Adventures In Design: Life Can Be A Pitch…

E3 2003 – One of the toughest, least glamorous tasks for a designer is to pitch a game. You spend weeks (sometimes months) preparing documents, guiding concept art, and working on a playable demo (if you’re lucky) with the intent of convincing somebody you’ve most likely never met before that they should give you a large amount of money to make a game that may or may not be successful! In this case, I was pretty excited to pitch a game to one of my design heroes! However, the experience soured considerably when most of the Japanese delegation showed up wearing SARS masks and the star attraction just sat there and said nothing at all about the pitch. I have no idea what his problem was. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was disinterested.

Finally, you need to strike a good balance of providing information while giving your audience enough leeway to inject their own questions and opinions which you can respond to in a constructive manner. You don’t want a pitch where you finish talking and everybody is quiet, asleep, or texting away on their phones! When you’re done with your pitch, always let them know that you’re done and ask for further questions. You’ll get some great questions and some not-so-great questions depending on who you’re pitching to. Either way, the trick is to make the meeting feel participatory for everybody involved!