Mock pitch – 6th July 2021

In this post, I shall cover the mock pitch that we held on Tuesday, which was done so that we could gain initial feedback that would help us bring our project in the right direction, as well as inform how we deliver the final pitch in August.

The pitch was held online using Canvas and was delivered before three people from different creative industries. Students of other teams could watch our pitch and equally, we were able t watch prior and subsequent pitches

There was quite a rush by all of our team members to get enough work done so that we could illustrate our progress and also demonstrate the nature of the game, as well as its core mechanic.

Luke and I worked together until roughly 5 minutes before the pitch to get a video done that showcased some of the mechanics. This video is also viewable in my post on level design.

We all collectively worked on various slides of a powerpoint presentation (Perry, L., Quinn, L., Tenney, M., Tsaklev, G. and Waters, J., 2021) that we would use as part of our pitch. This presentation can be viewed by clicking the link below.

We made sure the presentation covered the name of the game, which we have agreed should be ‘Construct’, the genre and format of the game, the object of the game, as well as the possible design. The presentation also covered issues of accessibility that we will address in the game, as well as inspiration for the game and we gave examples of existing games with fanbases we would appeal to.

The presentation also specified our progress, as well as what our roles were. We made sure we demonstrated that we had considered what platforms the game would be ported to, how much it would cost and that we had touched upon how we would market the game.

The pitch was delivered at 7:15pm by Georgi (Tsaklev, G., 2021.), who agreed to be the spokesperson for our group.

The three people who we were pitching to were as follows. The descriptions that are listed have been taken from emails which our tutor Jamie White sent to all members of the course ahead of the mock pitches (White, 2021).

  • Anisa Sanusi
    • Anisa is a Senior UI/UX Designer at Roll7 and Founder of Limit Break, a mentorship program for underrepresented people in the UK games industry. On top of being a BAFTA Games member and juror, she is listed as Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe and as one of GamesIndustry.Biz Top 100 Game Changers and Most Influential Women in the UK Games Industry.
  • Roman Ohlendorf
    • Roman Ohlendorf is a Senior Technical Designer at PlayStation London Studio. During his career, he has worked across all design subdisciplines, including Narrative, Level and Systems Design. Involved with cutting-edge technology throughout, he has worked on titles for all platforms ranging from next-gen consoles to mobile VR.
  • Charles Batho
    • Charles graduated from LCP with a degree in graphic design. He worked as a designer/art director for a number of agencies until around 2000 when he transitioned into more of a project manager/creative producer role making ‘games with purpose’ for BBC, C4, Science Museum and Wellcome Trust. Subsequent to this he worked in a couple of small startups as Head of UX and Lead Product Designer. His work has been nominated for a children’s BAFTA and also won numerous other awards including multiple BIMA game of the year.

Georgi spoke very well about each aspect of the game and went into a reasonable amount of detail for each aspect of the game, as it was listed in the pitch presentation.

Georgi also showed them the video which illustrates the core mechanic in the game.

After the pitch, the three people were able to give feedback.

They all really liked our idea and it was well recieved, but Anisa and Roman agreed that it would have been good to see more aspects of the game and in particular, the puzzle aspect.

Roman also praised us for focusing on accessibility and also took note of the focus on the core mechanic, which he described as ‘changing the colour of surfaces’. He also encouraged us to focus on the core mechanic more for the final game.

We were also told that we may need to consider more thoroughly how the theme of sustainability relates to the core mechanic of the game and how we can reflect this theme in the story and gameplay.

Unfortunately, Charles did not appear to catch our pitch, because of Internet problems, so he did not have a lot of feedback.

This was really positive and the whole team felt relieved. The main take away from this is that left the three panelists wanting more. They were keen on what we had come up with and they wanted to see more of how the game would function and the puzzles that we would come up with using the core mechanic.

This is very encouraging and highlights that the project is generally going in the right direction. Despite delays and a lack of a playable demo, we at least have an understanding of what we need to do next and how to carry this out in a way that will result in a playable and engaging game at the end of the unit.

We do, however, need to consider how sustainability can be tied into the story of the game and we also need to start considering who our target audience really is.

As of this post, I have now caught up with all outstanding blogging for this project and I will continue with the practical work – namely level design, design for the logo and the menu design.

References

Tsaklev, G., 2021. Mock pitch for ‘Construct’.

Perry, L., Quinn, L., Tenney, M., Tsaklev, G. and Waters, J. (2021) Construct [PowerPoint presentation]. Available at: https://igdblog.jamespwaters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Pitch-Deck.pptx (Accessed: 1 July 2020).

White, J., 2021. Pitch Practice Judge Announcement. [email].

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