30 Things I Hate About Your Game Pitch

[Music] I've been told to tell you in advance that you should silence your cellphone's if you haven't already and that also please when it's all over if you can fill out the evaluation form though that would be really great and so without much further ado I'm gonna do just gonna launch right into 30 things I hate about your game pitch first let me give you a bit of background about why you should even care what I think about your game pitch I've been in the industry for 20 years I started off as the creative director for Red Storm entertainment I designed Rainbow six and Ghost Recon but for the last 14 years I was a senior game designer at Sony Santa Monica I only recently left to go independent and for a lot at that time I was one of the guys you pitched to probably and I heard several hundred pitches during that time so that there was a lot of stuff that I I saw and it gives you a new unique perspective on it because if you if you're the person doing the pitching you may only do a handful of pitches in your career but if you're the person receiving the pitching that you see a lot II you get to see patterns in how people pitch and so the genesis of this talk was last year GDC I took a whole bunch of pitches and I was talking to them one of the people I was I was listening with and we were just shocked at how many mistakes people made and particularly people that people made even who had been in the industry for a really long time people with 10 or 15 years experience still doing really bad pitches and we always tried to give people a fair shake we were trying to hold things against them but at the same time there's some really obvious things people were doing and so that was the genesis of where this talk came from so when I was looking at pitches they're really two big questions there's really two things that I want to know and that is is this game worth making and can this team make it and anything that's not directed toward answering one of these questions in some form I don't it doesn't really need to be in your pitch or if it's in your pitch you need to play it down and in it exchange for answering one of these questions and in a meaningful way so I only have 30 minutes and I have 30 things let's let the hate begin number one I don't give a crap about your backstory a lot of people start off their pitches trying to introduce you to their game world you hear 20 minutes of like the complete political situation on some fantasy continent or you know what the childhood of your protagonist was and this really doesn't help sell your game at all if you think of also about what you do but you go about what you try to buy a game you may enjoy knowing all the information while you're playing but at the point of purchase when you're deciding whether or not you actually want to have that game you don't know all that backstory and if your game can't stand alone with a huge dump of what the backstory is that's a problem it's a problem that could be addressed even at the pitching stage so first off 20 minutes of lore will not sell your game a rule of thumb look at house the original Star Wars begins you have a really quick text crawl it sets up what the situation is and then you're on into the action if you need to set things up try to set them up that quickly number two I don't give a crap about your inventory system either and another pattern that I would see with when people would pitch is that they would explain in great detail systems that are very standard so if it's central to your game that you have a really unique and different inventory system if that's something that's really different about how your game plays by all means yeah showcase that but the pitch is not a place to just do a general dump of every mechanic you have but there's a lot of times if you say oh yeah we've got an inventory management that's all you need to say so number two don't explain standard features if anything's there it needs to be there because it is really core to the concept number three I'm not going to design your game for you a lot of times people would come in to do pitches and they would start off with questions what's your D game do you want to see well you like or they would give you two different options like we're thinking about making this first or third person what what do you think it should be that's not the place to do that if a company is interested in hearing different options they may ask you that later on the pitch but when you start things off you want to pitch what your creative vision is what the game is that you want to make and why you want to make it don't ask the person that you're pitching to to to answer questions about what they're looking for or what they're trying to accomplish if they want something different they'll tell you that you ask you so number three don't ask me what I want tell me what you want to do tell me what game you want to make number four game pillars are not hooks one of the things that we would always look for to determine if the game was worth making is what is the hook what is the unique thing that's gonna make this different that's gonna make it stand out from from all the other games that are out there and a lot of times people would think that they would say if they would say you like oh you'll here are our pillars that that would satisfy the need for what the gave the hook of the game is we want to have a really strong fantasy story in a really detailed world and it's gonna be all about hand-to-hand combat yeah those are pillars those help keep you on track while you're making the game but an important part of pitching is to tell the person you're pitching to why somebody would buy this game and set us instead of something else that's already out there so very on and you're early on in your pitch one of the key things you need to emphasize is what is it that makes your game unique and different from everything else that's out there number five you never explained to me what the player does and this often is tied in to the lack of a hook you have I would receive game pitches and people would like talk about how beautiful the world was and what the setting was and what their story was and what their monetization model was but when it came time to actually describing the moment-to-moment gameplay the experience of the player it would never be mentioned or they would mentioned sort of offhandedly oh yeah it's a platformer okay what kind of play well how is that different why do I want to play this platformer instead of the hundred other platformers that already out there if you don't have something unique you think about what is going to be unique before you get to the point where you're actually pitching and describe your mechanics be able to talk through moment to moment what it's gonna be like for the player to hold the controller in their hand and what they're actually going to be doing number six in the real world no one can double jump and what I mean by this is don't use realism is a way to excuse elements of your design a lot of times when you're pitching you'll be discussing why you made certain creative choices why you're why you have a certain vision whenever somebody would say something along the lines of oh yeah we made this choice because you can't really do this you know we wanted something that unless you're doing a real hardcore simulation unless the whole selling point of your game is that it's absolutely true to the world don't excuse design decisions by saying oh that's the way it really is because for the most part almost everything you do in a game is unreal in some way and so justify your design decisions for with real reasons rather than just appealing to realism and something that's related to that many times I'd get pitched a game I would have a frame story it's a game show if you pitched something as a game show I start thinking why why do you even need a frame story because game shows themselves don't have frame stories the frame story of a game show is that it's a game show so if you have a game and it has really cool mechanic and it's fun to play you don't necessarily need to put a wrapper around it to explain while the player is doing it if you really have a reason to do a game show game by all means do it don't let me stop you but don't try to feel the need to justify actions by some sort of artificial frame that you put around it so if your frame story for your game is that it's a game show you probably actually don't need a frame story just leave that off it makes everything simpler number eight it's a parody I always get very suspicious when I pitched a game that says were the people which person explains that it's a parody because I wind up thinking is it really a parody is it really just a crappy game did you really start out to make something that was serious and good and then discover that he didn't get it and see those you say okay I'm going to lampshade it so again I'm not saying don't make parody games but it announcing upfront that it is a parody sets off alarm bells it makes me suspicious that there is something in the game that is off or wrong that you don't like it stand on its own being taken as a joke oh and I just completely screwed up my presentation there number nine you never mentioned your glaring obvious test tech risk and this goes into can this team succeed in making it a lot of times if you see a lot of pitches and if you've been working them on the publisher side a lot you kind of know what's feasible and what's not and you know what things are hard to do and what things are easy to do and if somebody comes in and says yeah we want to do a thousand person multiplayer game with real-time firefights then alarm bells go off and it's fine to do something that's really technologically ambitious it's fun to do something that's really dangerous and hard but if you say something like that that sounds dangerous and hard and then you don't explain how you're going to pull that off then that really makes people nervous so taking a big risk is great but if you know you're taking a big risk then you need to tell people you're taking a big risk and you need you to acknowledge what you're going to do to address that big risk this is an interesting one number 10 your proof of concept doesn't prove your concept a lot of times people will do prototypes and you'll see prototypes when when you're getting pitched and you need to be very careful what you're prototyping because a lot of times when your prototype is the easy stuff and the easy stuff is not the stuff that needs to be prototyped so if you show me a prototype here like hey here's a character that's walking around I'm like that doesn't tell me anything it's very easy to get a prototype working where a character is walking around if you're going to prototype it is important to try to focus on the things that are unique and different and hard show what it is that if you have unique combat mechanic that's what I want to see in prototype I don't want to see oh hey the character can open doors because I know you're gonna be able to execute on the character opening doors so when you think about prototyping or doing proof of concepts prototype what will showcase the hook of your game and things that may convince the person that you're pitching to that you're able to mitigate the risks that are that are inherent in what you're on and what you're proposing number eleven Heaven lots and lots of shitty art does not make your art less shitty if you have if you don't have an AR is on staff if you don't have somebody who can produce high quality images then try to pay to have just one or two you don't need to have a lot of art to sell the vision of your game often you can sell a the the look of a game with with a single really good image and you're much better off spending the money or the time if you're the artist to produce that one really stellar image that sells the look and tone of the game then to krab your presentation with a lot of stuff that's really mediocre so yeah one or two amazing pieces is better than a dozen mediocre ones don't caught in the trap of trying to think that more art is better if that's not something you can easily execute on and related to that make sure that I can tell what's placeholder and what's not one of the worst things you can do is put stuff in your game your presentation that is just good enough that I might think that you intended it to be in the final game but it's really not so if the person who put this image on the Internet is around thank you for letting me use your image because it was a it was them showing how they actually would showcase just pure mechanics with pure engineering art engineering art is great because there's no way the person you're pitching who can mistake that for what's really going to be in the game so an obvious placeholder is better than bad art that looks like its final number thirteen this is a weird one because this kind of goes against the rule of not having crappy stuff that you pitch with you polished too early and part of the reason this image is in here this is from a game I worked on where we did like final art for all the dope for all the ships before we had our combat modeled down and all the stuff got thrown out and so if a game is really really visually polished but the mechanics are still really broken and prototype that also is an alarm bell because it suggests that the team is not putting all the effort where where it should be and it also suggests that a lot of work is going to be redone so again if you want to showcase what you're capable of in the art department that's great but make sure that it doesn't overshadow the fact that your your game in the prototype phase may still be really really incomplete a few still images of show with your art team is capable of is much better than prototype that is broken in a variety of ways but what that looks amazing because the person you pitching to knows that's all gonna have to be thrown out when the game actually gets nailed down so make sure that work in progress actually looks like work in progress I find this one particularly painful because part of I do is as a designer is write your sample dialogue sucks and this is a problem particularly if you're trying to pitch a game as having a strong story if you're trying to pitch a game that has a strong story then I'm part of what I will be judging you on is whether or not you can actually write and so showing showcasing a dialogue system that has a bunch of really kind of crappy placeholder dialogue does you know favors you're much better off not showcasing the dialogue system and instead just showing really good dialogue show off that you can actually write something not the generic hey do you have a quest for me but it showcased a dramatic scene where some people you can actually judge the quality of the story you're able to deliver so if you're selling the story do your presentation in a way that convinces me that you're actually capable executing on what you're selling this is a bigger deal last year your pandering to the latest tech craze does this game really need the tech that you're using does it need virtual reality doesn't need augment admitted reality back when the move is the thing we saw lots of pitches for move games where the move made no sense at all if you want to make a game for of these platforms make sure that what you're doing with the new technology with whatever the new hotness is actually make sense in the context of the game don't pitch a game where it feels like you had an existing game on the shelf and you've retrofitted some some new tech idea because you think that'll help you get interest because in all likelihood that will actually fail number 16 this happened more often than you would think I was with Sony and you just pitched a phone game to a console publisher and it would you know about 10 minutes in the responsibility we why are we even talking why are you wasting your time why am I wasting my time do preliminary research to the people who European to some publishers have a particular kind of game of puppet that they are interested in they're interested in horror games or they're interested in like 8-bit games or they're interested in RT games there's a whole that and some people acceptable shows all or also interested in having a broad spread of different titles so if they're already doing a horror game they're probably not interested in your game so do some preliminary research to find out what it is that people are interested in so you don't wind up pitching in something for the wrong platform the wrong genre suddenly that already goes against something that they've announced gone home already exists and this is from a couple of years ago right after gone hand came out it seemed like every other pitch we got was going to be hey we're gonna do a new version of gone home without any way to distinguish what it was that was at all different about it so again along with the the idea that there's being technological hotness that people are chasing after they're also hot games that come out so in addition to gotten home existing so does minecraft if you get if you pitch a minecraft clone okay how is this different from a Minecraft from from minecraft how are you taking something that already existed and moving in a different direction because if you just say you're going to remake your version of something that's already successful then the immediate answer is well why would somebody buy this instead of what already exists it's already putting you behind in terms of consents and people that your game is worthwhile to make this also it was at Marvel it was a completely different license but somebody actually came to us and they had this whole game pitch billet based around in it and on an intellectual property that they didn't own and at the end of the pitch were like well this is actually pretty cool and then they said can you help us negotiate the license to get this intellectual property and the answer you almost always is no we cannot help you I would negotiate your license to get your IP if you want to build a game around intellectual property those negotiations should happen in advance before you go to a publisher if you have a publisher who is already has access to some IP they may be interested in hiring a developer who will build a around those but asking a publisher to help you get an IP that you've already built a concept around is a really really dangerous thing to do this was big wouldn't know when when free-to-play was the first decent the the big new thing we would get pitches that consisted almost entirely as somebody describing their new monetization plan and yet nobody buys a game for a monetization plan the details of the monetization plan may be really interesting once you get into development if somebody's interested in your pitch they may say hey this is really really cool can you tell us more about how you're gonna make money off of it but going into what your pricing tiers are if you have some unique way that you're gonna sell in-game goods that's a relatively minor part of selling somebody on the idea of your game and a lot of that will fluctuate on during development it's worthwhile to say upfront oh yeah we're planning on free-to-play we're planning an in-app purchases you know a basic idea of what the the monetization plan is going to be affects what you have you you think if the game is feasible or not but actually going into detail of the how the system is going to work usually it doesn't belong in a pitch so make the game then figure out what your pricing tiers are don't start from the principle that you're gonna your build out your whole monetization plan in advance this is a huge one you have no idea how much money you need to make this thing or you this is the same thing or how many people or how much time never go into pitch without an idea of what your scope is going to be a common question you'll be asked is how many hours of gameplay this does this have how many levels how many lines of dialogue whatever I was taking pitches I always had a cow running a calculation in my head of how much money this game is gonna cost to make and because that that's where all the feasibility comes down to it's like can we afford to pay money to actually pay for this thing and if you have no idea how big your game is or how many people it's gonna take to make how many months you're going to run it makes it impossible to assess the feasibility of this that this game is a project you think you could have a pitch that a game that's really really really amazing but if you don't know what it actually takes to build it that suggests that you're never gonna be able to execute on it related to this is that you come in and you don't have a team you don't have anybody besides yourselves that beside yourself you don't need to have your complete team in place a lot of times when you're pitching it's because you want the money to build hire people but you at least need to have a roadmap for how you how your are go to hire people and at least have an idea of who the leads RV are going to be you know if it's if you have one or two people who you would like to hire you you want to be give the person that you're pitching to the idea that there is going to actually going to be a body of people who are capable of executing on this idea and not simply it's a pipe dream that you that you have that you you're hoping to make without any any resources to execute on it when you're specifying what sort of stuff it is that you how much you need and how this game is going to have a roadmap to success make sure your business plan that you're presenting is realistic you know if you're saying that you're gonna sell as much as World of Warcraft that's not going to happen your game is going to fail and so if you need to have those sort of sales for your game to make financial sense then your business plan makes no sense so when you're putting together what your business plan and make sure that it's not based on outliers if you're saying hey you know here's the scope of our game here's how much money we expect to make pick a middle-of-the-road title one that's like a moderate success whenever you know as soon as the game is probably to succeed a little people tend to go into these things that with a sense of optimism but don't do so don't have a business plan that's based upon some sort of wildly unrealistic outrageous sense of success here's another one you seem like you'd be a huge pain in the ass to work with I actually sat in pitches where afterwards we would sit and talk and say man that was a really great game idea but that guy was a huge asshole and this is more important than you think because a publisher developer relationship is a relationship it's ongoing I mean it you're gonna be working together for six months quite often it could be eighteen months two years three years if things go wrong things get stressful there's a lot of money involved people get nervous if you're not able to be friendly and agreeable in a pitch meeting what are you gonna be like when you're sleep-deprived and you're a week out from alpha nothing works so your remember that your pitch is also in addition it is making you you're showing to the person you're pitching to what sort of person you're gonna be like to work with or you could be a colleague that they actually want to be involved with number 24 you expect me to know off the bat who you are there are a lot of games out there under a lot of game developers and I may not have played your previous games start off giving me a little bit of background tell me you know what you've worked on before don't assume and don't be offended in particular if I haven't played your game before even if it was well received there's a lot of stuff out there number twenty-five you get annoyed if I ask you questions edit this is hard sometimes because you if you're if you've pitched and you if you've rehearsed your pitch really well and you know exactly what you're gonna say you have your whole thing scripted and down and then somebody like twenty minutes five minutes and raises their hand and ask you a question you're gonna answer later on it's really really annoying but if somebody is asking you questions while you're pitching it means they're interested in your game it means that they want to know more and so try to roll with the flow of how the pitch goes if it takes you off script go off script you know this is you're not being judged on how well you stick the script it's how will you convey what needs to be conveyed for the game this is a weird one that we're watching the pitch on your phone it's really hard to look at a PowerPoint if it's like this big and so you'll be sure you have the adequate technology to pitch what you're pitching even if you're pitching a phone game it is off it worthwhile to show stuff on a tablet to the person you're pitching to so please bring a laptop or a tablet or a laptop to to your pitch number twenty seven you bought a laptop but you didn't bring head I was talking to sometime I no longer take pictures because I'm freelance but it somebody showed me their game a couple of days ago and I thanked him because we were in a really noisy place in he had headphones if sound is it all important to your game if it means anything assume you're gonna be pitching in the noisiest bar at GDC because a lot of times that's what happens and actually please bring headphones because if you hand me your earbuds I don't want to put them in my ears number 28 this only happened once you show up hungover or drunk or high please don't do this hungover is probably the most common one but I've seen I've seen the others and it really my immediate response is if you're not taking this seriously then why am i taking this seriously and it also suggests that you know if you're not able to pull it together for a half hour pitch what is it going to be like over the the the entire development I've gotten the five-minute warning before late fortunately I only have two more don't trash other companies people will say oh yeah our last publisher was really awful or we really hated them or we don't want to make a game like this other game because it's crap or don't do this don't trash other people there's ways to talk about why your game is great or why you're a great team without talking about negative things about other people in the industry because again you know development relationships are always very stressful and what will run through the publishers mind is how are they gonna talk about us when they're making a game for us and finally make sure you take a shower I shouldn't have to tell people this and I know it's hard at GDC you're walking around a lot but yeah I've tried it not to hold it against people but yeah and this goes into the like if you're if you're doing a VR demonstration please wipe off the faceplate before you give it to me to put on or don't give me your earbuds be mindful of the fact that we're talking and interact with a lot of people and it's it's a small thing that goes a long way to feeling like you respect the person you're pitching to so just a couple of positive things at the end because that was a whole lot of negativity be enthusiastic be excited about your game you're the person is the most excited about your game and if you're not excited about your game then who is going to be you know show that enthusiasm while you're pitching be upfront and honest if you're an experienced team be sure to say that you know I mean that you're not gonna be able to fool most people you're pitching - you're not gonna be able to snow them they've seen things many many times you know be upfront with what's hard about your development be hard be upfront about like what your challenges are what your risks are that makes it seem like you know what you're doing when you're upfront about the problems you're face sell your hook really really hard what is it about your game that makes it original and unique and different because that's the thing that will make it sell and above all know your scope backwards and forwards know how much it's gonna cost how many levels how many hours how many characters how much dialogue you don't need to have created all these things you need to know how many of each one of these things you are planning to have in your finished game now I have like three minutes so thank you very much this is me as I said I've no longer with Sonia I live I've sewn into this past fall to go freelance as a as a design consultant my website is game on the rails comm you can follow me on twitter @ @b b Epton or you can just email me if you have questions and i think we probably have time for like two or three questions if anybody has any and people they've asked me to ask people to come to the microphones please and please speak into the microphones because it's being recorded hey thanks so much could you talk a little bit about time about how much time people would budget for a pitch typically when we're doing pitches a half an hour if again it depends if we were doing a pitch at GDC we'd assume it would be half an hour if we were going on-site which would happen sometimes that's gonna be longer we might spend an hour or two hours but usually if you do a site visit then you're actually digging into like what are all what what sort of tools are there using the pitch itself might still only take half an hour then but then there'd be all sorts of follow-up questions so the in general yeah you have something your sort of high-level elevator pitch but if you're doing a PowerPoint presentation 30 minutes is good thank you hi I'm from Lebanon and the Arab world in general is a publisher light investor heavy industry so we tend to be pitching Studios more than we do individual games what approach what advice can you give in terms of that I know it's not something you have experienced yes if I understand your question it's like how do you pitch to investors as opposed to publishers is that correct Studios rather than games studios rather than game yeah so in general I have a longer version of this talk that it's an hour and I can't fit everything in but if you're if you can gauge who's in the room right at the very beginning if you have senior management then you want to talk about high level vision and capabilities of the team so like this is the grand thing we want to build and this is the why we're great and why we can execute on it if you are talking to people who are if you have like a designer in the room or an engineer or an artist like my job is to go long as the designer valuate the design then that's why you go lower and more into the nitty-gritty so what I'm saying for your case where you're pitching the the studio which you really want to be doing is pitching the capabilities so you want to be saying you know here's the people we have here that here are what they're able to do if they've worked on other games these the other games they've worked on and then talk about create your creative vision your high-level this is the grand thing we want to accomplish not necessary with one game but with you with multiple games this is the team at what we want to do or this is in business terms what we want to do that's how I'd approach that oh thank you just a quick quick question I went to game connection America on this year and well even though according to the you know the thirty dots over here there we pretty much cover everything but at the same time since we don't have any published games we well we sort of hit a wall where people were always yeah I cannot you know finance you because you don't have anything published so you do have any sort of recommendations for people who are starting from scratch so the challenge the question was how do you how do you get published when you're starting from scratch and the challenge there is that it's on the can this team execute front because they don't want to take the risk because they don't believe that you can pull it off in that case a lot of what you may need to do is put extra effort into your prototype and that unfortunately means spending more money upfront to show that you're capable of producing something that's you know thirty percent finished before you actually go to pitch it it's very hard to pitch just a straight-up idea if nobody your team can has a track right of delivering the further along you get your prototype and the more complete the prototype it is the easier it is to sell with an inexperienced team and that's what reason is an inexperienced team to try to do something really small because then you can sell something that is more nearly complete when you're proposing it to somebody thank you so you need to do two while you're in your pitch pitching your game but what's the best way to get a certain company or people to actually be willing to meet with you to pitch your game to them contact them before you come to GDC this was a big one so research companies a lot of times it's going to be hard to convince them to do any sort of travel or that you're gonna do any sort of travel if you're pitching completely cold a lot of times the way pitches would come in to us would be there'd be an initial contact point and because we were a publisher we would advertise you know this is who you need to contact right - the initial contact point it explained that you have you that you're a small company there is a game you're interested in pitching and at that point you include basic information that shows that it's even worthwhile to take the pitch at that point typically what we would get might be you know one or two three pages about what the intended game is that's just a very high-level concept description and then more information on who the team is because again the two questions are is this worthwhile and is this is this team be able to execute and so setting up front like hey I'm teasing this something you think you'd be interested in seeing this look at us we're actually kind of competent you should actually maybe trust us to do this that for us was enough to at least get us to do a follow-up email a little back and forth and then try to do that prior to GDC or e3 or try to do it in a way that gives you a place you can have a quick and easy meeting with somebody without it turning into travel expenses because nobody's gonna pay for travel expenses for anything that's at the earlier.we proposal stage thank you hi my question is about trailers because I assume you get to see a lot of trailers and linework when you watch trailers how much patients do you have like to watch them and what elements are let's say more interesting or more relevant to you do you like to see game play do you like to see a narrated heart sale type of trailer what's most effective if you're pitching to two investors or higher level management a trailer can be really good for because it's because it's pretty in shiny and it sort of shows off like your ability to polish if you're pitching to people that are more down in the trenches they'll tend to ignore the trailer I would buzz more inched it in prototype and in concept art than a trailer because you could hide so many things in a trailer and so what I would say is that that unless a trailer is something you can do very easily based on an existing prototype you have an existing yarn you have that's probably not the best place to put a lot of effort in to your pitch because it it it will sell the game potentially to an inexperienced investor but not to somebody who is really going to be digging deep into whether the game is going to be viable or not thank you are there any metrics that you think are important to bring to the pitch if you have them or any you'd avoid what do you mean by metric I like daily active users or previous sales like previous games or oh absolutely mean if you have a track record in particularly if you view a track record of success that is absolutely something that should that you should talk about is it I have a longer version of this talk that's not entirely negative and I talked about you know how to sell your how to sell your company and one thing is who are the principal people in your company what are their experiences what games have you shipped if those games have been successful how successful were they all that stuff is great because that really shows that you're able to execute on on what you're proposing so yeah if you have stuff like that that is that that's perfect information yeah some yeah sometimes when you have been working on acting for a long time it's difficult for you to find back to the hook of the game do you have any tools to like finding back to the hook and defining the hook for again well I'm not sure I understand your question could you the hook of the game oh the hook how to find the hook well that's that that's the twenty million dollar question is it yeah I mean so what I tend to do as a designer and this is this is outside pitching and designing is that you know take whatever your core game is and then like you know push it in some like push it off axis a little bit and see where that takes you so and I'll use the first P game I worked on which is Rainbow six we wanted to do it we knew we want to do a first-person shooter but we wanted to have a it to have a slightly different feel and it it started out the hook started out with the idea that what would be like to play a shooter where twitch reflexes didn't matter where it was all about patience and tactics and that came out almost from the very beginning but was the idea that we took something that was established and then said oh let's just take you know what if we what if we changed the rules a little and push it a little in this direction or push it a little in that direction there are variety of things that can be a hook I mean I'm mechanic hook is always good sometimes just the look of a game is a hook one of the best pitches out we ever took at Sony was for on the unfinished Swan and it was so stunning because it had an original mechanic and an original look at the same time which was like two hooks and two extent related and so you know if you have a really compelling character if you have a really original look if you have original gameplay twists but look at ways to take something that already exists and push it in an unexpected direction and see where it takes you and iterate on that don't just pick the first one that comes to mind try to find different ways to to push things in different directions thank you sure anybody else okay perfect you

Channel: GDC

Views: 635,376

Rating: 4.8522277 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, game design

Id: 4LTtr45y7P0

Length: 37min 37sec (2257 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/iugameprof]

I've pitched and been pitched to many, many times. What he says here is absolutely spot-on.

For me, probably the #1 thing that new devs get wrong, or don't take into account is, "why would someone stop playing another game to play this one?" It's another way to ask about hooks, differentiators, USPs, etc. Whatever you call them, if your game doesn't have them (or worse, "it's just like Gone Home" as he said), your game is going nowhere fast.

[u/Dani_SF]

Dang this talk was just so good. Every dev needs to hear this.

[u/LukeLC]

Heh. @ 10:51, 'lots of bad art doesn't make your art less bad.' I always feel terrible trying to break this fact to people in the indie dev scene, but it's nice hearing someone say it straight.

At the end of the day, no one will see your code. But they will see your art. Particularly, your banner images, logos, and whatnot. Making something visually appealing to your target audience at first glance is a powerful asset.

[u/Endroad]

Seems pretty obvious but I guess people really often forget to see it from this prospective.

[u/PlebianStudio]

Very interesting presentation and actually solid questions at the end.

[u/Nightmask3]

This talk is awesome and Brian Upton, the speaker, is a brilliant game designer.

Shameless self promotion follows, I made a video essay about a book he wrote called, "The Aesthetic of Play", which is filled with pragmatic and functional explorations of game design, similar to the tone of this talk.

I made it to act as something of a primer for gamedevs who want to dip their feet into game design theory.

[u/chillblain]

It's a really good presentation, but there is one thing that the speaker only touches upon a bit but I feel is far and away perhaps the most important point- knowing who you are pitching to. Not just the company, but the actual people. It's super important to find out exactly who you are pitching to before you do and to craft the pitch towards them. Pitching to a board of execs, investors, or non-developers is far, FAR different from pitching to developers, certain management, or even intermediaries. A pitch needs to be tailored to the audience it's being pitched to or you're likely to hit stumbling blocks or trip up on things they do/don't need to know or do/don't care about.

[u/comp-sci-fi]

1. Pillars are not hooks. The strengths of your game are important, but when making a pitch you need a hook... what makes the game unique

What was the unique "the hook" of some well-known games?

This might be a bit tricky, because what was unique at that time mightn't seem so cool and unique today (perhaps, in part due to that game itself). The converse also makes it tricky: the basic genre or concept that the game is famous for, mightn't be what made it stand out as unique at the time. These are common problems of "history". Finally, it can be difficult to identify the hook, when there are several unique ingredients - how to define the essence of the hook? How broad or narrow should you be? e.g.

PUBG's hook is a "battle royale" game mode for a shootrer. But what is "battle royale"? How do you define it? PU has described it as "land, loot, and survive" but that seems too abbreviated. Is it more, "100 players, on 8km² map, within a shrinking circle"? Are details of the guns, sound design, map design and vehicles essential or unique?

One test of this is Fortnite's battle royale mode - have they captured what makes it fun? If so, the similarities are a guide (and the differences are revealing too).

Of course, what I'm discussing here is the hook of the game... when pitching, they aren't actually playing a game. So the hook of the pitch is something a little different... some interesting idea/mechanic, that engages them (i.e. the funders), but - who knows - mightn't even be in the final game at all.

Here are some guesses of what was the unique "hook". Are they accurate - and would they have helped fund the game?

limbo - atmospheric lighting
minecraft - first person blocks
COD - regenerating health
horizon zero dawn - robo-dinosaurs
assassin's creed - climb everything
tomb raider - 3d indiana jones
angry birds - appealing characters

[u/dayman89]

I read this as "30 Things I Hate About You" game pitch. I was intrigued.