Pitching your sport to buyers and publishers is a make or break second for a lot of groups, and constructing the enterprise know-how you could finesse a pitch isn’t straightforward for a lot of new to the method. Aiming to assist sport makers develop their enterprise acumen and beef up their pitching abilities, Recreation Developer sat down with longtime funding advisor and GDC Pitch host Jason Della Rocca for a chat on precisely what devs have to know to efficiently get their sport in entrance of buyers.
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“I’ve been within the sport trade for 30 years now, and I might say the majority of that has actually been round developer success: serving to builders—significantly indies and startups—to reach the sport trade, and an enormous a part of that’s pondering via the enterprise aspect of issues,” says Della Rocca.
“Most sport builders come to the craft from a place of ardour and creativity; they wish to construct worlds and create experiences. They’re programmers and artists, designers and musicians, writers and all of those varieties of wonderful artistic roles. However not often have they got the enterprise acumen to essentially perceive funding, pitching, advertising and marketing, and all of this stuff.”
“However you weren’t birthed into the world with a comprehension of C++ and a keyboard in your hand. These are all realized abilities. The excellent news is that the enterprise and advertising and marketing stuff like pitching are all realized abilities. You’ll be able to study this and get good at it.”
First steps for creating your pitch
“It’s a must to actually perceive what you [are] really attempting to realize,” says Della Rocca. “Once I’m working with startup studios, there’s some sense that they’re constructing a enterprise and attempting to make a profession of it and generate some income.”
“Publishers, buyers, platforms… They’re not there to fund your pastime. They’re in enterprise they usually wish to become profitable too,” says Della Rocca. “If [your answer is] ‘I’m constructing a sport that I believe has an opportunity to achieve success’ or ‘I’m attempting to construct a studio and generate income’, then you could discover companions to make {that a} actuality.”
After you realize who you’re and what your definition of success is, the primary space you’ll wish to give attention to is product design.
“Plenty of builders assume that making a pitch deck is the objective, however there’s an entire bunch of stuff that occurs earlier than that, particularly across the product and product technique. What sport are you constructing? Is it viable?”
“The entire thing round product design is definitely, in some ways, an important enterprise determination you’ll make,” says Della Rocca. He provides an instance via a hypothetical new studio that units out to make a sport in a style that’s oversaturated like ‘puzzle platformers’.
“There’s one which does effectively each 5 years or so, however it’s not a wholesome style. So if I’m saying my definition of success is to pay my workforce, be worthwhile, and keep alive as a enterprise, you’ve made the preliminary improper enterprise determination. You’ll be taking part in on tremendous laborious mode as a result of your likelihood of attaining your definition of success with puzzle platformers is sort of nil.”
4 suggestions for a profitable pitch
Do Your Homework
Evaluation and analysis are a number of the most necessary issues you are able to do to set your self up for a profitable pitch. Understanding what challenge to pitch depends on market evaluation and aggressive evaluation, which helps to establish what varieties of video games are viable and which aren’t. Della Rocca stresses that this analysis is vital to all the pitching course of: “Why am I going to present you cash to make one thing everybody is aware of will not be going to promote?”
“Should you’re going to show to individuals and say ‘give me cash’, they’re anticipating to become profitable in return. So if you happen to selected a style and didn’t do the market analysis, it’s a [non-starter]. Regardless of how slick your slides in your pitch deck are, the reply will at all times be no.”
When you’re beginning to e book conferences, doing all your homework turns into ensuring that you’ve every little thing you want available and prepared for that pitch. Have you ever cleaned up the social media pages for you, your sport, and your studio? Do you’ve got a second particular person coming to the assembly with you as a devoted word taker? Should you’re assembly in-person, do you’ve got the information in your construct, trailer, and pitch saved on an area gadget?
Nurture & present proof of participant curiosity
“An increasing number of, the individuals with cash need two issues: They need to have the ability to play one thing they usually wish to see some proof of participant curiosity,” stresses Della Rocca. “Your construct may very well be a proof of idea, a prototype, a vertical slice, a demo, or something. The necessary half is that buyers are capable of play it and see [what makes your game stand out].”
“It’s a must to ask your self ‘is my construct playable?’ Sufficient the place I can hand it over to somebody they usually perceive what the gameplay loop is, what the hook is, and that sort of stuff? Do I’ve a strong construct and do I’ve some sign from {the marketplace} saying that gamers need it?’”
That second bit of data increasingly buyers are requesting, participant curiosity, is your approach of proving there’s an viewers in your sport that’s already considerably engaged. That proof might come within the type of trailer views, Discord members, e-newsletter subscriptions, wishlists, viral tiktok posts, likes, feedback, shares, and so forth.
“Should you stroll in and also you’re like ‘right here’s the construct, we’re already at 50,000 wishlists, and we’re working a playtest’, then impulsively the individuals with cash perk up and the chance is rather more actual,” says Della Rocca. Should you’re a developer and it’s time to pitch, you must ask your self in case your construct is playable and funky sufficient to be performed.
Don’t simply current your sport
Della Rocca stresses that pitching your sport is extra than simply ‘pitching your sport’. You’ll be able to land the pitch assembly of your desires and spend all the time speaking concerning the sport—its gameplay, the techniques, the mechanics, its artwork, the pipeline, the characters—however when all is claimed and executed, the publishers thanks and run to their subsequent assembly.
This strategy makes two key errors: it focuses on the sport content material over the sport’s enterprise case, and it makes use of all the assembly time to current the sport supplies.
“You wish to embody a number of the enterprise and manufacturing components,” says Della Rocca. “So here is the sport, that is the timeline, that is the funds. Here is the workforce that is making it, here is the market evaluation and gross sales projections.”
“The opposite mistake is taking over the entire time. Let’s say you’ve got a 30 minute pitch assembly. The precise pitch itself needs to be like 5 – 6 minutes. The remainder of the time is small discuss; you’re attending to know one another, you’re asking them questions.”
He says that it’s vital to not go away that 30 minute appointment with out deciding on the following step and motion objects out of your pitch assembly. These can vary from sending a construct after the assembly to organising a follow-up name, however regardless “you shouldn’t go away that pitch assembly with out having a transparent sense of what occurs subsequent.
Take part in GDC Pitch!
Discover and reap the benefits of the sources out within the wild that may assist you to sharpen your pitching abilities. For these headed to the GDC Pageant of Gaming, taking part in applications like GDC Pitch can present a useful alternative to get suggestions in your challenge and whole pitching strategy with out the added stress of your studio’s monetary future hanging within the steadiness.
GDC Pitch is a pitching competitors held dwell at GDC that provides builders an opportunity to pitch to a panel of judges from the investing and publishing world and get pre-pitch teaching in addition to speedy suggestions on how they will sharpen their presentation and supplies. This 12 months’s panel consists of judges from Innersloth, Uncooked Fury, Kowloon Nights, Hooded Horse, Finji, MIX, and Humble.
Della Rocca, himself the longtime host of GDC Pitch, says that the teaching members obtain plus the added observe go a protracted method to make builders really feel extra assured and ready for the actual deal. He goes on to say that, even past the teaching and judging course of, simply getting your sport pitch in entrance of a panel of buyers—plus the 300-odd builders, publishers, and buyers watching from the viewers—can show a worthwhile expertise inside itself. Della Rocca goes so far as to say that it’s not completely extraordinary for conversations to start out proper after leaving the GDC Pitch stage.
GDC Pitch is held on March 19 and March 20 on the GDC Pageant of Gaming in San Francisco, CA. These occupied with taking part within the 2026 version of the competitors can enroll proper right here. Submissions shut February 6.
This text was written in partnership with GDC Pageant of Gaming. Recreation Developer and GDC are sibling organizations underneath guardian firm Informa.
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