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The Birth of a Game Studio Part Two: Goin' Places, Meetin' People Who to Talk to… There are two answers to that question. The fast answer is: "everybody!" Still, there are specific strategies when approaching different types of people. Here, I will try to expose some of them, so you can put your best foot forward and make a good contacts. Publishers and Investors Planning your talks to publishers or investors is of extreme importance, as they are the ones willing to put your title on the store shelves if they believe in you. Although each has their own unique style, there are some general guidelines to follow which apply to all of them. First of all, it is not a good idea to speak a lot: it is much wiser to speak well. Publishers are a bit like the genie in the Aladdin story: they will grant you a certain number of wishes (or minutes, usually), so you better use them well. Plan the message you want to convey, and make sure it gets through.
As a starting point, it is a good idea to prepare your talk beforehand, even if it is going to be a casual, five minute meeting. First of all, try to put in writing what the objective of your talk is going to be. Try to narrow it down to a single concept or idea, or prioritize the objectives if you think there is more than one. Then, write a checklist of the facts you feel you should present in order ot achieve your objective. Make sure you include those facts that make your company or game unique, and expose why the publisher should be interested in doing business with you. Then, assign priorities to the different concepts, and re-do the list putting those in order. As an example, let's imagine you are going to be at a party (a very good place to meet people), and you believe it is likely that you will be introduced to some publishers. A good plan could be as follows: Objective: arrange a meeting at your booth
Notice I put "financing needs" as low priority. You have to talk about the right subjects at the right moment. In this case, discussing that subject at a party can be seen as an unprofessional move. You should reserve that for a later moment in time. Making the checklist and then being able to build an interesting conversation (while touching on all the relevant subjects) takes time and practice, but it is definitely a good way of having succesful conversations with investors. A different story comes when you have made a contact, and the time comes to talk about contracts and money. In this situation, the rule is to remain extremely calm, and never, under any circumstance, let emotions betray you. Deal making is a time consuming and complex science: each term of the contract will be talked over again and again, until things settle to a final version. To give you an example, in a past project (not game related) I had to go through the process of making a deal for a capital round for a company. The contracts were about one hundred pages long, and were revised for two weeks, dedicating about ten hours a day to re-reading them and making changes. In the end, we agreed upon the eleventh version of the agreements. Patience and hard work will always help you make a better deal. Those papers you sign are going to determine your company's future, so you better take some time to really understand them thoroughly. Obviously, it is of extreme importance to have a lawyer backing you up and guiding the company through the process at all times. These can either be agents specialized in representing studios, or lawyers with experience in the electronic entertainment field. There are many firms who can provide you with those services, and they will be addressed later in this article. Contractors and Consultants Gamemaking is a complex science, often involving in excess of forty people during two or more years. Still, some time and trouble can be saved by using contractors who can provide you with some product or service you require, but do not want to develop in-house. By outsourcing parts of your development, you can create great games with smaller structural costs for your company, or in less time. Here I will tell you the different kinds of contractors, and the key items you should look for when talking with them. To begin with, there are software contractors, who can work along with you and license some code or application for a fee. This includes both full-engine licensing (Quake, Unreal, NetImmerse, Renderware and many others would good examples here) and toolkit licensing (such as RAD GameTools popular Miles Sound System, Bink, and many more). The reason to buy these packages is obvious: you can start your project with a full-blown engine (or part of it) from day one, thus saving time and, sometimes, money. Still, these options always boil down to a cost vs. benefit comparison: how much does the package cost and how much would it cost to develop the same functionality internally? Think not only in the man-hours, but also the equipment required to achieve the results. Music outsourcing is a good example here: having one in-house musician may not seem that expensive, but purchasing all the synthesizers, sequencers, and other tools he will definitely need can be a huge investment. So, when evaluating a potential software contractor, it is a good idea to make sure the fee vs. features curve is reasonable. As a side note, make sure you understand all the terms of the licensing: some engines require paying a fixed fee only, while others add a variable, royalty-based remuneration to be paid to the original developer. Royalty-based structures allow you to begin working at a low cost, while in the long run you can end up paying more if your game is succesful. Also, keep an eye on the duration of the contracts: is the software package license valid forever, or does it cover one title only? The latter is the most common option available today, but make sure you go over these issues with your provider before signing anything. Most software contractors are very open, and payment terms are usually quite negotiable to suit your needs. Another type of contractors you are certainly going to find in industry events (more likely in places like GDC) are art service providers. This includes companies you can use to outsource all or part of the 3D modeling, music, sound, texturing, etc. for your game. These contractors usually have big teams which will allow you to ship the game faster, and stick to tight schedules. On the downside, make sure you understand the fee structure, and make sure you get what you paid for. Negotiate payment terms to ensure you can check the quality of the results. Additionally, it is a good idea to write an exhaustive specifications document and ensure both parts understand and agree to stick to it. Developers will often complain that the results are worse (or, simply, different) than what was expected, and the contractors will reply that the specs were diffuse or changed in the middle of the project. The third breed of contractors you will find are consultants. Imagine you could have some of the best professionals in the business in your team. Well, sometimes, you can. Experienced people are available to do specialized work for young companies for a fee as consultants. These can be game designers, coders, artists, lawyers or any other position you can think of. Usually, they have very solid backgrounds, with several projects shipped, so their advice can be very valuable. Thus, having consultants in your team can be a significant "power-up" to your team, and will also help build confidence from publishers, as their names are easily recognized and respected. You can find consultants who can help you cover most positions in your company. Still, as they are going to work outside your studio, make sure you assign them tasks that do not require continuous contact with the rest of your team, or the relationship will simply not work. Lawyers and agents, who can provide all the legal assistance you would ever need, are one type of contractor that can be particularly helpful. There are many firms providing quality assistance in these matters, which are especially important when the time comes to talk to publishers. Make sure the consultants you hire have a background relevant to their area of expertise. Most consultants out there are great people with impressive resumes-including many hit games. Unfortunately, some (just a few) others approach young companies desiring only to make some money selling consulting services backed up with insufficient or simply nonexistent experience. Just dedicate one minute to check the candidate's references. This will suffice to ensure that they provides the added value and publisher appeal you paid for. Finally, a global rule for all contractor and consultant work: remember to make sure you state who retains the intellectual property rights for the work. Some contractors will usually have two fees: a lower one they apply to projects where they get to keep the IP rights, and another (significantly higher) if the IP is to be kept by the client. Choose whichever contract type suits you best, but think in the long term, and do not underestimate the future brand value of the work you have created. Maybe in the future your characters, music or sound effects will end up in a big movie (think Tomb Raider, for example), so having taken some time to discuss IP rights ownership will be useful. Media Among the people you will meet at the events, the ones to watch for are media representatives (easy to spot as they usually carry distinctive badges). These are more abundant in business events, where the consumer side of the industry is exploited. Most media representatives belong to written or web-based publications, with only a small part coming from TV shows. When talking to the media, make sure to emphasize what makes your project unique: explore your background, team composition or current projects to find facts which can make you an interesting cover story. Finding these interesting facts is easy for indie studios with promising projects, as the media are quite responsive to "David vs. Goliath" stories. Many people are trying to predict what is going to be the "next big thing", so media usually pay close attention to rookies. A good idea is to prepare a media pack just in case you talk with journalists. This can be a physical, written package, or a digital pack in a CD (the latter being simpler and cheaper to make). It should include a working, simple to install demo and, for those journalists with little or no time, some pre-grabbed screenshots ready to publish. Keep in mind that magazines (especially written ones) work in very high-resolution formats. For example, a regular written page can be composed in resolutions as high as 300 dots per inch, so putting a 6x4 inch image requires a source image 1800x1200 pixels. Remember to encode those files using lossless formats, such as TIFF, which is the standard in the desktop publishing industry. This way they will look crystal-clear. Additionally, make sure you throw in some corporate logos for printing in any article related to your projects or company. Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) or TIFF are the formats of choice here. Images aside, a press pack should also include a shorter version of the treatment document, which highlights the main functionality and features of your game. This document should help media professionals write any article, preview, review, etc. about your title, so read some of those and try to understand the kind of information they present. Naming the different technologies you have developed can be a good idea, but going into a lot of detail about them will be worthless, except if you are planning to appear in a publication like Game Developer Magazine. Finally, it is important to provide the media people with a contact in case they need to discuss anything at a later date. In an ideal situation, that role would be carried out by a public relations agency (there are several of them specializing in the games industry). Still, most indie studios will decide to cover that themselves, as PR services can be costly. Designate someone in you team to act as the media contact person, and this way you can ensure a long-lasting relationship with the media representatives can be established. In Closing Industry events are definitely essential for the success of a indie studio. As a living proof, we dediced to make a game company in Siggraph 96, started working right after attending GDC 2000, and have used GDC 2001 to launch a tech demo. Attending this year's GDC has provided contacts with several major publishers interested in our work, and we have discovered some great contractors which will be working along with us in the future. We have attended about eight conferences, where we have learned everything from ultimate graphics techniques to effective budget planning. We are still far from being ready to release any game to the market. Still, the GDC experience has proven extremely valuable, and we hope to be able to attend the show once again in 2002.
Now, it is time for us to get back to work in our game: tech demo is ready, and now the time comes to really move to the real thing, and have a playable demo soon (September sounds like a good idea). There is a lot of design & programming to be done, and long hours of teamwork which will hopefully transform our tiny little demo into a full blown game. In my next column (titled "Executing the Masterplan") I will try to show you some details of the process. Discuss this article in Gamasutra's discussion forum ________________________________________________________
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