Successful Premiere of Pitch Level Up

Key insights

5 takeaways

01
The inaugural Pitch Level Up event held on May 3, 2022, in Hamburg, Germany, provided 89 participants with professional guidance on securing game funding and partnerships.
02
The event utilized a dual-track format featuring four expert-led presentations and 1:1 consultations with eight industry professionals to critique pitch materials.
03
Key educational topics included publisher selection, communication strategies, effective pitching techniques, and the legal nuances of game development contracts.
04
The initiative was designed to address the industry-wide gap in transparent, constructive feedback for developers following project rejections.
05
The successful turnout demonstrates a high demand for specialized, hands-on mentorship within the regional gaming sector to improve commercial success prospects.

Summary

Gamecity Hamburg's inaugural "Pitch Level Up" event, held May 3, 2022, at the Hamburger Ding Cross Community Space on the Reeperbahn, was designed to help game developers build more convincing pitch decks and present them effectively to publishers, investors, and funding institutions. The event was announced as a success on May 5, 2022, and marks the launch of a new workshop format from the Hamburg-based games promotion initiative.

Attendance totaled 89 developers, game makers, and students. The program combined two elements: a series of expert talks and one-on-one feedback sessions. Four talks covered finding the right publisher, communicating with publishers, the mechanics of pitching itself, and legal pitfalls developers should avoid. Speakers came from Assemble Entertainment, Kalypso Media Group, the law firm Taylor Wessing, and an independent business development consultancy.

The core of the event was the one-on-one pitch deck review. Participants presented directly to eight industry experts drawn from publishing, development, consulting, and games journalism, including representatives of Super Crowd Entertainment and Indie Arena Booth, KING Art, Assemble Entertainment, Goodgame Studios, Indie Advisor, and Gamecity Hamburg. Sessions also touched on pitching to the press.

The organizers emphasize candid feedback as the central value of the format, noting that teams often do not learn what to improve after a rejection or when publishers give no response. Participants left with concrete input for refining both their pitch decks and their game concepts. The coverage is regional in scope, focused on the Hamburg and German indie and independent development community, and consists of event reporting rather than quantitative research, with no outcome data beyond attendance figures.