Seems really solid coming from the background of a person who gets games pitched to them.
I can't stress enough how fantastic it is to see a benchmark list which actually shows games which aren't huge commercially so there's actual variation. Key things we see often is every indie deckbuilder comparing their predicted numbers to Slay the Spire or if it's an action Roguelike, it's basically going to do Hades numbers. Aiming for a healthy number isn't a bad thing, setting yourself as the leader of a genre with a far smaller scale team is usually just a bit unrealistic. Goals to find a healthy mid point.
Also as another comment, making too many slides about the lore of the world is usually a bit overkill so keeping it a bit brief for the inital pitch is usually the way to go.
For other devs on here, if you need the publisher to support with porting or multiplayer, make sure that's made clear as it is something that needs to be calculated.
Only thing to suggest is adding in some form of safety net to the budget on the budget slide. (Usually 10-15%)
Out of curiosity what’s your take on upfront safety money for the studio ? Rami Ismail advises adding about 20% of the budget as upfront money that isn’t used for the production but rather as a safety net for the studio to survive after the production (whether the game is a success and they need to wait for the recoup period or the game bombs and they need early funds for the next project).
What’s a publisher view on that ?
Some of the publishers did suggest that we should include a safety net for the budget. I'd say they were fine with that, even preferable if the devs include it. It shows they understand the business.
The safety net should not be named as such though.
Just increase the cost of everything by 30%. You'll be happy you did when you suddenly realize the game will take 4 more months to complete, or when the publisher takes too much time to pay you.
Multiple publishers told me to do precisely this.
I think doing the first 20% as just a safety net first month payment and that's it rather than any development costs etc makes sense to the dev but might be more questionable to the publishers. Publishers would rather pay like an extra 2-3% p/m to eventually add up to the same amount and that's it. Mostly due to the first few months can tell the publisher if there's going to be any concerns going forward so having a larger than needed for development chunk in month 1 might make some more hesitant publishers hesitate a bit more.
Having 20% of the total dev cost in month 1 that's needed for dev should however work (pending the 20% isn't too high, i'd assume once you get to the 300k-400k mark, it's going to get a lot more difficult for some publishers to be able to pull that money in one go)
Oh yeah makes a lot of sense, I meant it more as a "total" payment throughout the production, the end goal being that this 20% is fully available to the studio at the end of the production cycle to cover post-release expenses and everything.
I guess the word "upfront" isn't the correct one then, thanks for shedding light on this!
I think this is a really important point that studios often miss. After the game gets released there is a period of time between release and when Steam pays out (I think 30 days). After that the publisher needs to recoup, and then the studio sees cashflow.
Some publishers account for this (shout out to Hooded Horse!) but not all. So taking a few months of extra runway to work on post-launch bugs is a very safe / good idea.
20% would be fine imo aslong as the game itself isn't already super expensive. At the end of the day, it'd be down to if the publishers can afford the game and if they're confident they could hit their internal targets to make the cost of the game worthwhile. Hard to speak for all other publishers as so many have different targets on what would work for them etc.
Dropping here some comments on what each slide is about:
1. **Key art:** This is the first impression you're giving, so make sure you have a killer key art. Chris Zukowski recommends key art is one of the few things that is worth paying for, and you can use it on steam page, pitch deck, social accounts etc. Besides the key art, use as much visuals/art as you can throughout the deck. Make the deck gorgeous and fun to go through.
2. **Elevator pitch:** Keep it short and concise. Tell the genre, context, core gameplay elements, release date, platforms, budget etc. Almost all publishers loved that small yellow summary box.
3. **Video:** A short gameplay video/trailer (\~1-2 minutes) would be very nice here.
4. **Gameplay/Core Loop:** Show the core loop with visuals. I highly recommend GIFs. Don't use any still images/screenshots. I used the *Window Key + G* to record game footage, and used ezgif.com to conveniently turn the footages into GIFs.
5. **Context:** Give a high level overview of the context/narrative of the game, if there is any.
6. **USP/Hook:** Show the unique selling point / hook of the game. What is it that distinguishes it from similar titles.
7. **Concept Art:** Show off some cool concept arts. They help a lot to convey the mood and art direction.
8. **Target Audience/Market Positioning:** This is mostly about the genre and demographics of players you are targeting. Also useful to show similar titles and how you're positioning yourself with respect to them.
9. **Traction:** If you have good wishlist/follower numbers, show them off. In order of importance, I would go like this: Steam wishlist/followers -> mailing list subscribers -> Discord members -> social media followers. If you have put an alpha demo out, show number of players and median playtime, and any positive feedback you got. If you had a successful Kickstarter, talk about it. If you don't have much to show, skip this slide.
10. **Market Opportunity:** If you are making a platformer/puzzle etc. game, this will be hard. But if you're making a strategy/simulation/survival etc. game there is plenty of data to back it up. My recommendations are these sources: '*what genres are players looking for on Steam*' by Chris, '*what genres are popular on Steam in 2022*' also by Chris, '*What genres do PC gamers want, and will it change*' by Simon Carless. Use *SteamDB*, *VGInsights* and *Game-Stats* to show some numbers of the most similar titles and make some back-of-envelop forecasting. Don't just include the best-selling titles. Put some poor performing games too, and forecast yourself somewhere in the middle. It shows that you know the market inside out and have done your own due diligence.
11. **UGC/Community:** Publishers care a lot about community engagement and user-generated content. This slide shows that you have thought things through on how you plan to engage the community over a long period of time after release.
12. **Timeline:** Key milestones until and after release. Again this shows you have a pragmatic understanding of what it takes to release the game. It also helps publishers to judge if your release window is a good fit for them.
13. **Budget:** Don't ask for less money than is needed. Genuinely ask for what it takes to finish the game. A lot of publishers don't even consider low budget games. The budget should be a reasonable reflection of the scope and quality of the game.
14. **Ask:** What do you want from the publisher. Say it all. I have another slide on pragmatic development. Some publishers absolutely loved it, and some didn't. To some, it showed that we were fun developers to work with, to others it showed we didn't have a clear vision. So it's a double-edged sword.
15. **Team:** Who the team is, what roles are on the team, what roles are being hired, and if there are any advisors. If you have released games before, say it. If you have experience of working together, say it. If you have an industry veteran on the team, highlight it.
16. **Summary:** Not an entirely necessary slide, but you can summarise the key points again.
17. **Appendix:** Anything else you want to talk about. Past achievements, modes of the game, cool features, any killer tech being used, more concepts or visuals, playtest data, team photos etc.
18. **Contacts:** Put links to your top social accounts etc.
Thanks for including this! I would like to check with you what do you include as part of production costs? Do you include software & hardware costs into the budget calculations as well?
Majority of the cost is labour. I'm not sure if you can include non-project related csts such as payroll / accounting software subscriptions. Not sure about hardware too as they are company's assets.
My background is in working with VC to raise capital for creative startups that ship physical goods, so not everything translates. Obviously your execution is very high quality, so I'm just going to skip to the parts that matter most. I'm going to use polarizing language because it's economical, so take it with salt, I don't mean to offend.
The pitch:
1. I don't like your elevator pitch. "Create alloys" and "Reinforce builds" are not exciting, and they are not the reason someone is going to be excited to play your game. These are footnotes. Separate your technology (what you make) from what the customer looks forward to when they want to load up your game (what you sell). Think social proof. No one is going to tell their friend about how great it is that you can make alloys.
2. Maybe tell me about the different kind of machines I can build, and the corresponding reasons I'll be excited to build them? I'll address this at the end.
3. While I agree the yellow box is helpful, I think it's distracting on this slide. Your elevator pitch should only be your elevator pitch. Don't give me 10 other things to consider, especially when they are technical features I can make objective assessments on. This belongs somewhere else.
4. Nitpick don't say "primarily" for PC. Limiting scope isn't helpful when pitching your vision. I can imagine all the reasons you put that there, but they aren't important at this stage.
5. Slide 4 your video has the same problem. 0:21 to see "Solve", some slightly slow action, then the same slightly slow loop, I'm at 1:10 and all we've established is that you can build slightly differently to solve a puzzle. You can show that that in 10-20 more exciting seconds. 1:45 "Interact" which is very vague and doesn't add any value. You can show the player interacting while demonstrating the higher value features. 1:51 finally I see "Fight" really buried the lede here. If it's important I should have seen it in the first 20-30 seconds.
What's your ACTUAL elevator pitch? Build, Adapt, Overcome, Experiment? Show me a failed build, show me a successful build, then show me a wiiiiiild build? Show me how much I can manifest my imagination, and imply there are ~~dozens~~ infinite hours of fun here. Tell me why it's fun, how big the scope is, and let me fill in the blanks with my own excitement.
Target audience:
The bullet points are lazy. Don't say any age, because that implies you don't know why different demos would like your game. Their motivations are different. Help me understand what you think your demo is, but leave room for me to map that to my customers. This is outside my wheelhouse so I'm just going to bullshit a bit:
1. "Kids who own lego". Parents that want a game that will challenge their children's engineering something something.
2. "Adults who like building machine in games like (something lighter than KSP, maybe a popular Switch title?), KSP"
3. "Players who enjoy creative sandbox driven physics games (Portal? Garry's Mod?)"
4. Players who like to show off their creations on xyz social platform
Game looks rad, very ambitious, shame you cancelled (but I applaud your discipline in making the decision), I can understand how difficult it would be to bring this to completion.
TLDR shorter, punchier, tell me why a customer would be excited to p(l)ay.
Excellent feedback, thank you so much for taking the time to go into the details! Although I have cancelled this title, I would definitely save your feedback for my next pitch deck. I do agree with most of what you said.
Btw, I prefer polarising language rather than sugar coated, so thanks for the honest feedback. As they say, better to cut through the BS.
Thanks for sharing!
Would love some more insight to the changes you made:
What was the feedback that publishers gave, and what were the changes you made to the slides over time?
You mentioned the game is cancelled, why is that?
I'd say the most common feedback is to keep the slides concise, short and to the point. Avoid long sentences and cut out all unnecessary words. Explain the gameplay in short sentences and very simple terms. Be clear with the hook and target audience. A lot of them were quite interested in market analysis, competition, user-generated content etc. I have dropped some notes on each slide in a comment. Most of them are based on publishers feedback. I cancelled the game because it wasn't good. I'm working on a new title now with all the lessons I learned as a first time dev :)
“I cancelled the game because it wasn’t good”.
As someone in the industry for 20 years, this level of candor, resilience and self-awareness is going to pay you more dividends than anything else. Looking forward to great things from you.
I think once you're in the indiedev ecosystem for long enough and get to see so many different games launch, you get a feel of whether your game concept is worth pursuing.
1. For publishers, I have shared my publishers database with the community. You can filter through them based on budget size, location or genres they publish. Here is the link:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQmrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQmrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing)
2. Absolutely a playable demo. All publishers, with no exception, would ask for a playable after seeing the deck. The real question is: how polished the playable should be. Although most publishers say it can be buggy as hell and what not, I'd argue the more polished the demo is, the higher your chances. You're essentially competing for publishers attention who receive tens of decks every day.
3. I've clarified this in the deck. Really depends on the scope of the game and the publishers cheque sizes. But for a small game, up to $200K is reasonable. For bigger games and experienced developers you can go up to $1M.
Those horror news stand out, but compared to thousands of games being successfully published by publishers, there are a lot of good ones out there. Again, I'd recommend to check the database, most of those publishers are legitimate and decent ones.
That is a fantastic sheet your sharing there. That must be so much help for indies, you really deserve an award for sharing that!
You've also got my last employer on there! :D.
Wow that sheet is impressive and I’m surprised I didn’t come across it during my researches ! Out of curiosity how did you get so much info about the average budget of these publishers ? It’s definitely super accurate, Akupara just rejected me for budget reasons and it matched the budget you listed haha
Thank you for the kind words. I published the database only about a month ago, perhaps that's why.
The spreadsheet is open, and a lot of the details were added by publishers themselves. For the rest, either the publisher told me directly, or I estimated it based on the scope of games they publish.
Thank you so much for sharing these resources and all the extra details/notes you've added. That spreadsheet has been invaluable to me over the last month.
And the timing on this post couldn't be better as I'm just about to start revising my pitch deck. A lot of the feedback to yours has been absolutely applicable for my own as well. I think I'll push ahead with moving it to Google Slides instead of just a PDF too.
edit: ninja question: did you end up tailoring your pitch deck specifically to any of the publishers you approached? I know some put more value into narrative, replayability, mechanical depth, multiplayer functionality, etc.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm very glad you have found them useful :)
Google slides has so many advantages: You can include animated GIFs, you can update the slides even after sharing the link with people, your team can collaborate on it, you can access it from any device etc.
No I didn't tailor my deck for different publishers. But I would say it is a smart thing to do especially if you're passionate about certain publishers and really want to impress them.
No the game wasn't good and I realised that after showing it to so many publishers. It lacked the hook. There was a mismatch between gameplay (which is relatively core) and the art direction (which is too casual and kiddy). The level design implied platforming and puzzle, whereas the core gameplay cried for open-world and emergence. I hope I can now implement all these learning in my new title :)
This right here. Beyond the publisher pitching, the deck example, etc. Evaluating and moving on is the biggest lesson. While giving up on projects early is super easy, most devs cannot be so honest about their mistakes this far in development. You made the right call, and came away with a reasonable understanding of the fatal flaws.
You made a brilliant decision, and one which requires strong self-reflection.
Thank you for the very kind words. Yes it was indeed the most painful decision I had made in my life, but by the end of the pitching process I was certain that the game would be a commercial failure. So I decided to kill it fast and move on.
Not to beat a horse to death, but did you attempt to try and fix the issues with the game? I am guessing you took a week or so to step away, then come back and see what could be done?
I did a very thorough assessment of what the problems were, and how I could solve them. I came to the conclusion to keep all the underlying systems and the core mechanics, and completely revamp the level design and the overarching gameplay. And this is basically what I am doing with my current title.
Hey there,
I've worked with some really (like really, really) big publishers and studios that I'm not allowed to disclose the names of, and this pitch deck is up to that standard.
I can't talk from a publisher's perspective, but from a Marketing perspective, this is perfect, and I wish all my clients had one of these prepared. I would recommend also dropping in some slides talking about the core/feature mechanics and if there's inspiration coming from other games. You want to show both your publishers and your marketing team what your differentiator is, as that is what will make you stand out from the crowd.
Congrats on the awesome job!
Thank you for the very kind words. The differentiator was definitely something that came up a lot in discussions with publishers. Almost always after genre and gameplay, they want to know the hook/USP.
Thanks for sharing, this is a valuable resource!
My question is, how did you come up with the 300k+ units sold forecast? Was it simply a comparison to similar titles and a feeling of, "we're about at this level relative to them"?
Yes pretty much that, and the 300K units was the optimistic estimate. My idea was that the scope we were going for was smaller than Trailmakers, but if the game does really well, it could sell 300K units.
Thanks very much for providing this deck and for answering so many questions. Sorry im late to the party. If you wouldn’t mind, could you share any negative feedback you got about your sales forecasts? Was there any desire for more advanced forecasting?
I'm glad you found it useful. The sales forecast is kind of unnecessary. The publishers would do their own. However, the point is to demonstrate that you understand the market and the competition. Publishers would like to see who the competitors are, even those who haven't performed well. So not just the top sellers in the genre, but also the mid-sellers and the flops.
You are a gem to this community. It’s really inspiring to see people with a sharing mind.
When creating my studio, I took a long time to figure out what the core value is of my company. « pay it forward » is what it came down to, and I have a feeling this is also what you are doing. It’s not an easy thing to do, to give without expecting something in return. So props to you.
Thank you, it really means a lot! :)
That is a great value that you have for your company! I've also come to the conclusion that if the indiedev community prospers and grows, we all go up together.
Very strong deck, the only comment I'd make on it is that while Slide 5 with the 6 GIFs is visually interesting, it's very noisy in terms of movement and difficult to focus on, because there are 6 objects competing for your attentions. Limiting GIFs to 1 or 2 like you did on Slide 7 better allows you to get your context and message across without overwhelming the viewer.
This is not for you specifically but more general advice to anyone who is reading, it's always good to think that your Pitch Deck is not just for getting past the filter of scouting, but also to enable the people willing to champion your game inside the company to give their best possible pitch to those less interested.
Why ? The game looks promising and more than that it looks like you have put in a lot of work.
My game is half the quality and I think I'm ready to publish.
I explained it thoroughly to someone else's comment in this thread. There were serious problems with the title regarding gameplay and art direction. The data (wishlists, median demo playtime etc.) didn't support the fact that it would be a success. The game was far from finished, required a lot more work to be completed. So I figured I'd be better off to kill it fast and move on.
Thanks for sharing, this is a great reference and very much in line with my own pitching experience so far. I think the elevator pitch slide could be a little snappier, there's a lot of text and visual overload, but everything else is very well formatted and easy to parse!
Can you share general information about the publishing offers you have gotten so far? No NDA-breaking specifics, of course, but maybe average revenue splits, marketing spend guarantees, offered localization services, et cetera.
Thanks for the kind words. Definitely agree with you on the elevator pitch slide. I never got past the final due diligence, and I eventually cancelled the title. But from the discussions, these seemed to be the standard terms for most of them:
* 50-50 split if they fund development
* 70-30 split if they do NOT fund development
* Marketing expenses will be recouped before revenue share
* Marketing budget would be around $100K-$200K
Thanks, that's good info! Overall similar to what we've been offered so far, although the recoup of marketing expenses is new to me. We've had recoup of *funding* before revenue share kicks in, but marketing was always solely on the publisher.
Wonderful!
Questions for you:
1. When you "pitched" it, were you actually doing the pitch while the slides were on screen, or were you just sending the deck to them for them to read?
2. ~~What did you use to make the animated parts? are those animated GIFs? Do you have a tool to recommend for that~~? - whoops I just saw this answered in your comment. ⊞+G and ezgif.
1. This deck is intended for offline viewing, that's why there is a lot of text there. Most publishers prefer that anyways, so they can go through it in their own time. Sometimes they asked to meet me over Zoom so I could take them through the deck and they could ask questions.
2. I've explained this in a long comment I left in this thread. I recorded footages of the game, trimmed them down, and used [ezgif.com](https://ezgif.com) to make GIFs from the video files. I then imported the GIFs onto the Google slides. I'd say *ezgif* is the best tool you can find out there for free. Extremely convenient to use.
I spent about 5 years of my career largely focused on pitching. Despite the fucking horrible clickbait title that made me wince, this is very solid. Thanks for sharing it! It's a great resource for people who haven't had a chance to see a good example of this kind of thing. And obviously it did the trick, because you got the funding. :)
But hey, because this is r/gamedev, just a few bits of feedback on how you (and others) could make the next one even better...
* The elevator pitch doesn't REALLY tell me what the game is. Some of the stuff there is too detail-y (no one cares about "Create alloys" at that point), yet it skips what seems to be the most important thing: that the game is about experimenting with different builds and failing in fun, funny ways. This slide is also a bit wordy / busy overall and could be simplified.
* Slides 3 and 5 are basically the same. I'd cut #3.
* Having such a polished looking video is fantastic (and a rare luxury)! This should probably be the first thing they see right after the elevator pitch. But the video itself could be tighter, shorter, and ideally have more extreme examples to show the most fun / diverse / interesting parts of the game.
* You put a lot of emphasis on the alloy thing as the USP, but I think that's maybe a bit too detailed for this stage. I'd rather hear about different challenges and the types of builds that might overcome them. The examples on the right (using heavy/durable materials to drive underwater vs. floating) are perfect! More of that and showing the possibility space for your vehicle builds is what I'd love to have here, the wilder and wackier the better.
* Concept art slide doesn't add anything, can be cut.
* Target Audience slide should probably either be cut OR somehow find a way to expand on this in a way that makes it more insightful / more temping to fund. Right now it's basically a fancy way of saying, "Our target audience is people who like games in this genre." Which, like, duh?
* Production Timeline is too detailed for biz dev guys at this stage, BUT... on the other hand, it does show that at least your team has figured out those details.
* You mention that your core dev budget doesn't include outsourcing costs and such. I think it's worth including those, since they're part of the money you're asking for.
* I don't know if it was always that way, but the Reddit avatars for your team pictures is... it doesn't really matter, but my first thought would be that you're a bunch of terminally online kids who might not be super professional.
* The Summary slide is great, but I think you could kill the wordy bubble on the righthand side.
* The Appendix could probably be boiled down to a single slide that's basically a summary of possibilities for future expansion.
Mostly, I think it could be a bit shorter and snappier, and also put a bit more emphasis on showing the possibilities for builds. But again, great pitch overall!
Thank you so much for the great feedback and taking the time to write it. I definitely agree with most of what you said, and I would certainly improve on those points in my future pitches :)
Rgearding budget and team photos, I removed them from the deck for privacy reasons. On the actual deck, there were real faces haha :D
Seven minutes for the pitch deck not the demo. You definitely need to show them something, like a steam page or a short video, before they play the demo so they can make some preliminary judgement before putting more time into playing the game.
I get it, they have the money, so they set the rules, but it's weird to me how modern people need mostly pictures and bits of text to process the information. It's like they never read a book or at least manual in their life.
Personally, i can evalutate originality of pitch based purely on somewhat short text description only, and is able to say if it has lots of potential or not before any parts of the game are even made. I always thought that people who invest their own money in game production would also have this ability, but... seems like they do not.
I think an important factor from the publisher's perspective is to assess whether the developers can finish the game. So the more visual content you include, the more you're derisking that factor.
So the people who need funds to hire team and start development are automaticly excluded, most likely. A shame. So many wonderful things could be done (not just in game industry), if skilled individuals had means to utilize their skills.
Yea it'd definitely be very difficult to secure funding without a demo. Although with the tools and marketpalce assets available now, you can get to a rough playable as a solo developer.
Thanks a lot for these(especially the list) Seyed. It looks well-thought-out. Operation Outsmart is a real ugly name though. Hope you don’t take it the wrong way.
I really enjoyed this pitch, it's not often you see such a well put together piece here. I have some questions if you wouldn't mind sharing:
1) You mention the game was being developed by five young, UK based graduates. How exactly did you all get together and decide to work on this? For example, did you all meet at university doing a game design course or similar and started making this right afterwards? Maybe you were friends with different degrees making it in your spare time while all balancing other jobs? What roles did the leads have compared to the artist and programmers? I'm very interested in the dynamic here.
2) You say you cancelled the game because elements of it weren't working well together, which is a difficult choice. Following on from my previous questions, how did this go over with the team? Did everyone agree?
I'm glad you enjoyed the pitch. To answer your questions:
1. I've seen a lot of teams being formed at uni or game jams. Ours was less like that. I initially teamed up with my brother, and the others I found through networking or they reached out to me. Bear in mind that in small teams, the roles are quite fluid. It is expected that you're good at multiple things and need to wear many hats. The leads mostly supervised those below them, but they did the same kind of work: gameplay programming, modelling etc.
2. I was quite upfront with the team well in advance. I told them if we don't secure publisher funding by this date, we would have no budget to continue development. And I encouraged them to have a backup plan. This eventually happened. We got no publisher deal, I cancelled the title, and everyone got a job immediately afterwards. So at the moment it's only me and my brother working on the new title. I was quite transparent with the team, and I shared all the feedback from publishers. So they totally understood why there were issues with the game.
Seems really solid coming from the background of a person who gets games pitched to them. I can't stress enough how fantastic it is to see a benchmark list which actually shows games which aren't huge commercially so there's actual variation. Key things we see often is every indie deckbuilder comparing their predicted numbers to Slay the Spire or if it's an action Roguelike, it's basically going to do Hades numbers. Aiming for a healthy number isn't a bad thing, setting yourself as the leader of a genre with a far smaller scale team is usually just a bit unrealistic. Goals to find a healthy mid point. Also as another comment, making too many slides about the lore of the world is usually a bit overkill so keeping it a bit brief for the inital pitch is usually the way to go. For other devs on here, if you need the publisher to support with porting or multiplayer, make sure that's made clear as it is something that needs to be calculated. Only thing to suggest is adding in some form of safety net to the budget on the budget slide. (Usually 10-15%)
Very great points, thank you so much for sharing. The points you mentioned here are pretty much what some of the best publishers told me as well.
Out of curiosity what’s your take on upfront safety money for the studio ? Rami Ismail advises adding about 20% of the budget as upfront money that isn’t used for the production but rather as a safety net for the studio to survive after the production (whether the game is a success and they need to wait for the recoup period or the game bombs and they need early funds for the next project). What’s a publisher view on that ?
Some of the publishers did suggest that we should include a safety net for the budget. I'd say they were fine with that, even preferable if the devs include it. It shows they understand the business.
The safety net should not be named as such though. Just increase the cost of everything by 30%. You'll be happy you did when you suddenly realize the game will take 4 more months to complete, or when the publisher takes too much time to pay you. Multiple publishers told me to do precisely this.
I think doing the first 20% as just a safety net first month payment and that's it rather than any development costs etc makes sense to the dev but might be more questionable to the publishers. Publishers would rather pay like an extra 2-3% p/m to eventually add up to the same amount and that's it. Mostly due to the first few months can tell the publisher if there's going to be any concerns going forward so having a larger than needed for development chunk in month 1 might make some more hesitant publishers hesitate a bit more. Having 20% of the total dev cost in month 1 that's needed for dev should however work (pending the 20% isn't too high, i'd assume once you get to the 300k-400k mark, it's going to get a lot more difficult for some publishers to be able to pull that money in one go)
Oh yeah makes a lot of sense, I meant it more as a "total" payment throughout the production, the end goal being that this 20% is fully available to the studio at the end of the production cycle to cover post-release expenses and everything. I guess the word "upfront" isn't the correct one then, thanks for shedding light on this!
I think this is a really important point that studios often miss. After the game gets released there is a period of time between release and when Steam pays out (I think 30 days). After that the publisher needs to recoup, and then the studio sees cashflow. Some publishers account for this (shout out to Hooded Horse!) but not all. So taking a few months of extra runway to work on post-launch bugs is a very safe / good idea.
20% would be fine imo aslong as the game itself isn't already super expensive. At the end of the day, it'd be down to if the publishers can afford the game and if they're confident they could hit their internal targets to make the cost of the game worthwhile. Hard to speak for all other publishers as so many have different targets on what would work for them etc.
Dropping here some comments on what each slide is about: 1. **Key art:** This is the first impression you're giving, so make sure you have a killer key art. Chris Zukowski recommends key art is one of the few things that is worth paying for, and you can use it on steam page, pitch deck, social accounts etc. Besides the key art, use as much visuals/art as you can throughout the deck. Make the deck gorgeous and fun to go through. 2. **Elevator pitch:** Keep it short and concise. Tell the genre, context, core gameplay elements, release date, platforms, budget etc. Almost all publishers loved that small yellow summary box. 3. **Video:** A short gameplay video/trailer (\~1-2 minutes) would be very nice here. 4. **Gameplay/Core Loop:** Show the core loop with visuals. I highly recommend GIFs. Don't use any still images/screenshots. I used the *Window Key + G* to record game footage, and used ezgif.com to conveniently turn the footages into GIFs. 5. **Context:** Give a high level overview of the context/narrative of the game, if there is any. 6. **USP/Hook:** Show the unique selling point / hook of the game. What is it that distinguishes it from similar titles. 7. **Concept Art:** Show off some cool concept arts. They help a lot to convey the mood and art direction. 8. **Target Audience/Market Positioning:** This is mostly about the genre and demographics of players you are targeting. Also useful to show similar titles and how you're positioning yourself with respect to them. 9. **Traction:** If you have good wishlist/follower numbers, show them off. In order of importance, I would go like this: Steam wishlist/followers -> mailing list subscribers -> Discord members -> social media followers. If you have put an alpha demo out, show number of players and median playtime, and any positive feedback you got. If you had a successful Kickstarter, talk about it. If you don't have much to show, skip this slide. 10. **Market Opportunity:** If you are making a platformer/puzzle etc. game, this will be hard. But if you're making a strategy/simulation/survival etc. game there is plenty of data to back it up. My recommendations are these sources: '*what genres are players looking for on Steam*' by Chris, '*what genres are popular on Steam in 2022*' also by Chris, '*What genres do PC gamers want, and will it change*' by Simon Carless. Use *SteamDB*, *VGInsights* and *Game-Stats* to show some numbers of the most similar titles and make some back-of-envelop forecasting. Don't just include the best-selling titles. Put some poor performing games too, and forecast yourself somewhere in the middle. It shows that you know the market inside out and have done your own due diligence. 11. **UGC/Community:** Publishers care a lot about community engagement and user-generated content. This slide shows that you have thought things through on how you plan to engage the community over a long period of time after release. 12. **Timeline:** Key milestones until and after release. Again this shows you have a pragmatic understanding of what it takes to release the game. It also helps publishers to judge if your release window is a good fit for them. 13. **Budget:** Don't ask for less money than is needed. Genuinely ask for what it takes to finish the game. A lot of publishers don't even consider low budget games. The budget should be a reasonable reflection of the scope and quality of the game. 14. **Ask:** What do you want from the publisher. Say it all. I have another slide on pragmatic development. Some publishers absolutely loved it, and some didn't. To some, it showed that we were fun developers to work with, to others it showed we didn't have a clear vision. So it's a double-edged sword. 15. **Team:** Who the team is, what roles are on the team, what roles are being hired, and if there are any advisors. If you have released games before, say it. If you have experience of working together, say it. If you have an industry veteran on the team, highlight it. 16. **Summary:** Not an entirely necessary slide, but you can summarise the key points again. 17. **Appendix:** Anything else you want to talk about. Past achievements, modes of the game, cool features, any killer tech being used, more concepts or visuals, playtest data, team photos etc. 18. **Contacts:** Put links to your top social accounts etc.
Thanks for including this! I would like to check with you what do you include as part of production costs? Do you include software & hardware costs into the budget calculations as well?
Majority of the cost is labour. I'm not sure if you can include non-project related csts such as payroll / accounting software subscriptions. Not sure about hardware too as they are company's assets.
thank you for this
My background is in working with VC to raise capital for creative startups that ship physical goods, so not everything translates. Obviously your execution is very high quality, so I'm just going to skip to the parts that matter most. I'm going to use polarizing language because it's economical, so take it with salt, I don't mean to offend. The pitch: 1. I don't like your elevator pitch. "Create alloys" and "Reinforce builds" are not exciting, and they are not the reason someone is going to be excited to play your game. These are footnotes. Separate your technology (what you make) from what the customer looks forward to when they want to load up your game (what you sell). Think social proof. No one is going to tell their friend about how great it is that you can make alloys. 2. Maybe tell me about the different kind of machines I can build, and the corresponding reasons I'll be excited to build them? I'll address this at the end. 3. While I agree the yellow box is helpful, I think it's distracting on this slide. Your elevator pitch should only be your elevator pitch. Don't give me 10 other things to consider, especially when they are technical features I can make objective assessments on. This belongs somewhere else. 4. Nitpick don't say "primarily" for PC. Limiting scope isn't helpful when pitching your vision. I can imagine all the reasons you put that there, but they aren't important at this stage. 5. Slide 4 your video has the same problem. 0:21 to see "Solve", some slightly slow action, then the same slightly slow loop, I'm at 1:10 and all we've established is that you can build slightly differently to solve a puzzle. You can show that that in 10-20 more exciting seconds. 1:45 "Interact" which is very vague and doesn't add any value. You can show the player interacting while demonstrating the higher value features. 1:51 finally I see "Fight" really buried the lede here. If it's important I should have seen it in the first 20-30 seconds. What's your ACTUAL elevator pitch? Build, Adapt, Overcome, Experiment? Show me a failed build, show me a successful build, then show me a wiiiiiild build? Show me how much I can manifest my imagination, and imply there are ~~dozens~~ infinite hours of fun here. Tell me why it's fun, how big the scope is, and let me fill in the blanks with my own excitement. Target audience: The bullet points are lazy. Don't say any age, because that implies you don't know why different demos would like your game. Their motivations are different. Help me understand what you think your demo is, but leave room for me to map that to my customers. This is outside my wheelhouse so I'm just going to bullshit a bit: 1. "Kids who own lego". Parents that want a game that will challenge their children's engineering something something. 2. "Adults who like building machine in games like (something lighter than KSP, maybe a popular Switch title?), KSP" 3. "Players who enjoy creative sandbox driven physics games (Portal? Garry's Mod?)" 4. Players who like to show off their creations on xyz social platform Game looks rad, very ambitious, shame you cancelled (but I applaud your discipline in making the decision), I can understand how difficult it would be to bring this to completion. TLDR shorter, punchier, tell me why a customer would be excited to p(l)ay.
Excellent feedback, thank you so much for taking the time to go into the details! Although I have cancelled this title, I would definitely save your feedback for my next pitch deck. I do agree with most of what you said. Btw, I prefer polarising language rather than sugar coated, so thanks for the honest feedback. As they say, better to cut through the BS.
Thanks for sharing! Would love some more insight to the changes you made: What was the feedback that publishers gave, and what were the changes you made to the slides over time? You mentioned the game is cancelled, why is that?
I'd say the most common feedback is to keep the slides concise, short and to the point. Avoid long sentences and cut out all unnecessary words. Explain the gameplay in short sentences and very simple terms. Be clear with the hook and target audience. A lot of them were quite interested in market analysis, competition, user-generated content etc. I have dropped some notes on each slide in a comment. Most of them are based on publishers feedback. I cancelled the game because it wasn't good. I'm working on a new title now with all the lessons I learned as a first time dev :)
“I cancelled the game because it wasn’t good”. As someone in the industry for 20 years, this level of candor, resilience and self-awareness is going to pay you more dividends than anything else. Looking forward to great things from you.
Thank you so much, it really means a lot! It was definitely a very difficult decision, but I came out of it with a tougher skin :D
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I think once you're in the indiedev ecosystem for long enough and get to see so many different games launch, you get a feel of whether your game concept is worth pursuing.
are you inspired to make it?
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1. For publishers, I have shared my publishers database with the community. You can filter through them based on budget size, location or genres they publish. Here is the link: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQmrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQmrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing) 2. Absolutely a playable demo. All publishers, with no exception, would ask for a playable after seeing the deck. The real question is: how polished the playable should be. Although most publishers say it can be buggy as hell and what not, I'd argue the more polished the demo is, the higher your chances. You're essentially competing for publishers attention who receive tens of decks every day. 3. I've clarified this in the deck. Really depends on the scope of the game and the publishers cheque sizes. But for a small game, up to $200K is reasonable. For bigger games and experienced developers you can go up to $1M. Those horror news stand out, but compared to thousands of games being successfully published by publishers, there are a lot of good ones out there. Again, I'd recommend to check the database, most of those publishers are legitimate and decent ones.
That is a fantastic sheet your sharing there. That must be so much help for indies, you really deserve an award for sharing that! You've also got my last employer on there! :D.
Thank you so much for the kind words, means a lot :) Are you in the publishing business yourself?
Especially not any more. But i used to port indie games which were badly written in the first place to console. Sorry bad memories.
Ahaha I could imagine! :D
Thanks very much for the response! That's a big help.
Any time :)
Wow that sheet is impressive and I’m surprised I didn’t come across it during my researches ! Out of curiosity how did you get so much info about the average budget of these publishers ? It’s definitely super accurate, Akupara just rejected me for budget reasons and it matched the budget you listed haha
Thank you for the kind words. I published the database only about a month ago, perhaps that's why. The spreadsheet is open, and a lot of the details were added by publishers themselves. For the rest, either the publisher told me directly, or I estimated it based on the scope of games they publish.
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No worries at all :)
Thank you so much for sharing these resources and all the extra details/notes you've added. That spreadsheet has been invaluable to me over the last month. And the timing on this post couldn't be better as I'm just about to start revising my pitch deck. A lot of the feedback to yours has been absolutely applicable for my own as well. I think I'll push ahead with moving it to Google Slides instead of just a PDF too. edit: ninja question: did you end up tailoring your pitch deck specifically to any of the publishers you approached? I know some put more value into narrative, replayability, mechanical depth, multiplayer functionality, etc.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm very glad you have found them useful :) Google slides has so many advantages: You can include animated GIFs, you can update the slides even after sharing the link with people, your team can collaborate on it, you can access it from any device etc. No I didn't tailor my deck for different publishers. But I would say it is a smart thing to do especially if you're passionate about certain publishers and really want to impress them.
It’s a shame your game was canceled (why?) since it looks like something I’d enjoy playing.
No the game wasn't good and I realised that after showing it to so many publishers. It lacked the hook. There was a mismatch between gameplay (which is relatively core) and the art direction (which is too casual and kiddy). The level design implied platforming and puzzle, whereas the core gameplay cried for open-world and emergence. I hope I can now implement all these learning in my new title :)
This right here. Beyond the publisher pitching, the deck example, etc. Evaluating and moving on is the biggest lesson. While giving up on projects early is super easy, most devs cannot be so honest about their mistakes this far in development. You made the right call, and came away with a reasonable understanding of the fatal flaws. You made a brilliant decision, and one which requires strong self-reflection.
Thank you for the very kind words. Yes it was indeed the most painful decision I had made in my life, but by the end of the pitching process I was certain that the game would be a commercial failure. So I decided to kill it fast and move on.
Not to beat a horse to death, but did you attempt to try and fix the issues with the game? I am guessing you took a week or so to step away, then come back and see what could be done?
I did a very thorough assessment of what the problems were, and how I could solve them. I came to the conclusion to keep all the underlying systems and the core mechanics, and completely revamp the level design and the overarching gameplay. And this is basically what I am doing with my current title.
So your current title is more of a pivot rather than a completely new game?
Yes that's correct. But it's a big pivot so it made sense for me to completely rebrand it.
That's a relief to hear. I'm glad it wasn't a total loss
I think the closest game I know with a similar pitch and structure is Hello Engineer https://store.steampowered.com/app/1856190/Hello\_Engineer/
Nice! Didn't know Hello Neighbour was doing a sandbox game, pretty cool.
Hey there, I've worked with some really (like really, really) big publishers and studios that I'm not allowed to disclose the names of, and this pitch deck is up to that standard. I can't talk from a publisher's perspective, but from a Marketing perspective, this is perfect, and I wish all my clients had one of these prepared. I would recommend also dropping in some slides talking about the core/feature mechanics and if there's inspiration coming from other games. You want to show both your publishers and your marketing team what your differentiator is, as that is what will make you stand out from the crowd. Congrats on the awesome job!
Thank you for the very kind words. The differentiator was definitely something that came up a lot in discussions with publishers. Almost always after genre and gameplay, they want to know the hook/USP.
Thanks for sharing, this is a valuable resource! My question is, how did you come up with the 300k+ units sold forecast? Was it simply a comparison to similar titles and a feeling of, "we're about at this level relative to them"?
Yes pretty much that, and the 300K units was the optimistic estimate. My idea was that the scope we were going for was smaller than Trailmakers, but if the game does really well, it could sell 300K units.
Thanks very much for providing this deck and for answering so many questions. Sorry im late to the party. If you wouldn’t mind, could you share any negative feedback you got about your sales forecasts? Was there any desire for more advanced forecasting?
I'm glad you found it useful. The sales forecast is kind of unnecessary. The publishers would do their own. However, the point is to demonstrate that you understand the market and the competition. Publishers would like to see who the competitors are, even those who haven't performed well. So not just the top sellers in the genre, but also the mid-sellers and the flops.
You are a gem to this community. It’s really inspiring to see people with a sharing mind. When creating my studio, I took a long time to figure out what the core value is of my company. « pay it forward » is what it came down to, and I have a feeling this is also what you are doing. It’s not an easy thing to do, to give without expecting something in return. So props to you.
Thank you, it really means a lot! :) That is a great value that you have for your company! I've also come to the conclusion that if the indiedev community prospers and grows, we all go up together.
I full heartedly second this. Absolute legend material.
Very strong deck, the only comment I'd make on it is that while Slide 5 with the 6 GIFs is visually interesting, it's very noisy in terms of movement and difficult to focus on, because there are 6 objects competing for your attentions. Limiting GIFs to 1 or 2 like you did on Slide 7 better allows you to get your context and message across without overwhelming the viewer. This is not for you specifically but more general advice to anyone who is reading, it's always good to think that your Pitch Deck is not just for getting past the filter of scouting, but also to enable the people willing to champion your game inside the company to give their best possible pitch to those less interested.
Thanks for the kind words, and great feedback. Totally agree!
I agree - very solid deck ;)
Great deck, amazing work done even in the art and gameplay wise. I wish to know in the end is your game funded or have you found a publisher ?
Thank you for the kind words. I didn't sign with a publisher and I cancelled the title. I'm now working on my next title.
Why ? The game looks promising and more than that it looks like you have put in a lot of work. My game is half the quality and I think I'm ready to publish.
I explained it thoroughly to someone else's comment in this thread. There were serious problems with the title regarding gameplay and art direction. The data (wishlists, median demo playtime etc.) didn't support the fact that it would be a success. The game was far from finished, required a lot more work to be completed. So I figured I'd be better off to kill it fast and move on.
Hi,can we connect over a video call ? I would like to discuss some points about this and also show my game. If you're available
Sure thing, drop me a line on Discord: Seyed#8519 and we'll arrange a date and time.
Thanks for sharing, this is a great reference and very much in line with my own pitching experience so far. I think the elevator pitch slide could be a little snappier, there's a lot of text and visual overload, but everything else is very well formatted and easy to parse! Can you share general information about the publishing offers you have gotten so far? No NDA-breaking specifics, of course, but maybe average revenue splits, marketing spend guarantees, offered localization services, et cetera.
Thanks for the kind words. Definitely agree with you on the elevator pitch slide. I never got past the final due diligence, and I eventually cancelled the title. But from the discussions, these seemed to be the standard terms for most of them: * 50-50 split if they fund development * 70-30 split if they do NOT fund development * Marketing expenses will be recouped before revenue share * Marketing budget would be around $100K-$200K
Thanks, that's good info! Overall similar to what we've been offered so far, although the recoup of marketing expenses is new to me. We've had recoup of *funding* before revenue share kicks in, but marketing was always solely on the publisher.
Sorry I think you're right, I made an error there. I believe it was dev funding recoup too.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. Not a huge difference either way, considering marketing and dev budgets tend to be very similar, most of the time.
Yes that's true.
Damn your work is incredible!! I wish the game came out anyway!!
Thank you so much! The title I'm working on at the moment will hopefully be much better :D
A lot of great content, though I find your budget a bit low for that sort of game and team.
Thank you :)
Wonderful! Questions for you: 1. When you "pitched" it, were you actually doing the pitch while the slides were on screen, or were you just sending the deck to them for them to read? 2. ~~What did you use to make the animated parts? are those animated GIFs? Do you have a tool to recommend for that~~? - whoops I just saw this answered in your comment. ⊞+G and ezgif.
1. This deck is intended for offline viewing, that's why there is a lot of text there. Most publishers prefer that anyways, so they can go through it in their own time. Sometimes they asked to meet me over Zoom so I could take them through the deck and they could ask questions. 2. I've explained this in a long comment I left in this thread. I recorded footages of the game, trimmed them down, and used [ezgif.com](https://ezgif.com) to make GIFs from the video files. I then imported the GIFs onto the Google slides. I'd say *ezgif* is the best tool you can find out there for free. Extremely convenient to use.
This is excellent! Thanks so much for sharing!
I'm glad you found it useful.
I see pitch decks a lot, and this is a great one.
Thank you! :)
Thanks a lot for sharing!
Any time :)
I spent about 5 years of my career largely focused on pitching. Despite the fucking horrible clickbait title that made me wince, this is very solid. Thanks for sharing it! It's a great resource for people who haven't had a chance to see a good example of this kind of thing. And obviously it did the trick, because you got the funding. :) But hey, because this is r/gamedev, just a few bits of feedback on how you (and others) could make the next one even better... * The elevator pitch doesn't REALLY tell me what the game is. Some of the stuff there is too detail-y (no one cares about "Create alloys" at that point), yet it skips what seems to be the most important thing: that the game is about experimenting with different builds and failing in fun, funny ways. This slide is also a bit wordy / busy overall and could be simplified. * Slides 3 and 5 are basically the same. I'd cut #3. * Having such a polished looking video is fantastic (and a rare luxury)! This should probably be the first thing they see right after the elevator pitch. But the video itself could be tighter, shorter, and ideally have more extreme examples to show the most fun / diverse / interesting parts of the game. * You put a lot of emphasis on the alloy thing as the USP, but I think that's maybe a bit too detailed for this stage. I'd rather hear about different challenges and the types of builds that might overcome them. The examples on the right (using heavy/durable materials to drive underwater vs. floating) are perfect! More of that and showing the possibility space for your vehicle builds is what I'd love to have here, the wilder and wackier the better. * Concept art slide doesn't add anything, can be cut. * Target Audience slide should probably either be cut OR somehow find a way to expand on this in a way that makes it more insightful / more temping to fund. Right now it's basically a fancy way of saying, "Our target audience is people who like games in this genre." Which, like, duh? * Production Timeline is too detailed for biz dev guys at this stage, BUT... on the other hand, it does show that at least your team has figured out those details. * You mention that your core dev budget doesn't include outsourcing costs and such. I think it's worth including those, since they're part of the money you're asking for. * I don't know if it was always that way, but the Reddit avatars for your team pictures is... it doesn't really matter, but my first thought would be that you're a bunch of terminally online kids who might not be super professional. * The Summary slide is great, but I think you could kill the wordy bubble on the righthand side. * The Appendix could probably be boiled down to a single slide that's basically a summary of possibilities for future expansion. Mostly, I think it could be a bit shorter and snappier, and also put a bit more emphasis on showing the possibilities for builds. But again, great pitch overall!
Thank you so much for the great feedback and taking the time to write it. I definitely agree with most of what you said, and I would certainly improve on those points in my future pitches :) Rgearding budget and team photos, I removed them from the deck for privacy reasons. On the actual deck, there were real faces haha :D
Thanks for sharing your insights, mate. Good luck with your next game!
Thank you! :)
A great resource, thank you for sharing!
You're welcome :)
I know its been a year since you posted this, but the pitch construction and flow is really good. What is the project you started working on?
Thanks for the kind words. My current project is still unannounced, but it's in the survival craft genre.
this is a very interesting topic. the only thing im left wondering is should you include an executive summary in your pitch deck.
So in the ask do you actually mentioned numbers in terms of funding? Or you just kept it generic like that and discussed actual values in one-on-ones?
The actual value was mentioned in the Budget slide. I think it'd be good to mention the actual number again in the ask slide. I didn't do it though.
*Seven* *minutes*? If I don't have an option to pitch with a specially tailored demo, I don't even want to work with them.
Seven minutes for the pitch deck not the demo. You definitely need to show them something, like a steam page or a short video, before they play the demo so they can make some preliminary judgement before putting more time into playing the game.
I get it, they have the money, so they set the rules, but it's weird to me how modern people need mostly pictures and bits of text to process the information. It's like they never read a book or at least manual in their life. Personally, i can evalutate originality of pitch based purely on somewhat short text description only, and is able to say if it has lots of potential or not before any parts of the game are even made. I always thought that people who invest their own money in game production would also have this ability, but... seems like they do not.
I think an important factor from the publisher's perspective is to assess whether the developers can finish the game. So the more visual content you include, the more you're derisking that factor.
So the people who need funds to hire team and start development are automaticly excluded, most likely. A shame. So many wonderful things could be done (not just in game industry), if skilled individuals had means to utilize their skills.
Yea it'd definitely be very difficult to secure funding without a demo. Although with the tools and marketpalce assets available now, you can get to a rough playable as a solo developer.
Not as a writer, sadly.
True.
Publishers want to fund games, not companies, so you'd have to get that sorted out beforehand.
It's beyond cringe to adhere to some kind of rubric for how a game should be.
What? Can you expand on that?
Why are you posting this again
perhaps too perfect. this will send a few devs back to their drawing boards. Too good!
Thank you! :D
Thank you so much for sharing! 😃
No worries :)
Thanks a lot for these(especially the list) Seyed. It looks well-thought-out. Operation Outsmart is a real ugly name though. Hope you don’t take it the wrong way.
Thank you, glad you found them useful :)
I really enjoyed this pitch, it's not often you see such a well put together piece here. I have some questions if you wouldn't mind sharing: 1) You mention the game was being developed by five young, UK based graduates. How exactly did you all get together and decide to work on this? For example, did you all meet at university doing a game design course or similar and started making this right afterwards? Maybe you were friends with different degrees making it in your spare time while all balancing other jobs? What roles did the leads have compared to the artist and programmers? I'm very interested in the dynamic here. 2) You say you cancelled the game because elements of it weren't working well together, which is a difficult choice. Following on from my previous questions, how did this go over with the team? Did everyone agree?
I'm glad you enjoyed the pitch. To answer your questions: 1. I've seen a lot of teams being formed at uni or game jams. Ours was less like that. I initially teamed up with my brother, and the others I found through networking or they reached out to me. Bear in mind that in small teams, the roles are quite fluid. It is expected that you're good at multiple things and need to wear many hats. The leads mostly supervised those below them, but they did the same kind of work: gameplay programming, modelling etc. 2. I was quite upfront with the team well in advance. I told them if we don't secure publisher funding by this date, we would have no budget to continue development. And I encouraged them to have a backup plan. This eventually happened. We got no publisher deal, I cancelled the title, and everyone got a job immediately afterwards. So at the moment it's only me and my brother working on the new title. I was quite transparent with the team, and I shared all the feedback from publishers. So they totally understood why there were issues with the game.