[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALEX HUTCHINSON: Hi, everyone.
My name's Alex Hutchinson, our brand new creative director
here at Google Stadia.
We're here to talk to you today about pitching.
Over the last 20 years, from starting off
in a strip mall in smalltown Melbourne, Australia making
handheld games for the Gameboy Advance, all the way through EA
to Ubisoft directing games, like "Assassin's Creed 3,"
"Far Cry 4," or designing games like "Spore" and the "Sims 2,"
I've been pitching continually and often
throughout the entire development process.
REID SCHNEIDER: My name is Reid Schneider.
I'm a new exec producer here at Stadia.
I've been in the games industry over 20 years.
So today, we're here to talk to you about pitching.
And what I'm going to focus on is the production side
of the equation, and the important elements
as you're thinking about how you can structure the production
side in order to get great results as you're
making your pitch.
Over the years, I've had the opportunity
to work on a number of games from multiple different genres.
Everything from back, years ago, working on
the original "Splinter Cell," to "Battlefield Vietnam," to "Army
of Two," to most recently, "Arkham Origins,"
"Arkham Knight."
And then we just shipped "Journey of the Savage Planet"
as part of Typhoon Studios.
And now we're super excited to be part of that the Google
Stadia Team.
ALEX HUTCHINSON: To start with, I
want to talk a little bit about the origin of the term
"to pitch."
So during the 15th century, a guy
called Torquemada was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition.
And so the story goes, he would ask playwrights
that he'd imprisoned somewhere in Spain
to pitch him an idea for a play they wanted to write.
And if the play was entertaining enough,
he would actually allow them to make it, or allow them
to live long enough to make it.
Or else, he would put them back in the boiling oil where we
get the word "to pitch" from.
Is it true?
To be honest, I'm not necessarily sure.
But ever since I heard this story, it stuck in my head
like a little mind worm, which I think
is one of the keys to any great pitch.
So as a creative director, pitching is integral to my job.
At the very start, you're pitching to yourself,
trying to figure out what a good game would entail.
Then you're pitching to your team
to try and get them excited about the project
that you want to make.
Then you're usually pitching to the exec staff
to convince them that it's something
that they want to fund.
And then, if you're lucky enough to make it,
you're pitching to the press to get them to buy into it.
And finally, you're pitching to players
to get them to spend their hard-earned cash on the game
that you've just made.
So in a sense, there's nothing more
important than understanding how a good pitch is put together,
why it's important, and how you can deliver it
to your audience.
For us, there are four key elements to any good pitch.
The first and most obvious is a good pitch needs a vision.
You need to be able to express your idea clearly
and efficiently to your audience.
The second is it needs to be believable.
No one is going to buy into your pitch--
even if it's internal and all they're spending is time,
or worse, if it's an external publisher and they're investing
money--
if they don't believe you can actually make the idea
that you're pitching.
Third, it's all about people.
Any pitch is going to be made by your team, not just yourself.
So they need to understand who's going to do what,
and believe that it's actually achievable in the time
and under the budget that you've proposed.
And finally, you need a pretty clear plan.
Lots of people think it's just a high concept.
But we've found, over the years, that having a plan
right at the start allows people to buy in from day one.
I also want us to remember that games are inherently
a luxury item.
People are never buying your game
because they think it will solve a problem.
They're not buying it because it's
a cheaper version of a problem they already have solved.
They're buying it because they want
it, which means that the thing we're really selling
is emotions.
So the key to any good pitch is to arrive at the emotional core
of what you're trying to sell.
If you have a shooter, then you want intensity.
You want action.
You want drama.
Or if you have a romance game, you
want the key to the relationships
that you're building up.
Finding and identifying the key emotion
that you're trying to sell, then articulating
how you're going to sell it and how
you're going to deliver it to the audience
is the primary focus of any good pitch.
When we began "Journey to the Savage Planet,"
we had a few specific goals for the game.
We wanted it to be bright, optimistic.
We wanted it to be funny.
We wanted it to be cooperative so you
could go on this journey with your best friend or child
or partner.
We wanted it to be in the action adventure space.
And we wanted it to be set in a crazy alien world.
But if you boil it down, the core emotions
that we were trying to hit were basically bright, optimistic,
and funny.
And throughout development, every time
we came back to a question of whether we would include
a feature, or whether we would double down on an element
that was working, or whether we would try to fix something that
wasn't working, it had to hit one of those three points.
If it was something that was going to make the player laugh,
then we continued with it.
If it was going to make sure that we had a world that
was bright and upbeat and optimistic,
then we'd continue with it.
Anything else, if it wasn't working straight off the bat,
we would cut and move aside pretty quickly.
And then, another part of any good pitch
is even when you're in the process of talking
to people about it, you're actually continually getting
feedback, either from their expression
or from the questions they ask or from how they
talk about your game later on.
So it was important for us, when we look back on the project
to see if it was successful, to see if the audience
or if the press actually keyed in on the key elements
that we wanted.
REID SCHNEIDER: So Alex talked about all the creative elements
of the pitch, and those are core.
You need to hook people from the start
with the creative elements.
But as important as the creative elements are,
your pitch has to be achievable.
It has to be realistic.
So now, we're going to talk about the production
areas of the pitch, which hopefully will give you
some tools in order to make your pitch more believable
and give you a better chance of success.
So as an example, on "Journey to the Savage Planet,"
the pitch was all about focusing on great content.
It wasn't about creating lots of crazy new tech, because we knew
with the time that we had and the team we were building,
it really had to be an exercise in making awesome content that
would really appeal to gamers.
So as part of thinking about how you can craft a great pitch,
I want to introduce you to some creative leaders who
have really been able to hone their craft.
The first I want to introduce you to
is a person named Ed Catmull.
Ed Catmull was one of the founders of Pixar.
Pixar, obviously, is known for making incredible content.
And in his book, "Creativity, Inc.",
he talks about lots of really good lessons
for teams, especially game teams.
But there's two that I want to point out today.
The first one that he talks about
is that if you give a great idea to an average team,
it's probably going to come out kind of average.
But if you give an average idea to a great team,
they're going to make it shine, or they're
going to come up with a better idea, which is going
to make that idea even better.
The second idea that Ed talks about a lot
in "Creativity, Inc."
is this idea of team chemistry.
And in game development, it is such a huge factor
with what we do.
Chemistry is really everything.
So as you're thinking about building your team,
and as you're thinking about who those team members, which
are going to be part of your pitch,
you really need to be thinking about how
is that team going to work together,
because ultimately, that's what's
going to get you great results.
So in "Journey to the Savage Planet,"
we had a team of 25 people.
And one of the reasons that the game came together in the way
that it did was because we put people together
who had really, really strong team chemistry.
Now, that's not to say that, over the whole course
of the production, everything was always roses.
It's development.
There's ups and downs.
It's not always going to be that way.
But what's important to remember is the chemistry of the team,
overall, worked really well.
And I think, as you think about what you're
pitching to other people, that chemistry
is uber, uber important.
The next person I want to introduce you to
is a scientist named Douglas Hofstadter.
Now, if you haven't started already building your game,
Douglas Hofstadter knows a hell of a lot
more about your game than you do.
What does that really mean?
Well, as an example, something that we hear about a lot
is what's called Hofstadter's law.
So to boil it down, what that really means,
in terms of Hofstadter's law, is things
are always going to take way longer than you
think they're going to take.
But as developers, sometimes we're
prone to thinking that the best-case scenario is
what it's going to be.
And we need to get into the habit
of being realistic with our expectations.
And the more realistic you can be with your expectations,
the better your pitch is going to be.
So this slide's a bit of an exaggeration,
and it's highly anecdotal, but what it shows
you is that sometimes, as we're thinking about our pitch,
we're prone to thinking about what's the best-case scenario,
and everything's going to work well.
Again, in game development, there's ups and downs.
So really be realistic about how long things are going to take.
So for example, there's the best-case scenario.
Then there's the average estimate.
There's the worst-case scenario.
Then there's the worst-case scenario
where you apply Hofstadter's law to it,
and then there's the actual time something might take.
And again, thinking about how long
something's realistically going to take as you construct
your pitch is going to help you to do a better job,
and also to create an environment for your team
where they can really succeed.
So again, as developers, we are prone to thinking,
obviously, everything's going to be the best-case scenario.
But something that also is really interesting
is to be aware of that ultimate cognitive bias.
And as we think of that ultimate cognitive bias,
I want to talk to you guys a little bit
about two scientists.
So some of you might have heard this already,
but I think it's an interesting reminder.
So to start, let's meet David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
Now, David Dunning and Justin Kruger
are the creators of what's called
the Dunning-Kruger Principle.
So the Dunning-Kruger Principle essentially
maps out your wisdom on one axis and your confidence
and your skill in another.
So when we start a pitch, what we're thinking about--
or as we start talking about how we're going to build a game,
there's what they've affectionately termed
the "Peak of Mount Stupid."
So this is where you think you know everything
and you think everything is going to go perfectly.
And this is actually a really, really dangerous place
to be because this is really the point when you're just
starting to pitch your game.
This is, unfortunately, where all of us generally are.
But then you get into what they have also then termed
"The Valley of Despair."
So things are down.
It's hard to understand exactly where you are.
And are things going to work out?
But then slowly but surely, you climb
and what they've called "The Slope of Enlightenment."
Now, of course, these are all exaggerations.
The truth of the matter, there is a normal mastery curve
that flows throughout this whole process.
But again, as we think about how you're
going to create this pitch that ultimately is successful,
think about these things in terms of how long
it's really going to take you to get the results you want
and how to get the best results for your team.
And also, probably most importantly,
is how to create a sustainable environment for your team
where you're not burning anyone out
and you can get the best results.
So as game developers, let's talk
about what were the old-school, traditional production
timelines.
So maybe you'd have three months in a conception
period, another three months in a pre-production period.
You might have nine months in the full production period.
And then, what unfortunately would tend to happen a lot
is that your alpha, beta, and shipping would be squeezed down
to a short amount of time.
Let's assume that for three months.
The problem with this model is that you really
get all of your points in post-production,
post-production meaning that alpha-to-beta period.
So that's really where things come together,
and you can refine.
And you can make smart choices, in terms
of how to get the best results for your project
and how to create an awesome game
experience for your players.
So what I'd like you to think about now
is trying to take that old model out of your head.
But Reid, what should we do about this?
Like, how can we think about this?
Well, to start, as an example, throwing
lots of people at a specific problem all at once
is not going to get you the results you want.
An analogy we like to think about
is imagine trying to have tons of people trying to cram
through one door at one time.
It's messy.
You end up with a lot of collisions.
People don't necessarily know where they're trying to get to.
And it doesn't give you the best results.
So how should we do that?
Well, from our perspective, we think
it's really about thinking about your schedule
in a realistic and sustainable way.
So what does that mean exactly?
Well, what that means is let's take
"Savage Planet" as an example.
So as you're building your pitch,
one of the things that would be really, really
helpful for you-- again, thinking about something that's
achievable and realistic, and something that's
going to make a model that your team can actually believe in
and is sustainable-- is thinking about your development
in, essentially, three buckets.
Your bucket one being conception and pre-production;
bucket two meaning your production;
and bucket three meaning post-production.
So for us, post-production was the time period
where we had had a full alpha of the game.
Now, the alpha was what we called-- it was dirty.
I mean, there was bugs.
It was hard to understand.
But what it allowed us to do is to take a step back and look
at everything we had, and then decide what was good,
what to invest in, where to double down,
and where to cut things and where to remove things.
So the end of the production period, for us,
resulted in that full alpha.
ALEX HUTCHINSON: Looking back over the years
at the various pitches, and trying
to identify those that have worked the most,
I think the key is to find as focused a niche as you can,
and then attack it directly.
The way that boils down in practice is each of the games
that I've worked on has essentially
come with three big bets of new features,
or elements that we want the players to focus on,
that have then allowed us to focus all of our development
and to really double down on what we think
is going to make this game unique and important and
interesting to the player.
So we talked a little bit before about "Journey
to the Savage Planet."
The things that were important there
were bright, colorful, optimistic,
and exploration, really, as the three big elements
that we pursued.
And even though it's a small game,
and even though various elements we
cut or moved away from that core,
I think those three elements are still trying very hard
to be top of class.
With "Assassins Creed III," the three elements
we were targeting were a brand new setting
in the American Revolution and a brand new hero for players.
It was Naval exploration and Naval combat,
and it was natural free running, so
allowing the player to explore wilderness environments,
as well as cities.
And I think if you look back on the game
and how it was received, those three elements
come up in every review.
Those three elements come up in every piece of player feedback.
And I think they were key to bringing a huge new audience
to the franchise.
So I hope that gives you a little bit of an insight
into how we structure our pitches--
the idea of focusing on some key ingredients that
build emotions, building a team around it that can execute it,
and giving yourself a believable schedule.
But I wanted to finish with something
a little more personal.
A Post-It Note that's been stuck on my desk
now for 20 years or thereabouts, which is WSAGAF.
And it's not very Googley, but what
it stands for is "why should anyone give a [BEEP]?"?"
And it's something I use as a razor,
as a filter, to think about every decision
that I pitch to someone, every time I ask someone to do work
on a feature or the game.
It needs to be building an emotion in, not only the player
eventually, but in the person working on that feature.
If we're not getting a reaction from people,
then it's probably something that's not worth your time.
But either way, I really hope this short and sharp video has
given you an insight into how we work,
and I wish you the best of luck in your future pitches.
[MUSIC PLAYING]