作者：Edge Staff

Pete Smith（游戏邦注：索尼负责接洽外部工作室的执行制作人）清楚有关电子游戏推广的1-2点事项：他在此身经百战。他此前在Develop Conference大会的讲话不仅旨在帮助开发者，同时也是在简化自己的工作：他的开场直截了当，“我厌烦于免费废话连篇的宣传介绍”。随后，他总结若干宣传电子游戏的建议。

pete smith Sony from edge-online.com

焦点

Smith表示，“你自己也许很了解游戏，亲自编写各行代码，但若你没有表达重点，那你就面临严重问题。要将此总结成一个简洁句子。”为陈述自己的观点，他列举两个开发者描述自身作品的视频。首先是Evolution Studios，他们展现出团队胸有成竹的重要性，他们以一个关键句诠释《机车风暴》：“混乱环境中的野蛮越野竞赛。”而准备不充分的《疯狂小旅鼠》团队则无法合理描述他们的游戏，成员们都说不出一句话来。Smith表示，“《机车风暴》如今有600万份销量；而《疯狂小旅鼠》开发者则走向破产。”

我应该宣传什么游戏构思？

Smith解释表示，“我经常提问的一个问题是，‘你们想要什么？’如果我们清楚这点，我们就会将其体现在开发过程中。”相反，他建议你让宣传内容迎合目标公司的当前战略。若你的推广对象是微软，他们会希望你支持Kinect，而只有愚蠢之人才会向Zynga宣传没有采用免费增值模式的构思。

我需要什么资产？

Smith建议你尽可能保持描述的直观性：“即便是粗糙画面模型也比数页文本更具启发性。作为开发者，你希望投入尽可能少的资金，但你依然需要正确把握这点，在此你有众多选择。”

他非常推崇剪辑带：能够用于传递游戏核心主题或风格的视听剪辑内容。由于这些只运用于个人陈述，因此你无需考虑采用授权镜头或配乐；事实上，这值得鼓励。确保剪辑带包含前面提到的单一焦点。Smith呈现一个拼接系列过去30年动作电影和游戏作品的视频，这一视频旨在展示游戏，时长7分钟，显然太过冗长。

若你有足够资金，主体预览视频将带来双重益处，不仅能够向发行商展示游戏，而且能够“充当有效的团队标记工具——他们在《机车风暴》中采用这一方式，时常回头查看美术元素，以推进画面的制作进程。”

但促使发行商产生兴趣的最佳方式是可玩模型（游戏邦注：这是个高成本的举措），但如今随着Unity和索尼Fire Engine工具的问世，这一方法更具可行性。Smith表示，“这是很棒的工具，它们强化玩法，同时能够衡量团队能力，这对小型数字游戏来说尤其重要，在此美妙图像是关键。确保你的模型遵循正确方向，我不在乎框架是否杰出，我关心的是游戏的体验方式及其为什么有趣。”

Smith建议，无论采取什么路线，你都应着眼于简化发行商的工作。他表示，“若你手中持有有所侧重的杰出资产，我们可以更轻松地将游戏展示给营销部门，协助营销部门更有效地将游戏传递给公众——我们都知道，营销人员大多很懒惰。你给予我们的资产越杰出，我们在展示过程所遇到的风险就越小。发现杰出作品会令我们倍感兴奋，我们会希望将其呈现给大众。”

调整你的预期

你可以推出下款《Minecraft》，但不要对游戏的成功怀有过多信心，以致于认为，发行商会不求回报地支持你。Smith表示，“你要求的越多，事情就越复杂。建议你集中宣传你所在乎的某块内容。有人曾宣传过一款杰出作品，他们希望保留IP，获得足够开发预算，更高的版税，有保证的销量及营销支出。他们能够实现其中一个目标。”

IP是关键，年轻工作室要求发行商冒险支持新作品，发行商希望以IP权限作为回馈的情况司空见惯。Smith表示，“保留IP能够带来显著益处，而放弃IP也有其有利条件。记住：一切事情皆有其意义。若发行商持有IP，他们会更愿意投身于营销和推销工作。”这非常客观，但Smith也承认索尼坚持保留IP的态度令他们在《地狱边境》潜在专属权限角逐中败给微软。

宣传内容本身

Smith表示，“确保自己直奔主题。思考你希望发行商记住的信息，直接锁定这一内容。”以游戏的闪光点开场，结尾再次回到这一内容，以确保将此重点突出——但同时要记得整理商业案例。陈述成本、工作安排、当前状态及预期完成日期能够让发行商知道，你清楚开发工作的商业要素，而且能够协助你推销你的游戏和工作室。

Smith表示，这关键要点：“你多半无法通过第一个宣传内容就一炮打响，但能够借此推销自己个人及公司——这主要涉及建立信任和信心。若你让发行商印象深刻，他们未来多半会考虑和你合作，愿意接听你的电话。”

陈述人员也值得思考。在正式商务会议中，CEO将是合适人选，但若他对游戏的了解并不透彻，你最好寻找其他人。Smith表示，“如果你的初级设计师对游戏了解透彻且满怀热情。不妨让他们负责陈述内容。”Smith还建议你向发行商提供有关项目的总结内容，这要保持在1页之内，将所有资产呈现在FTP，或是U盘中（游戏邦注：后者是更理想的选择）。

注意事项很多，但Smith表述，最重要的元素是，“激情。要充分表现出，你对于构思满怀激情；你了解得很透彻，有信心能够将此变成现实。这是完成宣传工作的最关键要素。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How to pitch your game to publishers

by Edge Staff

Sony executive producer Pete Smith’s essential advice for your first meeting with a videogame publisher.

Pete Smith, an executive producer working with external studios at Sony, knows a thing or two about videogame pitches: he’s sat through hundreds. His talk at last week’s Develop Conference was, it seems, not only designed to help developers, but also to make his life a little easier: he opened, with welcome candour, with “I’m sick of sitting through crap pitches”. What follows is a summary of his advice on how to pitch a videogame.

Focus

“You may understand the game yourself and have written every line of code, but if you don’t have a focus to communicate you’ve got a serious problem,” Smith said. “Get it down to one focus sentence.” To make his point, he showed two videos of developers describing the game they were working on. The first, of Evolution Studios, showed the value of having a team that’s resolutely on-message, with each paraphrasing Motorstorm’s focus sentence: “Brutal off-road racing in a chaotic environment.” The poorly prepared team working on a Lemmings game were, to a man, incapable of describing their game properly, with one failing to say a single word. “That,” Smith says, “was the CEO. Motorstorm is now on six million units; the Lemmings developer went bust.”

What game ideas should I pitch?

“The most common question I’m asked is, ‘What do you want?’,” Smith explains. “If we knew that, we’d already have it in development.” Instead, he suggests you think tailor your pitch to a company’s current strategy. If you’re pitching to Microsoft, they’ll like Kinect support, while only a fool would pitch an idea to Zynga that wasn’t using the freemium model.

What assets do I need?

Smith recommends that you keep your presentation as visual as possible: “Even a rough screen mockup can give more insight than pages of text. As a developer you want to spend as little as possible, but you still need to get this right – and there are lots of options.”

He’s a fan of ripomatics: audiovisual montages that can be used to convey a game’s key theme or style. As they’re only used in private presentations you needn’t worry about using licensed footage or music; indeed, both are encouraged. Just ensure your ripomatic retains that singular focus we mentioned earlier. One video Smith showed spliced footage from a host of action films and games from the last three decades, which conveyed nothing about the game itself – and at seven minutes, it was far too long.

If you’ve got the funds, previsualisation videos can be of dual benefit, not only helping sell the game to a publisher but acting as “a great benchmarking tool for the team – they used it in Motorstorm, constantly referring art back to it to push the visuals.”

The best way to get a publisher interested, though, is a playable prototype – traditionally a costly endeavour, but more feasible now with the likes of Unity and Sony’s own Fire Engine. “They’re brilliant,” Smith says. “They give an impression of gameplay, but also help gauge the competency of the team – and are especially important for smaller digital games where fancy graphics are important. Just make sure you prototype the right thing – I don’t care about a fancy framework, but how the game plays and why it’s fun.”

Whichever path you choose, Smith advises that you focus on making the publisher’s life as easy as possible. “If you have great, focused assets we can more easily communicate the game to marketing, and help marketing more easily communicate the game to the public – and we all know marketing are a bunch of lazy bastards,” he says. “The better assets you give us, the better we look, and the less risk we take by presenting it. We get excited when we find great games, and we want to show them off.”

Manage your expectations

You could have the next Minecraft on your hands, but don’t be so confident in the game’s success that you expect a publisher to back you outright without anything in return. “The more you ask for, the more difficult it will be,” Smith says, advising that you “pitch the one area you care about and focus on that. Someone once pitched a good game and they wanted to keep the IP, have a massive development spend, bigger royalties, and guaranteed unit sales and marketing spend. They’d have got one of those.”

IP is key, and it’s not uncommon for a publisher being asked to take a chance on a new game by a young studio to want the IP in return. “There are obvious benefits to keeping it, but also to giving it up,” Smith says. “Remember: 100 per cent of nothing is nothing. A publisher is far more likely to commit to marketing and merchandising if it owns the IP.” It’s a fair point, if understandably one-sided, and Smith admitted that Sony’s insistence on IP retention meant that it lost a possible exclusive on Limbo to Microsoft.

The pitch itself

“Make sure you get straight to the point,” Smith says. “Think about the one message you want the publisher to remember and get straight to that.” Open with what makes the game great, and return to it at the end, to ensure it sticks – but make sure to make the business case, too. Explaining costs, your schedule, current status and projected completion date shows the publisher that you understand the business side of development, and helps sell not just your game, but your studio.

This, Smith says, could be key: “You’re probably not going to succeed with your first pitch, but sell yourself as a company and as individuals – it’s all about building trust and confidence. “If you impress the publisher they’re more likely to consider you for future work, and pick up the phone when you call.”

It’s worth thinking, too, about who pitches. Your CEO might be great in a normal business meeting, but if he doesn’t know the game inside out, you’re best advised to look elsewhere. “If the junior designer is the most passionate and knowledgeable about the game,” Smith says, “have them do the pitch.” Smith also recommends you leave the publisher with a summary of the project, kept to a single page, with all assets either on an FTP or, ideally, a USB stick.

Lots to bear in mind, then, but Smith says the single most important thing is “passion. Show that you’re passionate about your idea; that you know it inside out and have the drive and communication to make it happen. It’s the single most vital ingredient to getting your pitch over in the right way.”（Source：edge-online）