but I don't necessarily feel the need to have a script although like you say I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with having a script the only thing I'd add is I think you have to be flexible

to the idea of the questions might not come at the end they might come at the different breakpoints it's a bit like you read in a book and you've got different chapters people might have questions after chapter 2 they might not want to save them until the very end it's really important to have key points you know like stuff that you know you really really need to say but if there's like a page that you learn from from you know start to the to the end in between and that kind of you get lost if you have to enter something in between and then you don't know where to start from again that you know that's not necessarily the best decision I think if you know your game and you know what you need to you need to say then you'll figure it out but it doesn't hurt to have a script you know that you could dive into at any given time as long as it doesn't mean that you're not gonna take any questions until you're done because otherwise it's not gonna happen cool and another thing about

preparedness that I'm kind of interested in is um you know we were saying about impromptu meetings and that kind of thing and having an opportunity to pitch that you didn't originally think was going to come should you take every available opportunity to do a pitch or other times where maybe you should just hold back may like build a casual relationship with it with somebody before you then start saying oh actually I have this game I'm gonna start pitching it to you now should you just take every opportunity to go oh hi you're someone from this publisher I have a game I think you'd love to hear about it is there a fine balance and I've answered my own question please discuss I don't think you need to picture a game right away to a publisher if it's not ready but any means but it you know it doesn't hurt to get a contact you know and just have a normal conversation depending on situation right if you're at a kind of friends that you're just run running into someone that is a publisher then it's good to have a nice conversation if you're scheduling a meeting it and only come friends right now and you don't

have anything to talk about that it doesn't really make any sense right yeah but I think you should wait for the moment that you actually you know what you want to ask for and that just go ahead so a lot of people say to like make opportunities but there's appropriate times to make up Unity's and some people get very excited about their game and very excited about seeing published Jupiter I think you've gone audio-wise however frozen yeah I can't hear her while Jupiter returns I was waiting for Jupiter he says but I mean because I think GP was making a you know a really great point sorry my mic disconnected it decided to use a mic that's not plugged in I don't know what I set up to there just are you sorry there are appropriate

times to pitch to publishers I think if you're at an event and you see someone and they're like you know talking to someone and they're doing something or they're engaged in some way and but even if it's casual coming up and being like hello I know you're a publisher for this game and for these games and I'd really like to show you my game might not be the most appropriate time so in that case it's probably better to just introduce yourself and get a business card and mention that you have a game that you might want to talk about so it's a lot about reading what's going on in the situation and not being the type of person that comes over at a time when it might not be appropriate and inserts yourself because that's a very bad first impression I mean I couldn't agree with you more what I was gonna say when they might drop down it's just about reading the room it's you know because you could be sitting there and I think it's always valuable to start up a conversation like you say you can get the business cards and then anything over the course of that conversation you then you know they

say well what are you doing like oh I'm an indie developer and if they follow up with something along the lines of oh that's interesting what are you working on there's your opportunity but if you can tell that they're you know for example moments away from having a meeting or busy you know about to go on the phone or even just trying to take a break sometimes people are just trying to have a break at busy conferences then you know just as simple as oh if you've got a business card you know that's what we're all there for and you know a lot of the time meetings at conferences and again I was only talking about this with an indie developer earlier in the week you know it might not be until the six seven eight ninth time you've met them something comes well I say met them spoken with them chatted with them anything like that that something comes with it you know I think it's probably rarer that things come right off the bat from a first meeting all the time so you know just saying hey it's really nice to meet you you got a business card having an opening chat and just showing your face could be the start of something later down the line yeah

that's pretty much exactly what it was trying to say making the first contact and not necessarily pitching right away just to have done it but it's you know we're all people and it's happy to check just once in a while and this I'm just gonna take a question from the audience I have another question and now the chat is going a bit weird for me so just a before we move on to sort the final closing ideas in Hutchinson asks and I hope I'm getting this question right some confusing the wording but how much time would you recommend spending tailoring your pitch for each audience should you have one pitch for everybody or should you focus on having a lot of different pitches for depending on who you're pitching to I mean from my point of view I think it's it's you should always do a little bit of tailoring but I think the idea of making an individual pitch for every single person is complete overkill and is actually taking way too much time out of what you're normally doing you should have core elements of a pitch that you utilize all

the time because ultimately though just your game and then you have different elements for example if you're talking to you know a journalist you know might not be drumming down into the literally the fine lines of the monetization if it's a consumer journalist whereas with the publisher that that might be what you want to do so you know tweaking it definitely but having like bespoke individual pitches like here's my pitching deck for a publisher here's my pitching deck for a journalist I think if you've got the time to do that then awesome but you know as we said right at the top Indies are wearing so many hats and you know to me that that would feel like a lot of work for a studio let alone for one person on their own also those pictures will probably have a lot of crossover yeah oh everyone seems agreed on that yeah and so another question that I was going to ask and I'll include somebody else's question in this what's the best way to

make it maintain contact and follow the people that you meet as part of pitching and attending conferences and that kind of thing and Don Creek in the in the chat is asking what's important when you followup it with on a pitch to follow up yes what method is the best way to do it and what should you be including when you are getting in so most of the time people follow up via email because that's what's given out if they put out a different way they prefer you to contact probably that way it's important to answer any questions that were unanswered during the pitch that's something to always keep in mind yeah I think it always helps to have some personal touch that shows you we're paying attention and not just copy pasting the same message to everyone although that's certainly the most efficient way to do it I would definitely say follow up but don't be

annoying you know hear if you're not hearing that from a developer you don't need to spam them every single day to get a follow up but I'm pretty confident that if they really like the game they will get back to you otherwise you know I would say focus your energies on in other areas or with other people that may have shown more interest to you yeah I would add that you know sometimes it might be necessary to just have a little reminder about who you are and that's not to be condescending or anything people meet so many different developers that you might say I was the person with the game that was about tanks so you know whatever you your game was I think sometimes that can really help all you know if you I would you remember we met for coffee such-and-such I just just a little line like that and it makes it's it's not just jobs my mind but it also like you say gives that personal touch like oh yeah I remember that meeting that that was that was really nice I think the other thing is there was two of the things I was gonna say which is again reiterating what

Stephen said is sometimes it's a bit patience you know people are busy and especially with the emails that only get checked let you know maybe a couple of times a day and you know having that patience and waiting further for the reply is really important and also if you know that someone is it runs the circuits as we sometimes say in the industry and is a lot of events maybe just find out what events they're going to in the future and say do you want to grab a coffee you know are you heading to you know I know do you want to grab a coffee you're gonna be there the amount of developers who I know who do that and actually it's just really nice it just helps me get to know people better and then that feeds into our growing relationship yeah for me it's also you know when you go to so many conferences I would never expect anyone to remember me just from one conversation never so what I'm writing emails to anyone I'm always just you know putting in one sentence like oh it was nice to meet you

at this conference they're there and maybe just one sentence about you know that what we talked about that really really helps and it's yeah and what the other side you know I was like being in a tiny tiny bit patient because if you have to do so many follow-ups it can take some time but it doesn't mean that people forget about you in the meantime great and I'm just gonna go for one last question so know we're sort of reaching the time here I would just wanted to know we've talked we've talked a lot about like things that you shouldn't do pictures that you um remember because they perhaps weren't very good I just want to know are there any sort of memorable pictures that you can talk about where it was actually really good and you you sat there and thought wow this is something I really like and what made it memorable for you when you saw that pitch yeah I actually if you don't mind I'd like to share a story from my very first in games event which is ten

years ago you know we talked about rehearsing pitches and and the most effective pitch at this conference which was in the Ukraine was actually not in English so the developer was not able to communicate in except for you know a few words like you know city building you know that kind of thing free to play that kind of thing and and but regardless I think the pitch was clear because energy kind of like if you go to a concert or whatever energy is contagious they were very very enthusiastic about the game and and within a matter of one to two minutes was able to show us at the table what was so cool about the game what was good-looking about it what was unique about it without you know being able to string together a complete sentence in English and we actually ended up leaving that conference and signing that game and we made a lot of money with it so I guess the lesson there would be it's

great here if you're like super polished pitcher but you don't even need to be great at that it's all about the communication and all the other forms I guess you could say the the nonverbal the the passion all the things we talked about being prepared to show the game and in a clear way and yeah I'll never forget that one because not only because it was my first event but because it actually worked so yeah that's I would say something to remember so this is sort of a story about a fun pitch I guess it was like interesting cuz we were it was on a big indie pitch we were doing like lots of pitches that day it was hours of people pitching in you get a bit tired and a lot of pictures could be the same and this one guy gave us his game to play and then well doing his feel was creating like a handmade print that had to do with his game so he was painting the stamp and stamping down on paper as he like systematically taught through his pitch which is clearly something he

had rehearsed any time with making this this thing that we all went to home with and I still have mine in my desk and it was just interesting to look up from the game occasionally to look at him because obviously he's giving a pitch and he's just very calmly creating this thing that he handed to us at the end it was so different and bringing something different to your pitch and bringing something different to your table to the table can really make you stand out yeah I mean one of the things I was gonna say which is actually very similar Stevan so i will give another example bow is you know sometimes language isn't as important as you think and that passion is contagious and one of our winners in korean who didn't in Korea at g-star the first time we did it which also because it was the first time we did it was so nice to see such support for the competition and he didn't speak any Korean any English your coffee spoke Korean spaghetti he didn't speak any English but his game just resonated on a level of enjoyment and he had that passion and he only knew a few

words and it was just so humbling to see someone so so surprised by how well received his game was being I mean it was well thought oh it was just yeah he was very humble about it it is an excellent game and very deserving to win but he was so humble that he was filming the winners and then when we announced his name he dropped his phone in surprise because he was so shocked that he was the winner and he was filming this for everyone else to have a keepsake and that was though that was lovely but and the game was was you know very deserving I suppose something else there is we've seen a number of very unexpected pictures that have done things that you know you've really been seen and even if they have been seen they've just been taken in such a new and fun twist you know things like a hidden folks and what the golf and you know or even ones that make you you know and feel something which is always very important just like they almost gone and we get you know a lot of those kind of experiences that make you feel something

and that always stays with me whether it's you know upset and sorrow for a well-told story or whether it's comedy from craziness and wackiness they're always well remember memorable yeah yeah for me it's like a I don't did we run out of time or do I still have like go ahead yeah so for me like you had so many pitches and so many people are you know trying to sell their game and when you have someone that is so convinced about their idea and they're really confident and that's what they're doing is actually the right thing and you have a conversation and I had a call with someone that has an awesome game and we were talking about funding him but at the end it just turned out and about advising him how he really doesn't need anyone to make that happen for himself and that's pretty cool if you if you talk to people that know what they're doing and they just need a tiny push in the right direction to figure out they're good to go and you know sometimes that's worth so much more I'm

just giving someone money and support them in that way and just building up their confidence and you're like yeah you got this cool personally my most memorable pitch I think was for golf peaks the beginning pitch in Poznan I can't remember year it was and the pitch was essentially just the the the developer played one one match of it was like this is the controls and it gave me the phone and said here you go and I just sat there and played for like the next four minutes was like this game is amazing why didn't have to explain anything about it I didn't have any questions I just wanted to keep playing and when I stopped playing I was so sad that I just wanted to keep going so yeah if you got a great game that always helps there's a whole article in that like from someone like me like the best of the pitch because I feel bad that I can't name like roll after roll after positive pitches cuz there really has been so many amazing pictures that that I've personally seen so absolutely and what a

lovely sentiment to end on and thank you all so much for joining us thank you to everybody on the panel Jupiter Stephen Beckett and Sofia thank you for your time sorry darlin and get around to your to your last question but thank you to everybody who asked questions or for joining us in the panel we will hopefully be doing another one of these next week or possibly in two weeks time it's all a bit at the moment but we we're not entirely sure what that will be but there will definitely be more roundtables in the future if you check pakka gamers you will find out more information in the coming days and of course don't forget that Pocket Gamer connects digital number two is coming June 8:12 I'm sure I got that right this time I've always got it wrong on my own podcast but that is going to be great we're doing vast improvements to our to our meeting systems and we're going to have all the same great content that we've had at all our conferences before and I've it's going to be fantastic please do check that out and I think that is it so I think all that's left to me is to say thank you very much again to everybody who joined

us and goodbye thank you slowly leave now yeah you