Have you ever pitched a game to a studio before?

I actually have a few connections in the UK now and even a young team willing to help put these game ideas floating around in my skull to screen.

One of my said UK connection is a young developer and we're coming up with a few games, but one in particular we want to pitch to Konami we feel the batshit loonacy in this particular game would be a good fit for them plus I want to load the game with Konami references/music.

Just out of curiosity I was wonder if any one has ever pitched a game before. Before I type up the pitch.

 

Having just submitted the release information to Nintendo for my second 3DS game, my advice is: don't bother. For better or worse, today is the age of the indie. Publishers are falling or consolidating left and right and even getting a pitch meeting in the current climate just isn't going to happen (and if it does, buy a lottery ticket). If you want to get the game made, you will have to make it yourself. If the game is good on its own and you still want to go after licensing/publisher support, then you might be able to get a meeting with a playable demo. It's been said many times before: ideas are worthless by themselves.

 

I know that mods of games are different from retail releases, but I think a ton of parallels points should be noted. I have modified various games for a wide array of consoles as well as PC, & in the process of doing so have had to visit various forums/wikis/sites that deal with editing that specific title.

You wouldn't believe the amount of times someone starts a mod that either has no idea how to modify the game themselves, & they just write down a bunch of ideas & a makeshift story, or it is an individual who does that same thing while maybe knowing the basics of one aspect of the game (mapping, texturing, coding, sound design, modeling). These projects usually die as soon as they start. They drum up little interest in possible players of your game, & push away anyone with the skills who could help it along, because to them, the project looks unorganized, lazy, & as if the person who proposed the idea for said mod has no ambition to contribute actual work to his own project.

I have been working on a HL2 mod off and on for 4 years, & I have yet to make a page on moddb for it, or even show it off. I know that I need someone more knowledgeable with C++ to cleanup my poorly coded functions. I need a modeler to redo most models that I slapped together. I need a texture artist to breath life into my environments & models. I need someone more competent with sound to help. Etc, etc, etc. The point is, I am putting together a playable demo so that I have something to show off the second I put it on the Internet.

That is what gets people interested. Demonstrations. The same goes for many mediums. I have friends who want to be rappers, & every time they say they found some producer, they have nothing to show.

An amazing demo doesn't guarantee anything. But if I was some guy in a position to fund some homebrew title, the one that I can see/play in action will be a trillion times more interesting than a document proposing possibilities.

 

The idea we has was, well if Bayonetta 2 won't go multiplatform, we'll just do it ourselves, and Stripper Witch was born. As me and my VERY small team of UK developers got talking about it we realized if this game is going to get anywhere we need a publisher with enough legacy characters to load it with Referneces. Plus I nobody somebody else who is pitching something to Konami already. It's just simply a project that wouldn't work as an Indie. Honestly I don't think it'll ever get made. The Team isn't experenced enough to do what I have in mind and I highly doubt I'll even get to pitch it. Stripper Witch is a working title too who would even think of releasing a game called Stripper Witch? No matter how much of a ring it has. Then again if I wait long enough, Suda 51 will probably make the game for us.

 

I honestly wish you the best of luck if you are truly serious about such an endeavor. Expecting to get trademark titles & characters into your first pitch of an idea is sadly not good enough for an introduction, if you plan on making a profitable game. I abused & reused many many characters, abilities, ideas for my HL2 mod as well, & as of now, it blatantly rips off a number of IPs from Nintendo-Sony-Microsoft-Capcom-Hudson-whathaveyou & I used graphics made by these companies to indicate my inspiration, but I know I need to downplay the resemblance to these well known IPs.
Gathering everything you love about every game you played & trying to create something new is a beautiful thing. Doing the same with well established resources from popular games can be, but it will never be remembered for its own innovation. If you got a competent team of designers (which I'd kill to have), make something fresh, & pack it with what you think makes great games amazing.

 

If they wanted to make a rip-off of Bayonetta, they would've done that already. It's not like they're gonna see your pitch and be all "Holy shit, you mean we could do a game that's just like this other game...but different!? We never thought of that!"