Bruised and Battered: Dummy Pitch
Ok So we’ve had the dummy pitch – a great idea because it stops us making big mistakes too late. However – with now only 2 weeks to go not the initial 3 proposed, there is so little time to do changes, and the potential for gloom to creep in is high.
Spoke to the other groups involved and I think we all feel battered and bruised after – such positivity from our Execs over the past few months – the Sony rep in the team meeting was not keen on the constructuve bit if constructive criticism and it seems other companies too are baffled a little by confliciting opinion.
We are keen to get this right and I just pray our super positive exec is really on the same page as Phil @ Sony or we may have been the wildcard who went feral.
And Pete @ Sony – I’d stick with the day job and leave any dreams of a career in diplomacy far behind!
On the bright side – we knew our presentation needed tightening so with solid feedback now, we’re bang on track to condense the pitch for clarity and really get a chance to shine.
We know from the mountains of research we have undertaken that the future will include a section that is this shaped in it’s desire to extend the PS experience in the way we are working towards – but will it be with Sony PS? time will tell
April 17th, 2010 at 2:38 am
You put people through this charade in order “to pitch to Sony” but it has never mattered what people have pitched so far, no one has ever gotten funding… EVER.
You may say that is their own fault, well i’ll bet they take their ideas some other place and then ask you, why is it, that in the light of you never giving out funding, that you don’t give your money to a cause that needs it, like cancer research?
Then at least you would be doing something genuine and meaningful with the money….. GITG is some majority big farce to make SCEE and your related associations “look like” they care about getting new games off the ground.
Boycott GITG in later in 2010 – 2011 its a big farce, go speak to those that dev can fund XBOX360 instead
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Noone has ever gotten funding, ever? Also, who exactly do you mean by “You”? Sony? Vision+Media? Pixel-Lab?
Last time I checked, this project had disbursed over £100,000 from Vision+Media between ten companies, all of which then used the funding to develop prototypes. That prototype funding is the only commitment from the project; as co-ordinators (Pixel-Lab) and funders (Vision+Media), we obviously can’t make commercial decisions or guarantees for Sony, but they’re willing to give an audience to the projects.
What developers get from this is funding to have a few staff spend a few months in pre-production. Anything that happens after the pitch concluding that phase is entirely between the developers and Sony. If Sony don’t want to take projects further, it’s up to them, but in that case, the developers retain their IP and don’t have to pay the 10K back to Vision+Media.
Any developer that’s been through GITG has a prototype and experience that were basically funded, and they can take that anywhere they like. They’re not just in the same boat as all other game developers, but are actually slightly ahead considering others would have to develop any prototypes entirely on the back of their own money.
As well as prototype funding, GITG has also offered free training in concept development, pitching and agile production to scores of developers – nothing to be sniffed at.
The rest of your argument is pretty ridiculous, and reads like something from the letters column of Mean Machines. Your words read as hurt and disillusioned. Whatever’s done that, I’m sorry, but spend a lot of time dealing with game publishers as a developer and you’ll find that of course it’s a hard slog, and it can be very, very difficult to get anything other than a “maybe” from them.
We can’t lead developers to a magical paradise where all pitches hit every note, where nothing ever has the plug pulled, where noone ever has to be laid off, every game sells well, the day to day business of publishers is to make sure everyone feels really okay and devkits grow on trees. What’s possible is to offer some extra support to the industry, and with GITG, that’s exactly what Vision+Media, Sony, Pixel-Lab, Screen Yorkshire and Game Republic have done.