Pitch Perfect

Digital Development Management helps established development studios get better deals with some of the leading publishers in the games industry, by working alongside them to create the perfect pitch for selling a development project.

Current European studios under DDM's wing include Illusion Softworks, working on Mafia 2 for Take-Two and an unannounced title for D3 Publisher, Black Hole Entertainment, currently working on Warhammer: Mark of Chaos for Namco Bandai, and BugBear, developers of the FlatOut racing franchise.

At last month's GDC Lyon, president and founder Jeff Hilbert gave advice to developers on how to pitch a game project to a leading publisher, pointing out the common pitfalls, challenges and opportunities that arise during what can be the make or break situation in any development process. GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Hilbert following the session to hear more tips on delivering the perfect pitch...

Jeff Hilbert: One of the big things that happens now with publishers is that three years ago if I had a two hour meeting I'd spend an hour and a half talking about technology, 20 minutes about game design and ten minutes about structure and budget. Now we spend ten to 20 minutes on technology, ten minutes on game design and we'll spend an hour on how the company is structured. It's really a big shift. The publisher attitude is that if the company is structured correctly and passionate about the game, then they can help out with the tech.

It started happening about a year ago, but in the last six months, publishers haven't shown a lot of interest in a studio's technology any more.

Not necessarily, but if a studio isn't up to speed, the publisher can help them. The problem isn't the technology, but who can manage sixty staff who are passionate about making good games and execute that successfully. Don't get me wrong, tech is still a risk, and if a developer is doing a game with a high technology risk, publishers will acknowledge that they are further ahead than themselves and not be able to offer much help.

Yes. They all know that they need to be professional in their pitch, but if they're an artist driven company they go to pitch with all this concept art but they won't bring everything else. Engineering driven studios go in with their technology at the front. What we represent is obvious — no kidding — but what studios don't look after is the fundamental structure. We break it down. It's not a menu where you choose to take in your best elements, you need to cover all aspects of your business. You can have awesome art and story but how are you going to make the game, what's your execution?

The biggest mistake developers make is that no matter who they meet with, they won't meet 90 per cent of the decision makers so the pitch has to survive without them there. If a developer goes in to a pitch and they just want to pitch their game correctly — they have to understand that the key decision makers aren't going to be there. They are pitching to a person that the publisher respects and he knows a winner when he sees it. What they leave behind has to pitch the game without them. That's the easiest way to think it through. Go to someone who's not that familiar with the industry and give them your pitch and ask them if they understand what your game is. That's the fundamental mistake that a developer constantly makes — if I'm not there talking it through, will the pitch survive?

The other big mistake is that they don't do a comparative analysis with the market. They'll go in to a pitch and ask for 15 million euros to make a game in a genre where nothing has sold three million units. How can you expect to get 15 million euros when that genre doesn't generate enough unit sales to cover the costs?

That's a trend that's come about in the past two years. We've been pitching it for years because a port of a game will lose so much in translation through other producers and developers. Publishers are trying to control the process and there's too much interference and filtering. Let one developer talk to the other developer directly. Engineers need to talk to engineers, let's not go through a long-winded process. Screw the producers, the engineers need to speak to each other.

People have started realising how ridiculous this whole little circle is, so now a developer can tell the publisher they can't do everything but they want to work with this other developer to get the job done. It's so much easier for a big development studio to say to the publisher that they can handle four skus, and they have good relationships with another developer who they trust to do the other three. And the publisher understands that if developers are friends then they are going to want to help each other. This is happening more and more. And the message from publishers is this: make it easy for us to sign a deal with you. If you come forward with a full solution, a publisher is going to be more inclined to accept that.

This kind of process is great news for start-up developers. Development is expensive so a publisher will want multiple skus to help pay for the costs. So if they want a PC version they'll go to a PC shop with the Xbox 360 code. If they are giving them the code, they are also going to need the development units, so they'll also need to be licensed for Xbox 360. So a publisher is helping a small studio get licensed and it really helps to open doors for your smaller studio.

As a small developer, other developers will help you. If you want to get in with a publisher, check out the back of a game box, see who made the game and call them up, see if you can help them out. Once a publisher trusts a developer they will let them do co-development projects. Publishers want to work with start-ups but they don't have the bandwidth to manage them. If developer has the bandwidth to manage them and they already trust the developer then it can be an awesome relationship.

Sports, because the market is pretty much sewn up. If Electronic Arts or Sony first-party doesn't do the deal with you, forget it. If it's a new genre and that genre takes off, a company like EA will do it internally themselves. Look at something like the Knockout Kings/Fight Night franchise. They did the first one externally and they planned on doing the sequel externally but the game went through the roof so EA bought it in-house. And I'd be pretty wary of things like city building games, they are dying. Real-time strategy is a tough genre. And then there's role-playing games. It's such a tough genre and everybody would like to give it a shot but it's too expensive and has incredibly long development times.

No matter who you are — you can be the best development studio in the world — you're going to have a weakness. If you measure a company by the ten key skills they have, at least one of those is going to be a weakness. Your weakest skill may be better than any other developer in the world but it's still your flaw. So the easiest thing to do is to show where you are solid but also show what you're working on to improve. The publisher knows you're going to have a weakness so what you don't want to do is go down a pitch where it comes close to being greenlit but it becomes apparent that you don't have a strong history in animation because your previous games haven't been animation heavy, for example.

If a publisher really wants to work with you and at the very first meeting you can admit to a risk, they'll know a great outsourcing solution. Or they'll have a better rate with head-hunters so they can help you hire an animation specialist. If they want to do your project they are not going to let a chink in your armour stand in the way. The key point is that you identify it yourself, explain it, and they will help you. Give them a solution even if it's just a plan to solve a problem.