5. PREPARATION PAYS

In this post:

• Candid thoughts on 5 days at GDC

• Experience pitching to publishers

• The importance of vision & fortitude

• What’s next

Thoughts on GDC

For my first experience at the conference I came in open-minded. After a full week there I still don’t know exactly how to describe it, so I’ll break it down into observations made throughout the week and you can decide.

• Making financial connections is tricky for outsiders: Firstly, publishers and investors are elusive and will only be found if they are want to, and I can’t say I blame them. I attended two relatively large networking events and did not meet a single publisher or anyone that knew investors at either – and I went out of my way to speak to nearly everyone, which is so outside of my comfort zone I’m still recovering =).

• Every developer thinks their game is the next greatest thing: And in many cases, they might even be right. The level of quality I saw in indie developer-shared progress in their games was extremely impressive. Some people that have worked for 4-6+ years on their projects have incredible showcases and demos of all genres. Sure there are duds, but the level of talent out there is legit and formidable. Unfortunately, that’s just one piece of what’s needed to find success, though.

• Most of the sessions are not a good use of your time: Seriously. There was so much fluff and wasted time in the sessions I sat in on that I walked out of most of them early. One panel on the importance of producers literally spent 20 minutes defining what “producer” meant to random people in the audience before even getting to the first question. It was painful. A select few of them were great. The lead puzzle designer of both Horizon games gave an excellent breakdown of his approach and learnings for creating engaging puzzles in the game that summarized years of trial, error, and playtesting into one strong presentation. But after day two I stopped attending sessions as my time was far better spent elsewhere.

• A lot of people I spoke to are pretty burned out: I’m not sure if they even know it, but the tone, body language, and way they speak about the industry shone through clearly in many of my conversations with developers and designers. A lot of resentment to people not buying their games… or how most of the success all gets funneled to huge companies at the top leaving the general masses to fight for the scraps left over. I can empathize. Making a game is a labor of love with high risk of failure. But I still believe greatness and quality will rise above all of that, and the challenges only forge smarter and savvier people to overcome them to produce something special.

• GDC is not worth the investment without pre-planning: I was in a tough spot because most of the most amazing things I had to share didn’t fall into place until the literal week before GDC began. So, reaching out to key contacts a month earlier was not quite an option leaving me just a few days before the event to try and connect with others. Luckily a few of them responded and made time to meet me, but I clearly was not able to maximize my time out there as well as I could have with proper networking leading up to it. Lesson learned there – and the silver lining was it gave me more time to sit and work on the game lore and world-building without interruption.

• I’m glad I went: All the above said, I’m still glad I attended. I got a taste of the political scene in video game entertainment, the power hierarchy, talent, ego, ignorance, and everything in between while I was out there. It also gave me more clarity on what’s needed as we progress this year and afforded me a few great meetings with potential publisher partners. Which leads me to what they said after I pitched them…

“Seriously, your game looks beautiful”

I was beyond grateful as each publisher I met with expressed interest in the title and left with next steps to follow up. I realize it may stop there, I could get ghosted or things could stall at later phases, but the validation was clearly there that we have something special here.

I’m a firm believer that this outcome is not because the game itself is incredible, but because I did my homework and showed up tightly-rehearsed and well-prepared. I watched over six hours worth of past GDC presentations from publishers on how specifically to pitch your game (at 2x speed, thankfully) as well as other devlogs talking about their good (and bad) experiences with making deals. I had iterated my pitch deck to version 6, changing the order and removing/editing parts based on fresh eyes and new conversations with knowledgable people I met.

The word that comes to mind in attributing how to stand out is “thoughtful”. Being thoughtful is something that’s missing more and more – not just in the gaming industry but in every industry – and truly helps people stand out among the noise. It’s become so rare that it’s literally refreshing to people I spoke with. The silver lining here is that this deficit makes you even more impactful when you engage others.

Vision & Fortitude

I believe now that the two most valuable qualities of a game designer are clear vision and unwavering fortitude. The waves are going to break against you and push you back in this industry, that much is clear. You’re going to get pulled into the undercurrent of others that would gladly see you removed from the scene to thin out their competition or see you despondent when comparing your game to theirs. A lot of people will say things cannot be done and happily tear others down. Fortitude is critical not just to endure this, but to rise above it.

I listened to a 2-hour podcast on a run today (again - 2x speed… it’s the only way to do it!) where a fairly soured developer leading a studio of 14 people essentially ranted about all the problems in the industry and how everything is shitty now compared to the past. And all I could think about when listening is that his downer attitude and closed-minded theories are seeping into every single conversation with the other 13 people on his team on a daily basis and I felt really bad for them. The world is what you make it. Sure, it’s hard. More expensive to make a game and more crowded to fight for people’s fleeting attention than it’s ever been, even. But the alternative is you quit. And if you’re not going to quit, then you do yourself a great disservice to keep grinding on about the problems when the only things that matter are solutions.

All of that thinking can go in the bin as far as I’m concerned. Saying remote work will never get you as dedicated a team as in-office… clearly he hasn’t figured out how to facilitate virtual culture then (and how to save a boatload of cash by not operating a physical location). These are things I’ve spent the last 5 years focusing on in my agency – driving a high bar and being present and engaged in service to my team. Great people respect that. They thrive with that trust. And I’m grateful for all of them.

Next steps

Our team has tightened up and we’ve brought more order and much-needed structure to our process now. They are focused and driven while still able to pause and step back to properly think through decisions that would otherwise haunt us months down the line. We listen to each other and collaborate as a team with a singular vision to make an incredible demo this year to share with the world. We will continue to build the game we want to play and not be swayed by the noise outside. I’ll never lose sight of that, which means it’s only a question of when – not if – we can share everything we’ve passionately been working on with others.