Key tips for pitching video games to publishers by indie advisor Rami Ismail

The video game industry is starting to look like a jungle. Indie studios face serious challenges when it comes to securing funding to create their projects. Many of them spend significant time attending pitch sessions (presentations of ideas and proposals) to showcase the concepts they want to sell to publishers, although most of them don't get the money. To know more about the topic, we met once again with an expert on the matter, Rami Ismail, indie ambassador and advisor, at DevGAMM in Gdánsk, where he shared some valuable pointers for these studios.

"The main thing I try to teach the indies is to move quick. A lot of indies that I meet spend a year and half, two years building their first prototype before they ever show it to another player or a play tester or a publisher," Rami explains to Gamereactor in the exclusive video below. "It's so much time lost because it's really hard getting funding right now, the industry is in a tough place and the funding is low". All this could make creating a highly polished prototype less useful, especially if the idea doesn't appeal to business people.

One of the tips might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it's important given the current state of the industry. "Move fast and don't try too hard. You should care about your game but I see a lot of developers researching every publisher that they pitch to, and I'm just like, go online, find a list of publishers, just pitch to all of them. And then, they'll figure it out. They'll say no if they are not interested, they will see it. And sometimes you get lucky. A publisher that normally you wouldn't believe would publish your game, might be interested. You never know".

Rami's last piece of advice for indie developers focuses on the communication of the project's core ideas. "You must know what your game really is. Be able to talk about what the heart is, what's the core of the thing. If I played your game and I loved it and five years from now I forgot the title and I forgot your name and I want to communicate this game to a friend, what is the one sentence that I could tell them that they could put into Google and then find your game? That's what I need to know".

Ismail also spoke about the saturation the industry has been facing in recent years, as well as the possible reasons behind the current video game crisis. You can watch it in the video, with the full interview with local subtitles.