When it came time to putting together my pitch deck I knew that I wanted the game to stand front on center. With the type of game I am making I knew that it would be hard to put across the vision of the game with just a text based description and a couple of screenshots. Thankfully I had the trailer already prepared and realised this was the best vehicle I had (outside of the game itself) to show off just what I was trying to do with Just Shoot.
However outside of that its has been a while since I had done a pitch so I began to research the most recent intelligence on what makes the perfect pitch.
And oh boy was there a lot! I ploughed through article upon article and video upon video to discover that there is no tried and tested formula that works. This should not really come as a shock because every game is different and therefore requires different aspects in order to illustrate its success. One thing I did find though was that a pitch deck is an essential tool when a developer is out there looking for either investment or support. As described by Romanos (2021) “A pitch deck is only one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a key part, not only to have something to present or send to publishers, but also as a process to help sanity check the why, what and how for your game, and in particular identify any gaps in your planning.”
When looking into the make up of the content I stumbled upon a great article from Donaldson (2020) who was detailed in his descriptions of the fundamentals of a pitch deck, “Interwoven through the initial pitch deck should be the fundamentals of Engaging, Simple, Short.” Within his fuller descriptions he details how the pitch deck needs to ensure it maintains the viewers interest with visuals, keeps its language trimmed down and light on technical jargon, and finally short giving a high level overview of the product.
Finally when I was developing my business plan for this module I found an excellent resource called Indie Game Coach and I recalled there was a pitch deck template available from this website. I found this template to be a lot simpler in its requirements but also thorough in its detail and content.
So with these three articles alone I was already heading towards an idea on what I wanted to do with my pitch deck, the specific content was also helpfully described within both of these articles.
| Romanos | Donaldson | Josef & Van Lepp |
| Title page (obviously!) | Interwoven through the initial pitch deck should be the fundamentals of Engaging, Simple, Short. | Product Details |
| Introduction (or executive summary) | Game Overview | Marketing Assets |
| Show me the game | Product Details | Launch Roadmap |
| Why should this game exist now? | Unique Selling Points | Team Info |
| The team | Market Research & Positioning/Competitive Analysis | Ask |
| Data, data, data | Roadmap / Where you’re at | Contact Info |
| Community & marketing | Financial Snapshot & Scenarios | |
| Production | Team/Accolades/praise/Accomplishments | |
| What do you need? | The Ask | |
| Thank you & Call to Action |
From this exercise I was able to break up my pitch deck into the sections I wanted to finally have and begin to develop the specific content for them.
Final Content for Pitch Deck
- Title Screen
- Product Details
- Trailer
- Gameplay Description
- Features
- Roadmap
- Budget
- Potential Income
- Team
- What We Need
- Contact
Thankfully I had a lot of the content already created through other aspects of this module so it was just a question of putting it all together. I cracked open InDesign and began to go to work.
One thing I needed to ensure I maintained was the visual style across all of my previous marketing assets and well as the game assets so I cracked open my Illustrator file alongside Indesign as I was working to create all of the different assets for the pitch deck.
The main important aspect for me was to be able to utilise the trailer within the pitch deck. Knowing I wanted to create a PDF for the presentation I had to do a little research into how to get a video to play within an PDF file through InDesign. Thankfully Adobe’s help website are really useful and I was able to find the solution really quickly. The rest of the construction of the pitch deck went quite quickly after this, mainly thanks to the fact that I had produced a lot of the assets previously.
- Product details were described in the business plan
- Trailer was already created
- Screenshots came from the marketing materials
- Budget and potential income came from the business plan
- Roadmap came from the Hack n Plan project management
- Game play and features came from the design outline and press kit
- Team came from the press kit
- and finally the What we need section was really the only thing I need to tweak a little to fit.
So once I had stretched my InDesign muscles I ended up with the final pitch deck.
Final Pitch Deck
Below is my final pitch deck (with the trailer removed).
JustShoot-PitchDeck-LightReferences
Donaldson, C., 2020. The Art of the Pitch Deck.. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/lunar-owl-consulting/the-art-of-the-pitch-deck-da27f0d0c779> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
EggNut, n.d. Backbone Pitch Deck. [online] Notion. Available at: <https://www.notion.so/Backbone-944f9e9ce4e54e8bba5ca459fdde14df> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Gummy Cat, n.d. Bear & Breakfast Pitch Deck. [online] Notion. Available at: <https://www.notion.so/Bear-Breakfast-f3d9ee881d3340f7bc8354ef1c2abe7a> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Helpx.adobe.com. 2021. Add movie and sound files to InDesign documents. [online] Available at: <https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/movies-sounds.html> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Hiding Spot, n.d. Beacon Pines Pitch Deck. [online] Notion. Available at: <https://www.notion.so/Beacon-Pines-7d5dfeb5bd8d43c687147acc5163ae2c> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Josef, A. and Van Lepp, A., 2020. The Essential Pitch Deck Checklist. [online] Indiegamecoach.com. Available at: <https://indiegamecoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Essential-Pitch-Deck-Checklist.pdf> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Kramer, F., n.d. Video Game Pitch Decks. [online] Notion. Available at: <https://www.notion.so/Pitch-Decks-f56e38c13fe6417f8379859e74367e1a> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Romanos, E., 2021. The perfect publisher pitch deck. [online] GamesIndustry.biz. Available at: <https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-08-17-the-perfect-publisher-pitch-deck> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Tyre Bytes, n.d. Turbo Boom Pitch Deck. [online] Notion. Available at: <https://www.notion.so/Turbo-Boom-e420a0658b2945b38f82f7fb823982d5> [Accessed 31 December 2021].
Figures
Featured Image: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Pitch Deck Front Page’ Created on 30th December 2021
Figure 1: Charlish, R (2021) ‘Working Illustrator file’ Created on 30th December 2021
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