The final pitches happened late in March, and we’ve had time to feed everything back to the companies. Phil Gaskell, head of XDev Studio Europe had this to say just after everyone had pitched: “I saw some really promising work today. We’re certainly going to be looking further into certain projects, and there’s a chance some of them might make it all the way to PlayStation”

Giong further back into GITG2, the workshop was much bigger than it’s been before, with agile training and some especially effective, but also nerve wracking pitch training, in which people were placed in front of a camera to pitch, only to watch and analyse the tape afterward. Everyone returned a month later to pitch for real money with a game idea, and ultimately five were selected from that first batch of pitches to receive £10K of prototype funding each, going through several subsequent stages on the way to the final pitch improving their pitching skills, knowledge and their prototypes.

It’s been arduous at points; as you can see by the posts below, the dummy pitches to Sony producers were an especially harsh step in the process, but ultimately a valuable one in focussing everything the companies had learned.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid we can’t reveal whether or not any of the prototypes have been picked up by Sony, but some very promising projects came out of the past 8 months. I’d like to thank all of the companies for taking part: It’s All In The Game Baby, Savvy Productions, Pixinworks, Milky Tea and Grant Midwinter. You all did yourselves proud with the prototype funding, and we wish you the best of luck taking your projects further.

first rule of pitch sales techniques…don’t be late.  Oooops. F***

Any nerves we felt on route, were smoked and bitten away, but on arriving at Sony Liverpool, we become serene, and giggly.  It’s a calming building and, though we have genuine doubts as to whether what we want to pitch is of any interest AT ALL to Sony and the guys at Pixel Lab, we’re ready to go for it.  We’ve some nifty slides and a ripomatic we’re proud of and even I’ve grown a set of balls!

So, yes, we’ve pitched a banana in an apple flavoured world – but what a buzz! I love pitching (I know, I am getting help for this one)

As we crack on with the pitch, I realise that our ethos, our desire to push boundaries and try something slightly left of field is, though probably not what Sony want, it is something that we will persue beyond this pitch and this process has helped define a future vision for Savvy that, if Sony don’t buy it, we will continue down this road.  Which, again, we have GITG and Northwest Vision and Media to thank for – an opportunity to think big and plan bold.

The 6 (or was it 300 panel members (felt like a lot around that table)) gave us a really exciting, thorough, uplifting and heated gentle grilling which is exactly what we needed.  And the two or 3 unanswerable questions  - that were asked (you know the kind, small matters like business models, making it pay…..) took us to the heart of the holes in our pitch idea…. holes we knew were big ones, and that we weren’t sure we could fill.

By the end of the session we knew that we were knocking on the right doors in terms of the sorts of products we wanted to develop, in terms of what shape we thought the future might become and we knew that Sony would hear our pleas again but now wasn’t the right time.  Marcus had made a convincing technological knowledge and plan, Richard proved the possibilities with some wider research and a good deal of gaming knowledge and I, well, I got all over excited and empassioned… it’s a flaw.

Rather ill advisedly, I found I could no longer contain my over theatrical nature and left thanking them for listening and saying that although it was a wild card – wasn’t development about pushing boundaries? and the chance to try something different?  - and if funding like GITG wasn’t the chance to aim high and wide what was?  And anyway what did they have to lose?

I was thankfully rescued by the team from climbing my soap box (which in the absence of one may well have become the conference table…. and we left, knowing we’d blown it but were strangely ok with that; in the time we couldn’t have done more.

Half way down the M62 (Where were all the cars from earlier!!!) Marcus had a Eureka moment and we found a plug for a big hole and realised what we were missing… c’est la vie.

So what happened?

When, late Friday evening, 2 days later, I got a call to say that no one was more surprised than the panel of judges to be giving us one of the 5x 10k to take our ideas further……. we were for a very brief moment Speechless!

An interesting development process ensues, I think we’ve spent the 10k in advance on post it notes and midnight oil, so it is a relief when we meet a fellow pitcher Onteca at the Media Festival and realise we’re all up against it.

We are keen to move across into the gaming world,   traditional gaming is, we think and (have some evidence to support),  open to moving in to entertainment that is defined beyond what is know and labelled as traditional gaming…… but as a company with an expertise in cross platform narratives and technology development, how far across do we go?

Lots of time spent debating the lines between entertainment and gaming, passive and active engagement and where narrative fits in.  So much so that I find myself sitting with an equally scary bunch of gaming types at a Matt Costello event @ the BBC organised by NWVM…………  Inspired? Terrified? Who Knows.

I also attend  narrative in gaming event with a fab company (what the hell are they called? he looks like Matt Lucas with curly grey hair) who help me through designing a shoot ‘em up – at the beeb – another NWVM event.  Am I any the wiser?

And how exactly is this helping? Sometimes not knowing what you don’t know is a distinct advantage.

After Enda’s introduction we heard from Clemens Wangerin, SCEE, who gave an entertaining and informed presentation on what Sony are looking for out of this project, especially interesting were the hints dropped about where Sony are aiming to take the PS3 through new platforms and its new PSP Mini store…

I hope that the event got people’s creative juices flowing. We’ve already seen the applications start to come in. Sony have already seen and been blown away by the quality of the ideas generated last time around, so here’s hoping we can do that again. Remember to adapt your idea to what Sony are looking for, and you could be making the game for real! The deadline for submitting your ideas is 2pm Friday 25th September… get applying!

Here are Clemens slides, detailing a lot more about what Sony are looking for:

We launched Get In The Game 2 at FACT in Liverpool on Tuesday night, with about 40 people from Northwest companies in attendance. A few photos are up on Flickr.

Enda Carey from Northwest Vision and Media, and Clemens Wangerin from SCEE took people through the project, talking about the process for GITG and what Sony are really looking for to go on PSN. Clemens also showed videos of some games currently in development for PSN, which we’ll be posting along with the slides soon.

The presentations all ran relatively smoothly from a PS3; we’re actually quite impressed that one can be used for showing slides and video, as it gives the proceedings quite an informal and friendly feel. Kind of like showing your friends cool stuff online, instead of being the speaker with powerpoint.

If you want to apply for GITG, you can do so directly via Eventbrite here, or if you’re more comfortable with a word document, you can download this one and either email it to amalier [at] visionandmedia [dot] co [dot] uk, or print and post to Amalie Roberts, Northwest Vision and Media,BBC Building, Room LG45, Oxford Road, Manchester M60 1SJ.

The deadline for applications is 14:00 on Friday, September 25th.

Stepping in at the 11th hour, as I rested in my sick bed, Steve – Citrus Suite’s own Super Mario (a bit inappropriate considering the pitch was to Sony) – did the presentation and as the icing on the cake we showed a simple demo illustrating gameplay on the target hardware. Seeing that Sony are still talking to us I guess Steve stuck to the script!

It’s been great to be part of this process and I’m sure Get in the Game will go from strength to strength. Thanks for inviting us along.

Chris Morland

I appreciate that I haven’t mentioned the name, type or style of game I’ve been working on and this might frustrate some readers, as my comments without being put into context may appear very vague and pointless. However IP protection is something I feel strongly about and without signed publishing agreements, it’s really the only thing a developer has.

Now it’s just a case of watching my inbox to see what the final decision on moving forward will be…..

Cheers,

Ivan

I made sure I left early to avoid possible delays on the M62. Luckily I was OK and had time to have a tea at McDonalds close to the Sony offices.

The plan was to show the powerpoint presentation which includes a video file. This part should all work fine. The game itself had developed a long loading delay due to all the new artwork we had added in. So we devised a way for me to load the game and leave it in the background until needed, I would then press a key and it would play the game. I knew from a previous meeting that my laptop worked on the big Sony screen. When I went into the room I discovered they had an even bigger and newer screen and typically my laptop refused to work with it! We eventually used the original screen but then my laptop forced itself to change modes and so my mid presentation video did not play and I had to come back to windows and run it through media player. Then the game crashed and had to be re-run due to the mode changing. Even with all these issues I was able to stay on message and deliver my pitch. The game seemed to be well received and now we wait to see if Sony wants to move ahead with us on the title.

The key insight I have leant through this whole process is that my team and I have to own the game idea, concept and plan for making it happen. It’s no good hoping someone else has the answers for you. The various meetings helped identify areas we had not defined and resulted in a crystal clear plan for the game.

• My advice to others would be;
• Understand the technology you’ll be coding for.
• Know your target market and define why your game will stand out and be different.
• Work with people who can create great results, both visually and coding wise.
• Create a buzz within the team about the game and get everyone singing from the same song sheet (with the aid of an X Statement).
• Don’t be afraid to change things. If areas need to be improved, removed or added, then do it.
• Get plenty of feedback. Not just at the meetings but from other game players and friends.
• Do your best to clarify the end vision for the game, visually, audibly and if possible with a simple game play prototype.
• Spend your budget wisely. Until your game is green lighted and given full funding it’s best to spend with caution. We used freelancers for the artwork, so when they were done on these jobs we did not have to keep paying them.

We’ve enjoyed the whole process, it’s been exciting to be involved. Finger crossed now for Carnage!

Rick Vanner

Financial Director

The Game Creators Ltd

There’s been a lot of bloodied action in Onteca’s ‘This is Surgery’ operating theatre over the last few weeks. We’re now all quietly confident that we could successfully undertake a coronary bypass op’ (off pump obviously – so you can see the heart beat) with possibly a small tonsillectomy thrown in for good measure.

Since our practice pitch, we’ve been working on Player journey experience from Newb House Trainee to potential Lead Consultant, developing artwork and watching numerous research YouTube surgery vids in our lunch hour.

We recommend : http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-6218906821548692571&hl=en for the non squeamish amongst the ‘Get in the Game’ companies.

We’ve now got a ‘This is Surgery’ Lead Consultant Surgeon to mentor Player progress

and a Super Surgeon to make career progression just that little bit more painful.