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This article is from GDC's official Youtube channel, and the original content is in the form of a video speech, which has been compiled and organized by indienova and shared in the form of pictures and texts. See the original link at the end of this article.
- 演讲人：奥古斯特·布朗（August Brown）
- 译者：Linzz
About me
Hello everyone! I'm August Brown, and I'd like to talk a little bit about pitching[1] today.
I've been in the industry for 12 years now, and most of that time I've been working in indie game publishing. Most of my work is related to game development, but I've also been deeply involved in finding and evaluating new projects and communicating with developers since I was in the publishing business. During this time, I've reviewed thousands of pitches for mobile and PC games—across virtually every genre—and I've talked to countless developers. I hope that the knowledge and experience – especially what kind of pitch proposal will excite and excite publishers – can be useful information for everyone.
A new way to pitch
Next, I'm going to revisit the way games are marketed. A lot of blog posts, GDC talks, and Twitter posts always emphasize the need to focus on content, and they say that you need to prepare your pitch document, create a budget, and other necessary preparations. These are important, but I think sometimes the other side decides that they won't sign your game before they even see the pitch. Therefore, I will focus more on how the information is presented than on what information should be included in the sales pitch, and I will look at the pitch as a whole, like a "sales funnel" [2]. Finally, I'd like to share some of the games that Armor Game Studios [3] finally signed on to see how the developers organized the information. At the same time, I'll tell you how publishers react when they're excited about a game.
Widespread awareness
As for the aforementioned general perception of game merchandising, most of the posts and pitches are from publishers, which makes me feel guilty because I'm also working for publishers. The point is, when talking about merchandising from a publisher's perspective, we have an inherent bias that will naturally give us suggestions that make our job easier.
When we use a tool like a business intelligence suite or spreadsheet to work on a pitch, we populate it with information such as budget, tax, and issuance time, which is put into a spreadsheet. So most of the information that people get from publishers is how to fill it out to make the publisher's job more efficient, and some things like "hmm...... It annoys me, and when people do, I advise them not to." I hope you don't have to stick to that, while it's a very effective way to provide information, if you just fill in a bunch of numbers, then your pitch is just as mediocre as any other pitch. There are thousands of people selling the game, and the competition is fierce, and if there's a way to make your pitch resonate with more people, you should try to do it.
Sales funnels
Exploring this question, we can explain it from the perspective of the "sales funnel". To give you a quick overview of this concept, let's play a little mind game. Let's say you open a pet shop with the main goal of selling cute puppies, and in order to sell puppies successfully, we need to complete several steps. First of all, your pet store needs to be known by everyone, otherwise no one will come to patronize it; Customers need to be physically present at your store; They need to find a pet they like; Complete your purchase. We can see that each step depends on the previous one: if people don't come to your store, they can't buy pets, and people can't come here if they don't know about your store. Sometimes, guests may say, "I really want this dog," but when they see the price, they say, "Oh, I don't really want to ask for it." This is a visual manifestation of the "sales funnel", where people are screened out at every step, and people can't jump straight to the third step, they have to go through all the previous steps.
To understand the relationship between the sales funnel and different sales pitches, let's imagine scenario A, where a large billboard is placed outside a pet store that reads: We are selling a puppy for $7500. In scenario B, we put the cutest puppy in front of the window of a pet store. From this, one conclusion can be drawn: not every sales funnel will produce the same effect. In scenario A, the billboard may make more people aware of the existence of a pet store, but they will be less willing to come in because they don't want to spend $7,500 on a puppy. Conversely, in scenario B, the cute puppy is placed in front of the window, which will also attract a large crowd, but this time, the customer is attracted by the cuteness of the puppy and wants to know more about what the store sells, and they will walk into the store and sell more.
Pitch is marketing
Each of the above points is crucial. In the capitalist hell we live in, marketing a game is just like anything else, it's a marketing strategy, and it's a very special one – you need to market yourself and your game's potential to publishers in order to get funding. The process follows a similar process, the publisher receives your promotional materials, demos the demo, and then has the team evaluate the game, and they may hold an internal meeting or meet with you to learn about your business and ask some questions, make predictions about the game, and finally send out a launch offer. But in reality, it's more complicated than any step you might think.
Take the first step of "receiving the pitch", for example, in the case of email, we can email the pitch to the publisher - it needs to be noted that the email is just an example of a hypothesis, and the following also applies to the conference you are attending, or anything else related to it, in any case, the logic is interoperable. When they receive the promotional material, they first look at the subject of the email and then make some quick decisions about the description of the game in that topic. Then glance at the body of the email to see if there are any appealing visual elements. If they're happy with what they're seeing, they might click on a video and watch it randomly for a few seconds. They may read a portion of the email text and end up opening the pitch and skimming through it to see if there's something appealing to them. If you persistently get publishers to repeat these small steps, you may one day receive a distribution offer.
If this process sounds familiar to you, it's because it's similar to how a pet store operates. It's also a "sales funnel", and if they look at the visual elements in your email and archive them, don't expect them to open the pitch, which is bad. I think a lot of publishers actually want to be fair to every game, but even if they don't file the email, they may have already made a mental decision that "this game is not for me", and they may open your pitch, but the game has already been rejected. And no one will jump directly to the fifth step, they have to complete the first few steps to get to the next step.
An unfortunate fact
I think it's worth taking a step back here and talking about some unfortunate facts about the publisher and how we evaluate the game. We get thousands of pitches every day, so we can't spend much time looking at every single one. This means that most demos will not be downloaded, let alone played. Even before we even saw the demo, we had thoughts like "this game isn't for us, we can drop it". Whether or not we look at your pitch later, we make a number of decisions first. Even before we open the pitch, we get a feeling about the game, like excitement or thinking "this might be passed." Maybe we might go through the pitch to see if there's anything that can change our minds, but a lot of decisions are already in place before that. Someone might watch the gameplay video, but if you're sending a 20-minute video, I guarantee almost no one will. If you send in a full 5 hours of gameplay, I'm sure no publisher will finish watching it. Only 10 to 30 seconds of content will be visible to publishers, which will be 10 to 30 seconds randomly selected on the video timeline.
How decisions are made
It's terrible! It takes a lot of effort and time to make a pitch, and it's tedious to make a demo, as well as time to record and edit videos. It's so unfair that everyone has given so much and not getting what they deserve. However, if we were to watch every gameplay video we received that lasted for 5 hours, or even if it was only 5 minutes, we couldn't focus on publishing. As bad and unfair as the situation is, the reality is just that.
So we can use that experience to be smart when building our pitches. To do this, we have to talk about how decisions are made, not about how groups come to consensus, but about individual decisions. For example, am I excited about something? I think something is a good idea or a bad idea? After all, at least for now, computers are not able to handle sales pitches automatically, but humans are in charge, and humans are supplied and constantly influenced by them. This is crucial when structuring a pitch.
"Thinking Brain" and "Feeling Brain"
In order to clarify this point, I would like to start with the "thinking brain" and the "sensory brain". We may be in both of these mindsets when making decisions. The point is that at a given moment, there is only one "driver" in your brain who is in control of the situation, and if you are completely in the mode of analytical logic, thinking about the impact of numbers and things, your brain is in thinking mode, and the "sensory brain" is sitting in the passenger seat waiting for its turn; On the other hand, the "sensory brain" is a more emotional state.
First, let's talk about the "thinking brain". If I'm in this mode and receive an offer, I think about it carefully and evaluate it. My brain thinks like this: How big is the potential user base for this game? Does the development team have the required professional experience? What are the challenges in marketing? The game's visuals look appealing to younger users, but the theme is heavy, will this make marketing difficult? Does the game fit into our budget and release schedule? Were there any other games released during the same period? These factors may pose external risks. If you follow my thoughts, you will find that it is quite logical to consider the risks and benefits of these things.
On the contrary, the "sensory brain" only wants to have a pleasant experience and will only get excited or resistant to things. We're mostly talking about situations where we're excited and we don't care about anything and just say, "Hell, this game is amazing." So think back to the pet store example mentioned earlier, if your "thinking brain" is in the driver's seat, then generally speaking, the options will be narrower because your brain will think, "The budget is a bit high, I don't think it's a good fit", or "There are two other similar games that I don't think fit this one". In this case, the "thinking brain" can easily knock the game out. On the contrary, the "feeling brain" gets excited, and that's when it's easy for your brain to let the mind take over the decision-making process, for example: "The budget is a bit high, but that's okay, this game is fantastic, I really want to release it." ”
Optimize for the "sensory brain".
As you may also understand from these examples, I strongly believe that everything should be optimized during the sales pitch process so that the "sensory brain" can be mobilized to take interest in your game. For example, at the beginning, the subject of an email should resonate. We've gotten a lot of emails with topics like "pitch to Armor Game Studios" or "new game recommendation", and while these topics are clear, they don't excite me. While the theme alone won't make the game sign up smoothly, it can put my brain into a state of curiosity, like "Oh? I don't know what that means, I'd like to know more. "It's like it's tailor-made for the "sensory brain".
So from the start, you should put some catchy GIFs at the beginning of your email or pitch. There's no benefit to hiding key information, and your best bet is to put it at the front, with the shortest description, and capture the game's unique selling point – what makes your game stand out in a sentence or two?
One of the most important things about the "sensory brain" is that it doesn't like to read. If too much text is read, it loses interest and then the "thinking brain" takes over. For example, when important content is hidden in links, the "Sensory Brain" will still want to see your presentation and video, but once you hide these links in a large block of text, the "Sensory Brain" will easily go away. But if you can make it very clear to the other person that "the video is here", the "sensory brain" can continue to work.
There's obviously a lot of nuance, but at the end of the day, you just need to get the focus on the top of the pack and everything else will fall into place.
The real reason we need to think in this way is that when the "sensory brain" is in charge, you don't need to do much information presentation for your proposals, presentations, and all the other materials. If the "thinking brain" is in control, it is easy for the other party to make decisions such as "the budget is reasonable, this is a reasonable timetable for the execution of the game". But when the "sensory brain" is driving, the other party will be more relaxed. Your pitch shouldn't aim to "get the game to sign up" because that's not possible, and no one will send a check right away after seeing your pitch. We always have to go through all kinds of negotiations and things until the last step. What your pitch should do is get someone in the publisher really excited and want to support your game.
Case Study 1: The Key to Tartos
To illustrate the practical application of these theories, let's turn our attention to the Armor Game Studio signing case and see how the developers planned their pitches and how we reacted. First up is The Tartarus Key, whose email subject line "PS1-style horror mystery game" is unusual, neither a blockbuster nor a "pitch for Armor Game Studios," but evocative. The description of "horror and suspense games" piqued my curiosity, and combined with the "PS1 style", it piqued my desire to explore. The developers depicted the game succinctly and accurately in the text, and an accompanying GIF showed the beautifully rendered PS1-style room: demonic runes everywhere, blood-stained walls and floors creepy, and the protagonist talking about how bad it all was.
This intuitively reveals the core elements of the game. Also, in line with the principle I mentioned earlier, it's laid out very clearly, like saying, "Hey, if you want to watch a video or a vertical slice [4], there are a couple of links here so you don't have to worry about reading too much". So, when I got the email at 11:37 a.m., I shared my initial feelings almost immediately in the internal Slack[5] chat channel: "This game looks fun, but it's not the genre I like, maybe it's not for us." However, Game Director Dora immediately responded excitedly: "Yo! followed by a capital "YOOO! Her excitement quickly infected me. After 25 minutes, she described the amazing feeling of playing the demo in all caps, and this 20-minute demo made me change my attitude towards the game from hesitation to eagerness.
That's the key to the success of Key to Tartos: to be clear about who you are, and not to please everyone. They could have used that graphic style to show a normal corridor scene without gore and curses, but that would have lost the character of the game. So, from the very beginning, they pre-empted everything that was good for the "sensory brain", using GIFs and other elements to stimulate our interest and curiosity, so that we didn't have to worry about budgeting before then. The game was daring to experiment, and the developers grasped what made it unique and targeted it to find its target audience, and they did.
Case Study 2: "Small Floating Island"
Next, I'd like to talk about a game called Islets. First of all, I would like to share a few words with you: "Metroidvania[6] will always be a saturated market"; "It feels like every Metroidvania game is going to be tough and I'm not sure how this game is different from the others"; "It's a really good Metroidvania game, but I don't know what makes me excited to sign it". That's all I've said, and it's all really my thoughts recorded in our spreadsheet. I love Metroidvania games, but this market is really volatile and I don't know what can catch my eye anymore. After all the other things went on, I became "Oh, I'm never going to fall in love with Metroidvania games, okay".
This is an example of how to gain adherents, and I hadn't looked through all the promotional materials at the time, but I already knew that I liked the game and I was going to fight for it. So, in what ways does "Little Floating Island" do well? It has an absolutely beautiful interior, and the developers know this and put it in front of the email. The email subject line is very resonant and hints at some interesting little questions that I would be curious about. It also comes with a 60-second trailer that is amazing every second, and no matter where I randomly drag it to the progress bar, I never get bored. And the pitch didn't go too far, there was only a project budget, a good demo, and all the things that were necessary for us to make a final decision, just didn't put them up front. Honestly, if they didn't put the budget in, I wouldn't have said "you didn't write the budget, we're not going to sign it", but would have emailed the developers right away and asked them for the budget because I would love to release the game. Enthusiasm is contagious, that's why it's all so important, I was so fascinated by the game that my colleagues soon started posting memes for Little Floating Island as well, and whenever we talked about it, the memes went viral. We did sign the game in the end.
conclusion
To sum up, I think the following points are worth noting. First of all, don't try to cover up the highlights of the product with your own cleverness, and don't think "this is the enemy at the bottom, I don't want to reveal it". If you think it's the coolest thing in your game, it should be shown at the beginning. This principle applies not only to marketing to publishers, but also to any form of marketing.
Second, don't be too general and don't say, "I think this aspect of the game might turn some people off interest, so we'll be cautious". This may be the conclusion you come to through the "thinking brain", and this is not the way to attract people by teasing the "feeling brain". You need to attract fans and find like-minded people by showcasing and promoting your products. Even though most publishers probably won't support you, don't be discouraged. There are many, many publishers in the market, and if your product is really good, then you will get a chance because there will always be people waiting to be your supporters.
Finally, when you think the pitch is done, review it point by point and tell yourself, "This sentence doesn't need to be this long, this thing doesn't need to be this long, the 'feeling brain' won't like it." Another example: "This one is more interesting, so let's put it a little bit earlier and put these links down." "Whatever you do, you just have to make sure that the 'sensory brain' is able to take the lead from the start.
Q&A session
Q1: A lot of the points you mentioned were about getting publishers into a state of fast thinking rather than slow thinking. Is there any further reading material that I can start learning about merchandising, or do you have any other recommendations that would make me a better salesperson?
A1: I recommend Paradox of choice, which is about how people make decisions and make choices. That's the basic idea behind that, but you can also search for marketing content more broadly, not just about sales, any marketing message and presentation is applicable to sales.
Q2: Thank you very much for your presentation, and I would like to say on behalf of everyone that it was great to learn about the other side of the story. I have two questions: Do you think independent publishers and large publishers think very differently? If there's a developer looking to get more budgets, have you seen an example of an independent publisher pushing a game to a certain level and then co-publishing it with a larger publisher?
A2: For the first question, I haven't worked for a triple-A publisher, so I can't answer it exactly. But the truth is universal, and there are a lot of great presentations from others. Whether you're pitching your game to a small publisher or a large publisher, to Nintendo or to Xbox, it's all about finding advocates, hitting the emotional point, and getting people excited, and that's for anyone you're pitching to.
On the second question, I think in general, co-publishing is still quite rare, and publishers usually work with foundations or other objects, such as the Canada Media Fund, but it's not very common to work with other publishers.
Q3: Hi, thank you very much for your presentation, it was really useful, but have you guys considered the other side? Developers should be better at marketing their work, but from a publisher's perspective, what can you do to improve the process? Sorry, I'm a bit of a trick to ask, but it's possible to miss out on a lot just because games don't have screenshots, after all, indie developers aren't as good at marketing as you guys.
A3: I'll admit that we might miss something, but let's be honest, if a game doesn't even perform well in front of us, how do we promote it to users? I can't speak for everyone, but at least at Armor Games, we look at every project, and we don't like to keep archiving emails, we respond to every project, and I think a lot of publishers are trying to do that. So for developers, it's something like we're just going to give you 20 seconds to either be interested in your game or not, and if it's the latter, it's going to be hard for the game to get signed.
Translator's Note:
[1] A technical term used to refer to writing an investor proposal or business presentation.
[2] A model that represents the flow of customers in the sales process. It usually consists of multiple stages, each representing a different progression of the customer in the buying process.
[3] American game publisher and free-to-play online game portal. The company develops and publishes indie games for Steam, mobile devices, and consoles under the name Armor Games Studios.
[4] A product term used to describe the user experience of various subsystems or features in a product.
[5] Team collaboration software, mainly used for online real-time communication, file sharing, and project management.
[6] A coined term from the gaming world, a combination of Metroid and Castlevania.
Original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZyCgChW0dc
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