Alex Nichiporchik

How To Pitch Games (in 2024)

It's 2024 and the games industry has significantly changed. While our best practices guide on pitching games still remains relevant, a few months ago I did a presentation on how to pitch games in a recession.

I highly recommend you watch the full presentation, and here are some take aways:

WHAT TO PITCH?

Probably the most important question is what to pitch, in other words what to work on. Games take a long time to develop. Often over 3 years. If your career in game development is 30 years, you really have under a dozen opportunities to make something great.

What are people playing?
What do you like playing?
What can you make?

The answer will be in the middle of these 3 questions. And the first question requires external data. I highly recommend using 3 simple tools on a day to day basis:

SteamCharts - go there with coffee every morning. Look at the top50, top100. Don't just focus on the top10. What are some games that have a sudden rise in concurrent users after 7 years? What happened? Why did an extremely popular game suddenly have a dropoff? Why did a game launch with (see below) a million wishlists and nobody is playing it? Research answers to these questions.
SteamDB - go here to check the follower trending chart for games, and more recently playtests and demos. See what is grabbing users, and holding them. See what games are trending, and figure out why. What I'm looking for is a gradual growth in follower count -- meaning the algorithm is matching your game to the right audience. It means you have a fire, and a publisher can help you pour gas on that fire.
Steam Top Wishlists List - check what is trending upwards, giving you an idea of what is popular in the general mind of gamers. Then cross-reference that with tools above. Did they have a successful playtest? A really expensive marketing campaign? Great social media trends?

DON'T BE SHY ABOUT YOUR PREVIOUS WORK

If you shipped games before - great. Don't be shy about highlighting that. Even if they weren't successful, the mere notion of having shipped a game before means you know what it's like. Doesn't matter what platform.

HAVE TRACTION OR A CLEAR PATH TO MARKETING

Traction. It's really important. If your game is getting traction with a Steam page, don't let anyone tell you they're not interested in previously announced games. Having a game that's trending on Steam, Reddit, Youtube (with influencers or devlogs), X, tik-whatever -- all of those are important. And you should probably try all of them before pitching, to see if your game is finding an audience.

We will often post short videos from small TikTok accounts just to see if a game is getting traction. We've made dozens of videos for our title DUCKSIDE even before announcing it, just "ducks with guns lol" and a funny video. What are the first frames that capture attention? What makes people want to interact? These are extremely important questions.

If you do not want to follow this path, and it's understandable in a lot of cases - have a clear path to marketing. It is no longer enough to do a comparison slide of "game XYZ sold 100m copies, therefore we will have a % of that audience". You need to have a really clear path to wowing people. Here is an example of exactly how to do it, and I go deeper in the actual presentation on how Kingmakers came about:

WHAT TO HAVE IN YOUR PITCH

Packaging your pitch up is relatively easy.

Snappy title / elevator pitch
Great GIF
Walkthrough video
Optional demo

TITLE

Make sure your title is great and snappy. Don't be afraid to use "X meets Z". We have absolutely no shame in saying "Tarkov meets Alien Isolation" when (re)announcing Level Zero Extraction:

GREAT GIF

Great GIFs are art. You have only a few frames to capture someone's attention. No time for build up. It's the same concept as short form video on all social media platforms, the actual "gif" format is less relevant these days. You'll use it mostly for e-mail (in a pitch) and on your Steam page. A single GIF can go viral though, and it's something you should be doing every day to figure out the fun moments in your game.

Here are a few guidelines

Keep it short, under 10 seconds
Make sure your frame rate is at least 20fps (for both .gif and video files)
CUT CUT CUT - the GIF above I've spent half an hour cutting off frames left and right to focus on the most important and interesting parts
Make sure it's not too dark. Use light touch ups for darkers scenes
Look at this on your phone. 90% of the time your pitch will be viewed first time on a phone. Does it load up properly? Is the size too large? Can you see what is happening? The same applies to trailers and video walk throughs. If your UI isn't clearly readable on a phone, odds are later down the line the Lets Plays for it won't be viewed as much.

WALKTHROUGH VIDEO

For years we talked about trailers and how to make a great one. I believe this has changed when it comes to pitching. Today not everyone actually needs a demo as it has a lot of variables and may require an actual call with the dev team to play. Just make a snappy walkthrough video. Make edits, focus on great moments, and just show your game and walk us through how it plays. Let your personality go through.

And please upload it to Youtube as an Unlisted video (not vimeo, not dropbox, not google drive) and paste a direct link (not a redirect) into your pitch. This way everyone who is reading the email will likely get a youtube preview in their email client, and will click (tap) on it. It's also the fastest in terms of internet connections, as many decision makers will be traveling when watching and a Youtube link will increase the chances of it being viewed and a decision to be expedited.

WHAT ABOUT THE BUDGET AND AN OVERPOLISHED PRESENTATION?

Great question. I'd say don't spend time on a polished presentation. People who care about powerpoints aren't the decision makers, and those who are will realize you've spent a lot of time on something that didn't contribute to the actual game. Hot take, I know.

What would help is a simple one pager overview of your budget, with the current runrate and an idea of how much you need to get the game through the door. A great partner will always be able to help with advice on how to properly plan things out, including milestones.

Going back to the presentation, instead of doing it just spend more time on a fun video. When making it you'll likely be making tweaks to the build to show its best side while recording, therefore improving the actual product.

IT'S ALL ABOUT WHAT TO WORK ON

And the key of what to work on, is how to make sure you're working on the right thing. This loops back to external verification. There are edge cases when games didn't get great external verification (the original Hello Neighbor had a failed Kickstarter for example), and those are edge cases. I can't tell you what to not work on, instead let me tell you what gets us excited these days -- following our huge milestone of 3 million wishlists.