>> All right everybody.
We're going to get started.
Can you guys hear us okay?
>> Yeah.
>> Great.
Okay. Well, my name is Jeanie Dumont.
I have the pleasure of being onstage with
four absolutely amazing women.
I was very, very excited to get them recruited and
up here to put this pitch perfect panel.
So, a couple of things.
One, we all know we are
under-represented in this industry both from a kind
of role perspective and also from just
getting a share of dollars in getting games published.
And so, rather than focus on
the gender issues that may be in our way,
we wanted to instead share some best practices and get
these four women who are experts in
the industry from a creative perspective,
from a business development perspective,
and from a publishing perspective
and kind of share those do's and don'ts and
everything in between to help you get your ideas
out there and get those games pitching.
And it is pitching season by the way,
so take notes, I encourage you to do that,
and afterwards if you have ideas and you want to talk,
we've got quite a few people who are open to doing that.
Shana T Bryant here from Private Division which
is Take Two's Independent Publishing arm,
as well as Katie Stone Perez here with her cohort Nate.
And I'm sure there's other folks
around too that would love to hear your ideas,
so we'll just put that out there.
So, let's get these women introduced.
We have first Shana T Bryant
from Private Division as I mentioned.
She's got over 15 years experience in
the industry from all different genres,
as well as different technologies working in AR,
VR and MR. And now she runs the pipeline
from pitch to production for
their new independent game studio.
And we have Ada Duan,
she's the General Manager of leading
the business development team at Xbox which
oversees the portfolio and
business relationships for Microsoft Game Studios,
the second party publishing arm,
the third party publishing arm,
the idea at Xbox program,
Mixer and Game Pass.
So, that's pretty amazing, pretty epic.
We have Tatyana Dyshlova who is with EA's DICE LA Studio.
And she has worked on
heavy hitting franchises including Forza Motorsport,
Need for Speed and Battlefield.
And most recently, she has pitched
her Top Secret prototype project
to leaders over at EA. And then we have Robin Hunicke,
CEO and co-founder of Phenomenon,
who is known for kind of pushing the boundaries
of what a game can actually be.
And has her IGF nominated game Luna,
which you can actually play upstairs.
As well as the PS3 hit Journey.
And so what we're going to do is we're going to have
three stages for our discussion today.
We're going to start hearing from
their perspective starting from creative,
going into business development and then publishing.
From there, we've got a few questions.
We're going to tee up for discussion,
and then the last part we're going to
open it up to audience questions.
All right. So why don't we get started and
let's hear in from a creative side of the business.
>> All right. It's on. Yeah. It Works.
Hi everyone. Thanks for coming.
Yes, so a lot of people ask
me how do I pitch games or who should I
pitch to or how does it happen
or what do you know? How can you help me?
And the first thing I always say is
that it's really specific to you.
So, your lived experience,
the thing your passion about,
the thing you want to build, is really,
really important and it's central to
every aspect of what you're going to
do in your life and your pitch should be no different.
So, when I started making games,
I came from a background in computer science and AI.
And I really was fascinated by the idea of storytelling.
The more I did work in that area,
the more it became clear that if I
kept building the things I was building,
that I will be building things that killed other people.
So, drones and that kind of stuff.
And that's where the job market was headed for
people that were sitting in AI in
the early 2000s when I was doing it.
And I got interested in using
games to simulate things and then just was like,
"Why don't I just make games?
Because I'm not really into killing people.
It's not what I'm into.
I don't want to make stuff that destroys
other people or destroys the planet,
so maybe what I'll do is I'll just
drop out of school and start working on games."
And I went to work on the Sims.
In fact, I worked with Lacey who
was up here just a minute ago.
So,I followed my heart out of a career that would
have been very lucrative and
potentially could have been
incredibly destructive who knows,
Into a career that was like,
my parents were just like, "What are you doing?
And I was like, "I'm following my heart."
The very first time I pitched a game
was actually in an interview at EA.
I was interviewing on the Medal of Honor Team,
and I just decided to not
answer the question and just go off with my pitch.
I get into the weeds
and I can tell you the game was not funded.
I was pitching a game based on
the comic book that I loved at
the time called Street Angel.
About a homeless girl that is a ninja who
saves the world all the time but nobody
knows and so she still lives on the street.
And I was like,
"Wouldn't that be the best open world game?"
And they were like. "Thanks, we'll call you."
So, I can tell you that there
are appropriate times to pitch
and inappropriate times to pitch.
You can follow your dreams but you
also have to follow the rules.
And so one of the rules that I tried to sort of adhere
to after that lesson is if someone's not asking me,
I don't force it on them.
I make it clear that I make video games and then I'm
always looking for funding and then I have ideas,
but I don't say, "Can I tell you right now?"
Like especially not in a context
where people are kind of relaxing and chilling out.
You have to wait for their request,
but you have to offer
the opportunity. Does that make sense?
And it's a common courtesy.
It's kind of like dating.
If you like someone,
you should go up to them and make yourself available,
and then you should let them make themselves available.
It should be consensual.
And so, I really think a lot of people get
stuck on that first part is just like,
I'm so desperate to tell you about
my idea. It gets stuck.
And I think from the creative perspective,
the thing to really focuses on is what you're bringing to
the table as the person you
are and why this is so important to you,
because that's where you're going
to find the person that wants
to work with you and help you get your thing made.
Lots of people can give you money,
but taking money from
somebody who doesn't really care about
what you're doing can be a really painful experience.
And so, I always say it's not networking,
it's not it's not pitching,
it's finding your next partner.
And really try to see it as it's a creative partnership.
It is a business partnership and you need to have
those skills as well to talk through the other stuff,
but it needs to be based on
your values and what you're trying to build.
And if you're working with somebody you don't
respect or someone who doesn't respect to you,
it's going to come back and bite your ass later.
So, they're not a lot of rules that I
have but that's pretty much it.
Those things have done well for me throughout my life.
The other thing is just in general like as you
age and you move through your lives in this industry,
the people that you know will also become
more senior and they'll be doing cool shit.
And they'll come to you and say, "Hey,
I'm the final signing person on
this budget and I really want to work with you."
You go, "Okay, let's work together."
And it doesn't seem that way now
because you're all young and broke.
No one's ever made your games and stuff,
but if you start with your values
now and you build those relationships now,
in your jobs, or in
your games that you're making on your own,
or in potential publisher partnerships,
it'll give you so many dividends later.
So don't think of it as like,
getting over another person,
or getting something that you
don't deserve so you're tricking them,
that's another common one.
Don't think of it that way. Think of
it that you're looking for a partner
because you want to make something great
and change the world together.
>>That's great thanks.
All right.
Tatyana how about you?
>> Can you guys hear me?
Awesome.
So I am the most reluctant person in terms of pitching.
I never ever aspired to do it.
I'm an introvert.
I have debilitating fear of public speaking and
I fell into it out of
necessity and I made all of the terrible,
like everything I imagined could go
wrong I've experienced in the past year.
Everything from drinking soda
and then burping in front of
an exec to, not doing that again,
I'll stick to water,
to actually forgetting to drink
water and literally losing my voice,
then having to like send me
mIme through the presentation.
I've pitched with my creative partner
who is the lead designer,
who is even worse than I am,
and he's actually bailed out of the room on me once
in the middle of his creative pitch.
So literally I've experienced it all.
Okay. Mic is not working.
Like literally everything that could
go wrong happened to me last year and in the end of it,
I am so passionate about it.
So, I would say don't necessarily buy into that,
"You have to be a great pitcher."
You will become a great pitcher if you do it enough and I
think I did it about a 100
times and eventually, you work it out.
There's nothing more fulfilling
than pitching something you're
really passionate about and you're able to
actually articulate it to the right people,
at the right time and
then they're like, "Okay, move forward."
You're like, "Really, really cool, awesome."
Then you are like, "Get out of the room
before they change their mind.".
There's a few things that really have
helped me that I didn't realize,
one is I started from
a technical program management point of view.
So I was always the person who the creatives
would come to with going like,
"We came up with all these cool things for
the next iteration of Need For Speed,
or Forza, can we build it?"
Most of the time, no. But I came into
this process of having
a very pragmatic sort of point of view,
I needed to believe that what we were pitching we could
actually build given the right resources,
and so I think there's an authenticity
that resulted from it
that has been invaluable especially as people.
There's definitely an element of blue sky.
You want to give people a promise of where it could go,
how it can disrupt the industry
but it has to be feasible.
Part of that is the team that I joined,
we came out of Battlefield One.
Most of the team, most of
the art team went on to create more Battlefield
One content and we were
these scrappy engineering animation technical design.
Myself who was doing everything in between,
we were having a lot of fun, we
didn't really have much of a mandate.
We were trying to find some core elements of gameplay in
software on an engine Frostbite that
we were potentially going to ship some of these ideas in.
So when it came to pitching
those ideas we had a lot of confidence.
People would say like, "That's
really hard, I've never seen it done.
Hey, it's working in software.
It's not pretty but it's there."
Part of that is everything we got into
software as quickly as we could we didn't care about art,
we didn't care about whether it was
going to scale to a million people.
We wanted to see if it would work for six people first,
and things can get a lot cheaper
when you have that point of view.
We playtested it all the time not just ourselves but
we invited people all through the studio,
anybody who was a guest at our studio, we forced them,
we sat them down and we had them
play it for 5-10 minutes and give us feedback.
So, that really built
our confidence around some
of the things that we were pitching.
The interesting thing about
pitching which is a catch 21 is
that you need to be unique and you need to differentiate,
you need to sell a promise of
bringing something new to the market.
But the more you lean into the uniqueness,
the harder it is for people to
sometimes wrap their head around it,
like the less you can say,
"If this means this or it's kind of like this plus this."
The more the less they can
really understand how it could potentially be successful.
So, in order to
counter that in addition to the prototype,
one of the things that we really have leaned into
is trying to make it
as easy for people to continue investing as possible.
Both in terms of being smart of what we were building.
We weren't saying we needed a 300 man team
right away next month,
in order to prove this out we were saying, "Hey,
we need maybe like three more people, we need this,
we need like we can outsource this part."
We also did focus tests, we did playtests.
We found data that professors were studying
player behavior like outlining
how some of this could tie directly,
and most important is we found
those business opportunities within all of
the triple-A business dex that circle
around during all-hands meeting
and basically tide of
how this could feed those business needs.
We made it as easy to connect the dots
as possible for the people who are the decision-makers.
It wasn't always sexy when we
presented it this way to other game teams they're like,
"I'm missing the emotional wow factor."
But when you're pitching to
people who are spending the money and taking the risks,
it works really, really well.
It's not necessarily just revenue
this is going to make you a
billionaire but it could be,
let's say, if there is a peripheral or platform that
a specific publisher is trying to
push and this is really going to showcase it.
Is there a new game art that we've really been
neglecting by focusing in the trimming
down our portfolio that this could
reach out and bring it to the company?
Can it drive engagement?
So, there's a lot of
different things that companies are trying to do,
and taking a few of them and
connecting how this potentially may
seem like a crazy idea you don't understand it but it has
these things that could connect to
it that really, really helps.
So, that's kind of
been the pragmatic approach to pitching
creative that I really take in from
my technical black brown and
brought to our creative team.
>> That's great. Cool.
So, if we switch gears a little bit to,
we've heard about creatively pitching,
but what about being on the end of where you're hearing
all these pitches and you're
the decision-maker with the money. Ada?
>> One of many. So, as Jenny mentioned
before I look after the business development,
Business for Microsoft and Gaming,
and the pitches that I see ranged from
little independent developers all the way
to studios at triple a publishers.
And primarily we're assessing them
evaluating for marketing partnerships,
development and sometimes publishing as well.
In a former role where I ran
the interactive group at Lucasfilm,
I was hearing pitches for IP licensing
for Star Wars which some of you may have heard of.
So, what I thought I could share with
you guys is just some insights from
the publisher perspective in terms of what we look
for and what happens before,
during and after the pitch.
So, one of the things I would say before doing the pitch,
is really to know who your audience is.
Sounds like a very basic advice,
but it's really true, because sometimes knowing
who you're going to walk into
the room with is really important.
Because you can have marketing and
publishing people in there, it can range,
you can may have other creative directors
and art directors and
business development people or
even consumer products people and
they're all looking for something different.
So, gathering that information up front and
knowing who your audiences and
what they're looking for is important.
So, it speaks to what Tatyana was saying is that,
sometimes like you, it's really important that you
pitch from the heart and who you are.
But you also want to make sure you
connect with who you're pitching too
and that really helps because those are
the people who will actually be making the decisions,
whether or not it's partnering
or funding you or publishing.
So, that's the prep work in
advance and then that helps at least you can
highlight certain things in
your pitch that will resonate with the audience and
it will also help you anticipate
questions that they may ask you during the pitch.
So, then some things during the pitch,
when you're actually sharing your pitch with them,
really it's about giving them
confidence in you and your game
and your ability to deliver
something on time and on budget,
it's probably a very common theme you
hear from the publisher perspective.
So, it's really what can you do during
that time to really tell them about yourself,
your passion, your team,
who makes up your team and it's
really helping the decision makers of,
honestly feel good about their decision.
So, they want to have trust in you,
if you have a track record even if you've never
built a game together as a team,
but individually you have done certain projects.
You want to talk about all of those,
so really provide that information.
And then, knowing what their goals are,
you can actually share what's
important and say like
in terms of your game you can highlight,
they might want to know
like if they're launching a new platform,
how you can be a technical showcase or
how you can be a great retail demo.
So, there are certain things
that you want to make sure you hit
on during the presentation.
I'd also say that
having a trailer or a prototype and actual working demo,
where people can actually
touch and feel the game is really
important if you're at that stage in your development.
Because sometimes talking about
it and showing pretty artwork
in a PowerPoint presentation only gets you so far.
Sometimes you can talk about the fun in the game,
but it's better for them to experience the fun.
And then I'd say after the pitch,
even when you're in the room,
is make sure that,
it's just as important for you to ask questions
as the publisher to ask questions of you,
so make sure you know what you're ask is.
Like are you asking for marketing,
featuring or dollars or budget?
So, knowing what your budget and what your timelines are,
are really important to share because,
well maybe they they're
looking overall at a portfolio and
they've got a specific release window
that they're trying to solve for,
they're looking to complement their portfolio.
I don't have this kind of game in my portfolio,
so I want to bring that into my portfolio.
So, those are the things that are ticking in
our minds as we listen to different pitches.
In addition to looking for something innovative,
something creative like we've never heard of before,
so those are some of the things that we're looking for.
So, after the pitch,
it's fair game to ask
what the decision-making processes is.
And then another thing is,
is to ask and see if
all the decision makers are actually in the room.
So, this is super basic,
but sometimes you have a few different stakeholders,
one person can't make the meeting.
And then what ends up happening is,
great can you share your pitch and we'll go
share it with whoever that person not in the room is.
And if it's at all possible you always
want to be the person to pitch
the game to any decision-makers.
Because you're the one who can best
represent your game and your creative.
Sometimes it's not always possible and they can,
some of the materials need to be shared around,
but that's also important
to know when you're in the room.
So, those are some tips and tricks
from the minds of publishers.
>> Awesome, great. Shenay.
>> All right,
I'm going to stand up actually because I want to stand
up and stretch my diaphragm
be the weird person here who's standing up.
All right, so, good afternoon everyone.
So, we just finished talking about how to give a pitch,
how to receive a pitch
and how it feels hearing the pitch.
So, I'm going to talk about what happens after the pitch.
So, first I want one asked everyone a question.
That question is, have you ever failed at anything?
If you've ever failed at anything, raise your hand.
Okay. Awesome, okay I'm in
the right place. So, I'm in good company.
So, I'm going to tell you
something real quick and it's something that
I wish that someone had told
me when I first started out pitching.
So, before I say it,
please know that I really mean this.
I hope you fail,
I hope you fail
and I know right know you folks are thinking,
oh, this is one of those, this is one of those talks.
Well, it kind of maybe it is.
But, honestly after being in the industry for so long,
I've come to a better understanding of what failure is.
Why failure is important and how failure
is not only contributes to success,
but it is undeniably critical to success.
So, let me tell you a little bit about me.
For 15 years in the industry,
I've had a lot of successes
and I've had a lot of failures.
I would say that failure is probably been
as much a constant in my career as success.
I've produce million sellers
and I've produced bargain bin darlings.
I've produced really big titles
and I've produce titles so obscure,
they don't even have a Metacritic score.
I learned that the best games don't always
sell and I learned that
sometimes the worst game sell a whole dog on lot.
But when it comes to pitching,
most pitches, this is what I learned,
most pitches end in failure.
And I learned that some, sure sometimes that failure is
just one person effing one particular thing up,
but pitches fail for a lot of reasons,
we talked about that a little bit earlier.
That the release timings wrong,
the audience is wrong, it's been
done before, there's the risk is too high.
It could be any of these,
it could be all of these, it could be none of these.
As publishers we hear a lot of pitches,
we hear a ton of pitches,
right now it's a pitching season.
So, I've already heard like three pitches today.
We often look at it like going to a restaurant just
ordering an item off a menu,
now just because I pick one item on the menu that
doesn't mean that everything
else on the menu is terrible.
That just means that I wanted the fish today,
which I know is a terrible analogy.
I'm comparing your beloved pitch
to the catch of the day, I know this,
but honestly what the point is that publishers
pass on pitches for as many reasons as there are pitches.
So, when I began pitching, I had
to become comfortable with the concept of failure,
because if you're not comfortable with it,
you can't really learn anything from it.
So, because I am comfortable with failure,
I'm going to share some of my failed pitches
with everyone here today,
and I would like a little bit of
audience participation if you guys don't mind,
I'm going to tell you the pitch
and if you think it was a failed pitch,
I want everyone to give me some jazz hands,
you guys know jazz hands right?
Jazz hands, awesome,
it's gonna make me feel like these were
successful pitches because people are going
to be applauding me.
All right, first one up.
I once pitched a game that was for an amazing IP,
that we didn't have the rights to,
what do you guys think? Was that a failed pitch?
Yeah, that one failed hard. All right, second one up.
I once pitched a party game to
a publisher that specialize in JRPGs?
You guy's think that one fail?
Also failed hard. All right.
Last one, I once pitch a game that was
an April Fool's joke that went a little bit too far?
What do you guys think? Failed game? Failed pitch?
We actually made that one. Dartboard 0 by the way.
So, every failure, with every failure I got to give
you a chance to learn something more.
I give you a chance to take a step back, regroup,
ask for help, ask for feedback and just improve.
And that doesn't mean I didn't fail
again, like that's not the point.
But failing in new ways is progress on its own.
What they don't tell you is there is
a lot of failure in success,
and there's also a lot of success in failure.
And why I'm on the topic as well,
I know that Ada mentioned this as well,
ask for feedback please,
ask for feedback for your pitches.
Like as publishers we have feedback,
trust me we want to give it to you.
But we all, sometimes we're not very
good at going beyond like a simple yay or nay,
so please ask for feedback from us and as
publishers we should try
and give feedback when we can too.
It helps you guys,
it helps us, it just makes
the process a lot less painful.
And so, to close this out,
I actually wants to give
you folks a list, because we love lists.
So, a list of four fun things
to do when your game pitch fails.
So number one, review your notes.
Feedback comes at all
different times during the pitch
it comes before the pitch,
it comes after the pitch but mostly,
it comes during the pitch.
I've have had folks asked me.
Should I take notes during my pitch?
You should absolutely take notes during your pitch.
I'm amazed at how few people take notes during the pitch.
Number two, ask questions,
Eddah was mentioning this as well,
ask questions if,
as a publisher I'm looking for great games but,
I'm also looking for great partners.
If I'm asking you questions
after your pitch it's because I'm interested in you,
I'm interested in your team and I'm interested in what
you guys just presented to us.
If you're not asked, if you're pitching to
me and you're not asking me questions,
you're missing an opportunity, like this is the start of
a relationship that could last
two or three years at a minimum.
Number three, don't debate
feedback I know I know this hurdle,
I heard some designers in
the room I know Gulie Huns is here.
Not all feedback is valid,
but all feedback is valuable and
the time you have with a publisher is also valuable.
So feedback is valuable,
so received the feedback but then it's your choice of
what to do with it because it's your pitch.
And then lastly number four is,
there's no such thing as a perfect pitch.
If you're ready to re-pitch your game after it's failed,
re-pitch your game to a publisher
that's great, that's fantastic.
But make sure that you review your notes
you respond to the feedback you got the
last time as well,
I'll make sure that your targeting
toward to your audience.
If your pitch has
the exact same problems this time that it had last time,
you can't expect a different result.
So last thing I've got here I'll close with,
you folks might have seen
this little poster going around recently.
It goes around on
Facebook and on social media every once in a while,
for those of you can't read it I
will read it for you right here it says,
"If at first you don't succeed,
try two more times so that
your failure is statistically significant."
But honestly that's what pitching is all about.
Failure is actually the most,
the best and most consistent teacher
you will ever have in your career.
Besides perhaps the ladies on the stage here so,
when I say I hope you fail, it so
that I hope you succeed. Thanks.
>> It's great, yes.
>> I just wanted to add to that, it is so true.
Because we actually once pitched,
our pitch and then the person's like,
"Well you guys have a long way to go. "
and we were like we actually got green-lit yesterday.
Yes it really is sometimes a bit of luck.
>> Yes absolutely. Like those all those pitches
that I mentioned are all absolutely real pitches.
I know some folks joke, sort of laughed when I said,
"Oh I pitch the game for a great IP
that we don't have the rights to."
That is a common thing that we get.
Folks will say, "I've got a great idea
for a Spider Man game. "
and it's like "oh".
>> That's exactly what I did,
like my very first pitch was that.
It was like, "This guy's awesome."
There's "Why are you telling it?"
>> And it winds up being a situation
where it is like, "That's an amazing game.
Do you do you need help?
Like, do you have that IP?"
"Oh no, we don't." "Can you help us
negotiate with Marvel or Sony
or-" Lucas felt like wherever
and that's a difficult conversation to have.
>> So, couple of questions just to build on this.
I've heard out of a few of you guys
talking about kind of finding that right partner.
So what are some of the ways that you think
about it in terms of who
is the right partner to pitch to?
Like do you have kind of
criteria that you think about ahead of time?
Or what advice would you
have for those in the audience to think about that?
>> As a small game developer,
like if I'm going to pitch to Microsoft,
I have to understand that everyone
in line ahead of me is probably
looking for much larger budgets
to make a much larger impact for
their bottom line than I am.
And also, probably way more famous,
or has made things that have sold a lot more.
Because you're going to assume that you're somewhere in
the stack and then it's a good stack to be in but,
you have to understand where you are in it I think.
And not have unrealistic expectations so like,
when I have conversations with people,
one of the first things I try to do is
say like, "All right well so,
we typically operate with budgets of say
$300,000 to $3,000,000 but we're
thinking of moving to
10 to 20 for this next title so that we can
have this kind of an impact on
the audience that we've already built
up with these smaller titles."
I let them know that I
know I'm not selling games like hotcakes right now.
But that phenomena is
a strong brand in a space that is growing,
and will be increasingly diverse,
unlike the reason I started building
the company was to build the brand to make
the $20,000,000 game that comes out in
2020 and crushes it and you should have half the money.
Like that's the pitch,
is that I'm already working my way up the chain
so they can be in that position
but I know that I'm not there.
So I think understanding that your partner probably has
other partnerships that are more
valuable right now but you want to become one of those.
And really owning that in the conversation,
means it's very authentic and you don't come off
sounding like yeah just give me 50,000,000 bucks.
I'm worth it, treat myself with your money,
like that's not an attractive way to pitch so,
I think it's for me as
a small developer I think
knowing that I'm tiny is important.
And honestly working at
EA in early in my career really helped because,
I've sat in those meetings like,
I've heard pitches and
I've been an External producer on people that are
not on budget and not on
time and I know what those meetings look like.
And the other thing is is that I think if you
are used to being through the mill a little bit.
You realize that the people that are
inside the organization that are funding your game,
and that are dealing with you on a day to day basis.
Like the kinds of questions you
can ask them like, who's going to be in the room?
That sort of stuff, when you're talking to
the person who's at the lowest level of contact.
They're like sandwiched between
all the developers that are so thirsty
for money and everybody
above them that has so much email and so little time.
So they're doing God's work,
really nice people and they
will give you as much information as
they can but sometimes they don't know.
Like I've had people say to me,
"I tried to book that meeting and
I'm not sure that so-and-so is going to be
there and I don't want to waste
your time but we might have to take the pitch."
And that's when you make your call.
"All right well I trust you,
you've been straight with me so
far and you've answered most of
my email which is amazing
because I know you have less time than I do.
So let's go for it and then if
so-and-so is not in the room then
you can show them the pitch."
It's not ideal but you learn to accept
that sometimes that person in the little wafer
between the money and
the needy is not
going to be able to have perfect information,
a lot of developers complain about people that are
endeavoral and I think it's
just silly because those people,
they love games they want to make games.
But they're helping you get your game funded,
and that's like such an act of sacrifice and
kindness that you should really appreciate it.
>> Coming from a place where I
didn't really have a choice we ultimately pitch to,
it was within our Org it was within EA.
One thing that I feel we did a
really smart that's analogous to that is,
early on we network within our company and we
identified some champions who had
same long-term goals as we did.
And wanting to push EA
new directions and wanted to go after some of
these new players or
attempting to break ground on innovative business models.
And we pitched to them first
and they gave us feedback first,
they were with us throughout the journey,
they were almost like our personal Board of Directors.
And they also made sure that people kinda
started hearing about us
before we we were even in the room.
So if you were like within
a publisher working internally,
that is a good way to start building
momentum around your idea before the pitch meeting.
>> Eddah did you want to say?
>> Yeah so I was going to say that yes that sometimes.
Sorry, do your homework
before you decide who to pitch to.
Because sometimes as Robin was saying,
yes publishers are looking for a big budget titles,
but other times they also have programs that cater to
the type of game and budgets that you're looking for.
So at Microsoft it might be the idea of Xbox program.
There are like EA originals
and Take Two of the smaller [inaudible].
So a lot of publishers now are
expanding their breadth of
titles that they're looking to get,
and so finding that right contact and
right group to actually talk to can be a good fit?
>> Yeah. And to add onto that, that's absolutely true.
I gave the example during my talk
of pitching a party game to a JRPG publisher,
that was a terrible idea.
I didn't do my research,
I didn't do my homework at that time,
I was really young in my career.
But yeah, doing your research
also means that when you get to the point
where you really see that the conversation is proceeding,
you can ask good questions.
If you're walking into a room and you
don't know who you're talking to,
and you don't know anything,
even the publicly available information,
then it makes me think, "Okay well."
Like we said, we take a lot of pitches every single day,
every single week especially
during this time of the year.
We want to make sure that our time is used wisely,
we want to make sure that your time is used wisely.
So, make sure that you do that research.
That's going to be really
critical towards making sure that
the conversation is as
productive as possible and we don't wind up having to,
a lot of pitches ended like,
"Oh sorry we didn't think about that.
Can we get that to you again later?"
Well, you just lost an opportunity, right?
We're face to face right now.
Being face to face and being
able to present your game idea,
is the best way to be able to present your game idea.
Doing it over email, doing it over the phone,
these are all things you can do,
but they're not as
impactful for these creative endeavors.
>> So, to follow on that,
is there a minimum bar that you guys would say
is the bar for when your pitch is ready to be pitched?
And how do you think about it in those terms?
Because sometimes we have a problem where
we think everything's got to be perfect,
before we share an idea.
>> Yeah, I was thinking it really depends.
I've had very successful pitches over dinner,
where I'm just like, "I was thinking of this thing.
And I don't know,
you said you're interested in this thing,
so let's just talk about it."
And they're like, "That sounds awesome."
Okay. That wasn't prepared really to pitch it,
but I had been thinking about it in
the back of my mind for a while.
Whereas, in other cases I've worked forever and
ever on something with
someone else and workshop the shit out of it,
and had to go through the meeting and get green-lit and
then get killed by
someone above the person in the organization,
because they didn't know their audience.
And so, I worked so hard on
that pitch and made it perfect
and then the person above me,
they just didn't do their homework,
or they were busy, or like in one case
someone new got hired in the organization,
and just said note everything
that had been said yes to two weeks ago.
It's very difficult when you've been hiring up,
because you were told yes they were works in process,
and suddenly it goes away,
but the thing to remember is that it
couldn't have been more perfect in that situation, right?
I did the best that I could, and so did they.
So we just moved on from it,
and actually that's come back
around and now it's greenlit,
five years later. Business needs change.
That's exactly the same stuff.
We didn't think we wanted them to buy this stuff,
but apparently if they don't buy it,
no one else does either.
Whoops.
That's the whole story of VR right now.
And so, things that I have been saying for years,
suddenly they are valuable,
whereas before they were not.
And that was just a lack of data,
no one knew it was a different time.
>> I just want to elaborate on something Tatyana was
saying about soft pitching,
getting internal stakeholders to buy in on something.
And then sometimes, if you meet
somebody from a company, you might just say, "Hey,
I've got an idea and here's how far along it is,
or it's in my head."
So, and I think you can get
some early feedback before you
actually do maybe a more formal or an official pitch,
but really getting people to
buy in and someone will like, "Great.
You should come in, you should
come pitch that to our team."
So, even getting an invitation knows,
and then you can help get the materials
prepared and whatever those expectations are.
But, you're right, you can be
at all different stages and a pitch can happen anytime.
And what Robin was saying is,
sometimes it's the right time
depending on who your audience is.
Sometimes they just have an idea and sometimes you've got
the whole working bill that
you are ready for them to play.
>> Yeah. Also adding onto that
and jumping on to something Tatyana mentioned earlier.
You mentioned that when you first were doing pitches,
you did like 1,000 pitches,
I don't know if that was an accurate number.
But a large number of pitches, right?
And there was some success, and there was some failure,
and a lot of the failure
helped teach you what to look out for,
what success could look like.
I think a lot of times,
especially as people from under-represented groups,
as women, as people of color,
folks from any under-represented groups
and marginalized group within this industry,
we talk ourselves out of it a lot.
I can tell you that in general,
I'm going to throw a random number out here,
but it's probably accurate.
I'd say 97 percent of pitches we get are from white men.
We don't get women pitching to us,
we don't get people of color pitching to us.
And that's a problem that we need to
understand and we need to solve, right?
I look at it as not, I
don't like talking on things like competence gap,
things like that because I don't
subscribe to that or anything.
But we think we have
some good conversations about, why that is?
We talk ourselves out of pitching a lot of times because
we think that it has to be a perfect pitch.
We think that it has to be
this watertight thing that no one
can ever question the very first time we do it,
because we don't ever consider
that failure is even part of the process.
I've been through, it was really
interesting to hear Robin's description of,
there are lots of different ways that you pitch, right?
The pitch over dinner, we just had
pitch over lunch a second here, right?
That's absolutely a type of pitch.
There's the types of pitches we take at GDC,
that tend to be a little bit more relaxed,
a little bit more time.
And then there's the types of pitches we take at E3,
which is like 30-minute slots for 10 hours straight.
And you have 30 minutes to do your pitch.
That is a very different audience,
it's a very different stress level,
it's a very different everything,
for that audience, for that space.
And I've had folks who've walked into
that 30-minute meeting at E3,
and just had a sheet of paper and
with a martini and said,
"Hey, I got some ideas.
What do you think about this versus this?"
What? "Oh, you don't like that one.
What about this meets this?"
So, I mention that to say we think the bar for pitching,
as marginalized folks, we think the bar for
pitching is all the way up here.
And that's why we often talk
ourselves out of doing it because we say,
I have to have answered every question,
know every single thing,
and before I walk into a room with anyone.
And that's not to say that the bar should be down here,
because that's also way too low.
But understanding what's reasonable,
what type of pitches,
how many times you have to do
a pitch in order to get comfortable with it.
And we're ready to find what success looks like.
That's really what it's about.
>> [inaudible] to say that you can
actually practice with your friends.
I used to fake pitch because I also had nerves,
ideas that I made up that were totally absurd.
Sometimes movies, but a lot of times they were games.
When I was at EA, I always used to do this pitch for
lap dance hero and pole dance revolution.
>> I'm not sure where this is going.
>> So, lap dance hero, you get two pair of
programmable dance pads on the top on one,
and pads on the bottom on the other,
and you just got to do Simon says.
You do it as a joke,
because you're just like,
isn't that, but seriously why doesn't
EA make games that actually appeal adults.
Why don't we ever have games with sex in them?
Is it just because we get sued?
Don't you think that's, look at Game of Thrones.
And you start having these conversations
and you get used to
asking the hard questions about
something that you have no intention of building.
I'm never going to build pole dance hero,
I'm not going to do it.
But, as you get used to practicing,
sometimes joking with friends at the business
over drinks or whatever, in the long run,
you do get there's something about that weird,
you just get over the fear of having
to answer or ask a hard question,
and you can do it in a totally not serious way.
It doesn't have to be the world's best,
but it can literally be,
those are two of the world's worst ideas.
They're not good ideas.
>> So thinking of hard questions,
why don't we open it up,
we have a few minutes left,
why don't we open it up for a couple of questions?
Anyone from the audience?
Don't be scared. This is all about
pitching your question to these amazing women.
>> Anyone have any games to pitch?
>> All right, here.
>> Can you show an example of what [inaudible] would look like?
>> That's tough.
>> So, there is
different ways to do depending on the game.
So, a lot of story-based or story writing games
tend to really do world-building
or lean into the characters,
because that's central to the game.
Things that lean very heavily into the mechanics,
you want to highlight those within your pitch.
So, like figure out what your game is,
how its strength will be evaluated, and from there,
what is the best way to tell your whole message
from the "Who we are as a studio" to
"Why we're making this game," to
the business end of how does it fit within the portfolio.
So, what feels the most
natural to have that cohesive message
and I will just put
all the thoughts down on paper and play around with it.
You don't need to necessarily have the whole narrative,
and then fill in the content.
Just put everything you want to say,
and then take things out,
put things and rearrange things.
Once you get to a part where your ideas on paper,
the actual structure becomes easier to manage,
and do a bit of soft pitching
where it's different from when
you're looking at something and
flipping through it to when you
actually have to talk about it.
For example, we had these awesome audio transition,
between some of the slides,
and when you actually talk to them,
all the sudden they interrupt
you talking and it's super awkward.
You're like, and this. It was
super cool when we were flipping through them.
Not super cool to talk to.
So, just do it
a little bit of both and play around with it.
>> How about another question?
>> Yeah.
>> Hello, hi.
When you're pitching,
based on your experience, do you think,
are they more interested in the story
versus the character versus the atmosphere?
>> I think that also just really
depends on the game, right?
>> We talked a little bit about like the,
where you're pitching, when you're pitching,
who you're pitching to, the audience is really critical.
I'm a Senior Producer, my boss,
Executive Producer, we've been involved in
the creative side of things
and we're currently producers.
We are highly interested in the production side.
One of the things that,
one of those common errors I see,
things that people don't do when they
do their pitches is they give you,
that gets you interested,
they have this hook, you're like,
"Oh man, this is awesome, cool, how much does it cost?"
"Oh, we really haven't thought about that yet."
"Do you have a team?" "Well, we we're looking.
We're thinking about that," and like
six months later, right?
So, when you're pitching,
there's a whole process for it.
When we take in pitches, we usually ask
ourselves two questions, like we hear a pitch.
Should this game be made? Is this team
the team that can make this game?
If the answer to both those questions is not yes,
then we're done at that point.
So, to go back
and to answer your question is a little bit,
and they both overlap,
the creative side of it
absolutely know who your audiences for it.
We get pitches oftentimes where someone is really excited
about the underlying stats back end,
and they want to talk to you about that for 15 minutes,
and that's super interesting.
It's usually not the right place.
It's not the best way to use your time at that point.
But then, also making sure that you
do have that production sides,
even if it's just a high level thing of like,
"Hey, here's how long we think it's going to take."
We obviously know that this is a process.
Game development, it's an art and a science.
>> Yeah, I end every pitch with a headcount plan,
with a rough person per month estimate, for everybody.
So, like let's just say it's 20k per
person per month because you learn
separatists gone, rent is expensive,
and you're recruiting against people
that are getting recruited into jobs that
are paid half a million dollars a year
to mostly ride bikes and eat ice cream.
You got to be competitive.
So, you say okay, this is going to
be 20 people on this game,
it's going to be two years long.
They're going to cost half a million dollars a person.
So, this is how many millions of
dollars a game's going to cost.
Then, we're going to put
in three million dollars in marketing.
On our side, we're going to put in this kind of
stuff to make sure that people
don't quit in the middle of the project.
We're going to do this, and this,
and that raises the budget to 17 million bucks.
And you can take five off or add five to it,
and then you can extend
the schedule this way or that way.
So, I maybe run two or three different tabs,
with different budgets, a high, low,
and the kind of like what I actually like,
and then I say, "If you
really think this is should be made,
then let's work on the numbers that makes sense for you,
based on what you think the market size will be."
And I always ask them,
"How will you help me make this game where successful?
Why should I bake it with you?"
Because you might think, well,
any opportunity is a good opportunity,
but you know it's kind of like
any dates and on a great day.
You could be at home watching Game of Thrones
by yourself, having an ice cream,
instead of being bored
by someone who just doesn't shut up,
so not every opportunity is an opportunity.
Sometimes an opportunity is
a waste of your time, and I think that,
when I said it's about you and your goals,
it's like you've got to value your time
and know that you're worth it.
If somebody doesn't want to work with you
because of some small dumb thing
you said in a meeting or some silly thing in the pitch,
then they're probably not going to be any good partner.
>> Yeah, you probably
don't want to work with them anymore.
>> Yeah, they would just be nitpicking you.
>> Consider what is
the strongest part that you have developed.
If it's a story game,
and you guys are great at character,
really lean into that.
You're going to shine where your strongest,
even if not everything is in place.
If it's the world that's been
created and not the characters, lean into that.
So, the thing that you're most comfortable,
like that is like in your T-shaped team,
the T, lean into that.
>> One last note for when you're preparing your pitch,
prepare to be interrupted.
There's going to be lots, and lots,
and lots of questions.
You're going to have this beautiful pitch
that you spent months figuring out,
and it works perfectly,
and then somebody's going to ask a question that
throws complete turmoil into it.
Three slides in and say,
"Please, can you you guys skip all that stuff.
I know that.
Can you just jump to the end, so we can talk about
money?" Be prepared for that.
Be prepared for those kinds of eventualities.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, by the way.
Just because that's just the way
that a lot of different teams work.
>> And just sorry, one final note on that.
It's just to make sure,
sorry now I'm interrupting,
is then make sure
you emphasize the most important thing, upfront.
Don't save the best for last.
>> Yes.
>> Because you may never get there.
>> Speaking of last,
I hate to break, but
Angela's going to give us the evil eye here.
All of these women are open,
I think they have time a little bit after this,
so if you have more questions for them,
please don't hesitate to reach
out and don't forget to also stop
by and talk with Katie and Nate
too if you have ideas or you just want to learn more.
Thank you guys.
>> Thank you.
For more infomation >> Top game BAU CUA để chơi Bầu Cua Bịp - Quy luật phần mềm bản hack Bau Cua 2018 - Duration: 5:15. 
For more infomation >> KOŞ DİNO KOŞ ANDROİD OYUNU , RUN DINO RUN ANDROID GAME,NO INTERNET GAME - Duration: 8:47. 
For more infomation >> Variety Vlog April '18 - 4 new game impressions! - Duration: 32:47. 
For more infomation >> Komets best Toledo 3-1 in game four of Central Division Finals on 5/4/18 - Duration: 3:19. 
For more infomation >> [K-GAME] GUESS THE SONG IN 5 SECONDS (ENG/PT) - Duration: 7:02. 
For more infomation >> Penguins Getting Ready For Game 5 Against Caps After Knotting Series - Duration: 1:27. 
For more infomation >> Hướng dẫn mua mặt nạ game Ro-Ghoul Roblox - Duration: 6:31. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét