Category: business

I publish games by other indies (redshirt and big pharma so far, with an investment in duskers), and am always open to looking at proposals. I turn down more than I fund. Some pitches are awesome, some are dreadful. Here are some tips, whether you are pitching to me, or someone else.

Reality check:

Before you write a single word of a pitch, step back and remember what you are asking. Your whole pitch is basically ‘Will you take a $50-200,000 bet on me making a profitable indie game?’ This is a tough ask, a VERY tough ask. Unless you have, in your direct personal experience taken a bet of that magnitude where there is a chance you will lose every single penny of it, then you don’t really appreciate what you are asking. No investor *has* to invest their money. They can leave it in a bank earning nothing, but staying safe. They can stick it on the stock market and hope to make a relatively safe return. They can spread it across business crowd sourcing and probably make a safe 5%. Or they can gamble the whole lot on your game design… The reason they will choose the game is that sometimes (rarely), it’s a big big win.

What To Do:

• Include a brief bio, so we know who you are and what you did. Even if you are just 18 years old and always been in school, still say it, tell us what you studied in this case, and how you did.
• Get straight to the point with a very short elevator pitch description of your game. Don’t expect us to get to page eight to find out its a mobile platformer.
• Include figures. They will be wrong, but we need to know you have thought about them. Be able to back them up to the best of your ability.
• Include timescales, broken down into milestones. We want to know this is not an open ended thing.
• Explain why you need the VC. Is it the money? or the expertise? If it’s just money, why haven’t you borrowed it from family, or a bank? or re-mortgaged your house? There are justifications for all of these, but we want to know yours.
• Include flavor text. Games that are simply a list of bullet point features with no soul generally tank. We want to know the passion, the feelings and emotions you will put into this game. Concept art also helps. Even art from other games, movies, inspirations etc is fine, if it helps to conveys your vision.
• Include an allowance for marketing the game in the budget.
• Include any evidence that you can finish a project this big. Even if its not a game, if you wrote some software that manages a tractor factory, thats really worth knowing. Seriously.
• Include allowances for stuff like software licenses and subscription stuff.

What Not To Do:

• Don’t include a lot of crap about the size of the games industry, with huge numbers in, as some sort of ‘intro’. If I’m an investor in the games industry, I know this stuff anyway so you are boring me, and telling me what activisions profits were last year has fuck-all relevance to your indie game.
• Make financial errors in any calculation, anywhere in your pitch
• Compare yourself in any way to minecraft. It’s an outlier.
• Pitch a three year project based on you sleeping in a tent eating noodles. This is not sustainable, and we can smell the desperation.
• Pitch a three year game where you earn $80,000 a year salary because that’s ‘the going rate’. Thats the going rate for a job, not a partnership where you own a huge royalty stream at the end of it.
• Wrap up the whole pitch in a single page. If you are serious about your project, then editing your enthusiasm down to a few pages will be hard.

What the investor/publisher will do:

We will tell you if your game is doomed from the start (our best guess, we can be wrong) due to business / financial choices. We will tell you how we think you can fix that. Don’t think that all of your pitch has to be the absolute right choices, there just has to be some spark there, combined with reliability and technical ability. If you pitch a mobile game aimed at kids, and we think the game design and art is fantastic but it would work better as a pc game aimed at the 30+ market, thats still something that can be funded. Investors are generally looking for people, more than ideas. We assume you are flexible.

So how to pitch?

You do *not* need friends in the industry (although tbh it does help). What you need is just email. You don’t need a glossy printed brochure about your game, unless your plan is to physically hand it to someone like me at a conference. (Thats totally acceptable btw). Nobody cares if your pitch is a slide ‘deck’ or a word document, or a PDF or whatever. Contrary to what some people think, it is totally fine to just email investors out of the blue to pitch your project. If I’m honest, you probably do slightly better to introduce yourself in person, because then an immediate two-way discussion takes place, but if you email me a decent pitch I will definitely read it. My email address is cliff AT positech dot co dot uk. I only invest in PC games. Strategy preferred, but not essential. I don’t do Free to play games. I’ll be at rezzed in London in March 2015 and on a panel at GDC 2015 too if you want to elevator pitch to me.

Not a trendy POV, especially for the younger net-savvy crowd. After-all, what kind of dumbass doesn’t have ad-block installed right? That will ‘stick it to the man’, and make your life easier right? Well frankly…some sites may as well have a huge banner that says ‘INSTALL ADBLOCK’, because they have flashing strobing monstrosities designed by people who have no idea how proper 21st century ads actually work but hey…don’t tarnish all ads with the same brush.

I’d suggest that as a consumer, you should LOVE advertising. Here is why. Like Democracy, advertising is a shit system, but its better than all the alternatives. There is basically a dilemma for anyone who makes a product, and that is ‘how do I get people to hear about my product’. The most honest answer to the question is that you set aside part of your budget to rent space where people will look, and use that space to inform people that your product exists. This is, of course, simple advertising. It works. It’s also fair. People would say it is biased towards those with money, but that money is simply an expression of faith in the product. Where some people have money, others have time. Time basically is money.

If you block all ads, or worse still, tar product-makers who advertise as being ‘evil’ or ‘corporate’ or, to quote some reddit replies to my ads ‘shilling scum’ (yup, under a ‘promoted link’, clearly paid for openly and proudly by me…’go figure’), then you are simply forcing business to find an alternative solution to promoting the product. The thing is, people WILL find another way to get their product promoted over the opposition. It is the life-blood of business. If you prevent them using ads, then the temptation to go with less obvious, less honest, frankly underhand and shady methods is going to win out.

From a business POV, spending $30k on ads vs handing $30k in a paypal payment to a famous you-tuber are essentially the same thing. The end result is the same, and the cost is the same. The first choice is very up-front and honest and people know what is going on. The second choice (assuming its undeclared to the viewer) is basically subverting what claims to be impartial information and manipulating it to push an agenda. Do people want that?

There are a vast range of businesses (I get emails from them all the time) offering to sell people twitter followers, or post on forums on your behalf, or up-vote social media posts, and all the rest of it, no-doubt linked to click-farms in China or India. This is the dark-side of ‘social-network-marketing’. If you want to just ‘buy’ popularity on a site where commercial concerns are banned, then it’s easy, just fill out this form and send the money. Unethical as fuck, clearly, but do you really think that nobody does it? if they didn’t, the spam emails wouldn’t be economic, for starters.

There is a myth, in the ‘anti-corporate, anti-ads’ world, that you can block out all ‘corporate’ influence, but you cannot. Not outside of North Korea, anyway. Even if your site has no ads, and absolute rock-solid captcha stuff to ensure there are no bots, and that nobody from (perish the thought) a games company is posting on your site, then it would still be trivial, trivial, trivial, to completely rig the odds.

Anyone with their own forums knows that preventing spam is almost impossible because a lot of it is ‘human spam’, in other words, accounts created by actual people (paid minimum wage in India/China) who can enter the captcha quite easily, make a few seemingly innocent posts, before (in my experience), spamming your site with links to cheap kitchen fitting. When you see this, it is basically human-marketing agents done really really badly.

Now imagine a situation with a smarter ‘black hat style’ marketing company. Say they have $100k to spend to promote game X. Why spend it on 10,000 Chinese kids who are obvious as hell, when you can just employ 10 full time western ‘social marketing agents’ for 3 months to actually go out there and hustle for the game. They can join dozens, if not hundreds of sites, read loads of threads, make loads of posts, look like any other member of the community, just hanging out, chilling, talking about games, and they all just so happen to have recently picked up a copy of X, and you know what? to be honest, game X is the best damned game they ever played, no seriously.

That is the world of game marketing without ads. It’s not always obvious. There is a spectrum. On the one hand, you have 10,000 Chinese kids spamming the world about Civony, or some other browser-based crap. On the other end of the spectrum, you have just two or three marketing experts who do their job so well you have absolutely no idea they have any connection to a games company whatsoever. What they have in common, is they are trying to subvert a non-commercial arena into being a commercial one.

Ads are different. there is a clear dividing line. When you see an ad for my games, It’s not disguised as anything else. It’s honest. It’s me saying ‘I believe enough in you liking the look of this game, I’m actually paying out money to tell you about it’.  I reckon thats good, thats fair, thats what I like, and thats why I have adblock off for the majority of my surfing.

I could take the hint, realize gamers have decided that ads are evil, that actually ‘lets players  deserve to be paid’, and just say ‘fuck it’, and hand over loads of cash to a PR company to do whatever the fuck they like, and ask no questions, but I’d rather not. I don’t want to be a full time promoter and schmoozer. I’m a game designer and programmer. Don’t let the underhand schmoozers take over.

I have a growing fear that the games industry, specifically the way indies are handled, treated, and reported, may be leaving a group of people behind. There are more indie devs now than ever before. I personally think we have an indie game crash coming. I see a lot of indie games that are unmarketable, unsellable, not viable as a commercial endeavor that supports a family. Yup, its great to be 20 years old and young and hip and hanging out in coffee shops with a laptop, and only needing money for coffee and wifi, but thats not a career, thats a hobby..

But regardless of inevitable indie crashes, I’m more concerned that game development, or rather indie-game development has become incredibly narrowly focused. If I was paid to enforce stereotypes for a tabloid newspaper, I’d probably say that all indie game developers are white, late-teens to twenties, english-speaking, liberal hipsters with iphones, who love breaking bad and game of thrones, who wear ‘ironic’ glasses, and spend a lot of time on social networking sites. They spend 25% of their time tweeting about cool game developers they have met and the other 75% of the time re-tweeting political/activist rants and memes.

They are developing a mobile game, or an ipad game, and its a platformer, or a puzzle game, or a walking simulator. Their marketing budget is of course zero, because they are *that* anti-establishment. They wouldn’t dream of charging > $5 for their game, and they are sure that somehow they will become a millionaire by age 25. They have spent a lot more time hanging out with other indies or going to conferences than they have, or ever will do programming. Obviously they code in Java or C# or something even higher level, and obviously they use unity. Their business plan on PC is ‘steam’.

Now obviously that isn’t *that* true, it’s a stereotype, but it’s a bit more-true than is comfortable. And the reason this matters at all (I have nothing against platform games, twitter, unity, or anything in that list), is that any group that can be described like this immediately becomes a group that repels outsiders.

Oleg is a 52 year old divorced ex-welder from Minsk. He taught himself C++ from books, and does not know anyone else who is a programmer. He lives alone, in Minsk. He does not speak English. He is very hard working, and very good at business decisions. He is an exceptional programmer, and has a fantastic eye for game design. He has never been to the USA. His project is a highly innovative strategy game that is better than anything else currently available.

The problem is Oleg doesn’t stand much of a chance at indie parties, and more worryingly, I suspect doesn’t stand a chance in the indie press. The indie press have decided what indies are like, and Oleg isn’t one, or at least not one that they will write about, and they sure as fuck aren’t going to fly to misnk to meet the guy, nor are they likely to ever hear about him, and more importantly his amazing strategy game.
Why?

Because Soooooo much press coverage comes from game shows, where indie devs show and ‘pitch’ their games to the press. That relies on them being Charismatic, friendly, extrovert, confident English speakers. That is A TINY TINY TINY subset of humanity. (Also it doesn’t help that Oleg is fictional…). I figure your chances of getting attention for an indie game if you are a white liberal english-speaking 21 year old guy in san francisco are 100x that of oleg. Am I wrong?

Journalists, prove to me I am totally wrong. Show me all those big articles on amazing indie games by people who don’t speak English. I bet there are some fucking amazing games out there we aren’t hearing about.

So what is the michelin guide? well wikipedia tells us that it is…

“a series of annual guide books published by the French company Michelin for more than one hundred years. The term normally refers to the Michelin Red Guide, the oldest European hotel and restaurant reference guide, which awards Michelin stars for excellence to a select few establishments. The acquisition or loss of a star can have dramatic effects on the success of a restaurant.”

Basically it’s the go-to book for foodies. A michelin star restaurant is pretty pricey. A restaurant with two stars is VERY pricey. A restaurant with more than 2 stars is stupidly pricey. With the price, hopefully comes quality. It is basically THE goal for a chef to get his or her restaurant in the guide. In short, it’s a guidebook for very expensive high quality restaurants. And what does that have to do with marketing and selling your games, indie or otherwise?

Fuck all.

But…it is very applicable when you look at the motivation. Michelin make tires. You can’t eat tires, they don’t go well with food, there is no obvious synergy there. You don’t order a confit of duck and a side order of all-weather snow tires. There is apparently no clear link… But there is. There are two of them, neither of which is apparent.

Link one: The indirect market. When the guide was introduced people had cars, but there was frankly not much motivation to use them. The train was the preferred method for long distance travel. Michelin made tyres, so they wanted people to buy more cars, and also…use them more. That means they needed a way to persuade people to travel more. A travel guidebook is one thing, but the michelin guide is much cleverer because it introduced a ranking system. Restaurants were no longer ‘good’ or ‘not bad’, but ranked in a very specific system that was based on the top-end. The chances of your local pub or restaurant having a michelin star were practically zero,m but LOOK! here is a list of all the ones that are great, some distance from you, and here is a scientific sounding accurate ranking that persuades you that they are so good, it isn’t worth traveling to! get in the car! Don’t forget to check your tyres!

It’s genius marketing, because it is so indirect, and so subtle. On the face of it, that nice michelin company are giving away (they later charged for them) a free guide to restaurants! whats not to like! clearly they just love food and want to give something away! In those days, the technology was pretty simple, but a cynical 2014 version of the guide would probably use cookies to encourage you to go to the furthest restaurant from your house :D

So what is link two? Well if you read any of those neurosciency advertising books I like you already know, but it’s this: Association with quality. In the world of food the word michelin == quality. People struggle for years to be awarded the honor of putting ‘michelin’ next to their name, because michelin means quality…michelin means quality…. ooooh do you need new tyres? what brand are you interested in sir?

So bringing this back to indie gaming, how does it help? Well firstly it explains a bit how clever some ads are, and secondly, it shows how subtle and long term and in what roundabout ways clever marketing people think. Most indie devs will not even consider advertising, or sponsoring something, or doing *anything* that doesn’t lead to a click and a sale *right here* *right now*, but thats not how marketing works. The michelin company were prepared to start a whole sideline in promoting good food to hopefully build up a motoring culture that would indirectly boost their business. Thats really clever thinking, thats really long term.

We should be more like that when planning strategy.