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As you prepare for pitch, you’ll frantically squash bugs and shoehorn new assets into your vertical slice. You’ll also work on a list of deliverables for publisher submission. The former happens on its own; by now, you’re accustomed to development work. I’m here to help you tackle the latter.
Here’s what most publishers will be looking for from you:
A studio budget
A pitch deck
A game video
A long-term production schedule
And of course, your vertical slice.
Much of this work fits best towards the end of development, when you have the clearest idea of your game’s direction. For example, it’s hard to make a budget when you don’t know who you’ll need to hire to make your game, and it’s hard to estimate your game’s production timeline before you have a clear sense of its scope.
But while you’ll do a lot of pitch prep after your final sprint, it’s essential to start preparing for pitch during development. Why? Because:
It’s hard
It’s difficult to delegate
If left until the very end, it creates momentum-killing drag
It’s hard
Pitch prep work is tricky for a few reasons:
It takes a mental shift. Pitch prep work is radically different from game development, which you’ve been living and breathing for awhile now.
It asks you to face uncertain and uncomfortable topics, particularly when it comes to budgeting (salaries, length of development, overall budget, etc.).
It requires a lot of disparate skills that can be hard to find or develop: video editing, Gantt chart proficiency, budgeting proficiency, and a good visual eye for a pitch deck.
After becoming comfortable managing a game studio, you’re now thrust into business development. It’s jarring. You’ll experience fatigue as you tackle these projects. Start them early.
It’s difficult to delegate
Unless you have a dedicated producer, you’re probably going to end up doing these tasks yourself. To some extent, it’s necessary. Take budgeting for example. It’s tricky to ask someone else on the team to concoct a budget if they haven’t been privy to every salary conversation.
You’re the optimal leader for the video and pitch deck because you’re the visionary. Your pitch deck and video tell your game’s story, and no one is better equipped to tell that story than its creator.
Since you’re often the only one who can tackle these problems, you’re a bottleneck to the pitch readiness. But you may not be a bottleneck in production. Many teams have redundancy across engineering and art. Use your teammates to tackle development work while you begin preparing for pitch.
It creates drag
By drag, I mean a slowing of team momentum. When momentum slows, morale fades, and you risk attrition. People may move on to other projects that have more momentum and feel more exciting.
It's really easy to lose people at the end of vertical slice development. If you’re very lucky, it’ll be 2-3 months from publisher submission until you’re funded and building your dream. It can just as easily take 4-6 months. Most people can’t just hang around waiting for the promise of pay.
You really don’t want to make the waiting period any longer than it has to be. If development wraps up, and you then spend two months preparing for pitch, you’re looking at a very long waiting window before you’re funded. Try to shorten the dedicated pitch prep window as much as possible.
What can you work on early?
The budget
Nothing’s stopping you from budgeting early. While your game’s scope will evolve over the course of vertical slice development, you’ve hopefully had salary conversations with team members when you brought them onboard (if not, have them now!). You can plug these costs in.
You also know what engine you’re using, what middleware you’re using for sound, and what software (if any) your team is licensing for art. Head to these software websites and take a look at their pricing models. That research can take time—do it early.
Early budgeting offers a significant advantage: you can see how much your game will cost to make. The numbers you see might be eye-opening. If your first time studio requires a $750k budget, that’s going to be a hard sell. Knowing your number early helps you make personnel and scoping decisions to bring your budget down into more attractive territory for publishers.
The pitch deck
Pitch decks are filled with concept art, which can be commissioned at any time. Pitch decks also leverage a lot of pre-production work, such as Creative Pillars and Market Research, so you’ve done a lot of your deck homework before you even enter production.
I recommend making a skeleton of your pitch deck as early as possible. You never know when you might be in a conversation with someone and want to reference it. Over time, you can add concept art and gifs to your deck.
What should wait?
The video
The video should happen last. Your game is probably experiencing visual improvements with each sprint, and you want to showcase your most polished work in your video. If you do want to get started early, make sure your artists and UI designers are focused on the most impactful assets first.
It can be useful to shoot an early, rough video to show people when opportunity comes knocking.
How do I schedule pitch prep work?
Schedule it like you would any development task! Size it up and assign it to yourself for the upcoming sprint.
You may decide that you want to start dedicating x% of your time to pitch prep starting with the second-to-last sprint (just an example). To do that, just put a cap on the amount of work you pick up each sprint. For example, if your sprint capacity is 18 points of work, and you want to split your time between development and post-prod work, only pick up 9 points of dev work.
The pitch prep segment of this site is broken up into a few sections. The first is a hybrid of production and pitch content, where I explore the tactics and resources you'll need to build a long-term production schedule that supports your game's full development. Those articles are:
Prepping for Full Production: an introduction to content and features, the two types of tasks you'll be estimating for your production schedule.
Estimating Content: a lesson in estimating knowns.
Estimating Features: a lesson in estimating unknowns.
Assembling Your Production Schedule: a walkthrough that helps you take estimated tasks and put them into a complete schedule.
Next, we get into the budget:
Budgeting Overview: an overview of the budgeting process, complete with a template.
Estimating Your Costs: a deeper dive into cost estimation that looks at salaries, software costs, and admin expenses.
Budget Milestones: an overview of milestones as they pertain to the budget (and your payment).
Finally, we hit the two remaining heavy hitters (the pitch deck and the video) and close it all off with Submission.
The Pitch Deck: how to get publishers excited about your game via Google Slides.
The Video: how to get publishers excited about your game via a 1-5 minute video.
Submission: how to send your game to publishers.
If you're ready to get started, head on over to Prepping for Full Production.
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