When creating a pitch deck for your video game, you’ll want to balance several things:

• providing all the information needed to make a decision
• getting them to trust you (by showing that you know what you’re doing)
• respecting a publisher’s time (as you want them to respect yours)

Software and extensions you’ll use matter less, whether you go for MS Office, Keynote, Slides, or our own Pitch Maker. What matters most is how you frame and position your game in the mind of the publisher or investor.

We’ve laid out the order of sections in a specific way, the one we found works the best, but feel free to shuffle the chapters around. If you have a kick-ass team of experienced and well-known individuals, you should feature them straight after the title page. If not, focus on strengthening the arguments for your game first, and leave the team for later on when the publisher is already hooked.

This is how we’d suggest you lay out your pitch:

• start with a quick intro with an overview of your game
• go deeper into an overview of the gameplay
• explain why and where it fits in the market
• show you’re heading in the right way with your metrics
• share your itinerary with a roadmap
• make a well thought-out financial ask
• let them know which services you’ll require from them
• describe why your team is the right one to pull this off

Game overview

This is the most important section of your pitch and should be the shortest one. At a glance, publishers and investors will know whether they’re interested in looking at the rest of the deck. In the game overview, you should list out:

• the platform(s) you are building the game for
• development stage of your game
• what category it fits into
• monetization method(s) you have in mind
• how long is the expected play time
• the engine you’re building on

For most publishers, at least half of these are elimination factors—based on them they can instantly decide whether they’re interested in learning more about your game and studio. By laying it out in a clean and straightforward way, you’ll be saving their time and yours.

Gameplay

The gameplay section serves to convince publishers that you have a strong understanding of game design and that you know how to deliver a great playing experience. After reading your description, they should be able to get a sense of what the game will feel like.

When writing the game overview, focus on:

• game theme, complexity, and play style
• the main gameplay loop
• game mechanics that support it
• the player’s goal in the game
• the environmental and psychological aspects of the game
• key features of the game
• the unique selling proposition for your game

Your unique selling proposition should sum up all the reasons why your game will shine on the market. Rami Ismail of the Leveling the Playing Field wrote an excellent article on how to think about USPs and a bunch of tips on what to avoid when putting them down on paper.

Assets

Illustrations, screenshots, gameplay videos, or a vertical slice. Depending on the stage of development in which your game is at the moment, assets such as these help publishers visualize and feel your game. Some of the assets you could include in your pitch are:

• a game design document: an outline of your game's story, player objectives, mechanics behind the gameplay, and other important elements of your game
• concept art: illustrations that show what the world you're building will look like. Include characters, creatures, and environment so that the publisher can sense your game's atmosphere and tone
• screenshots: if you don't have a vertical slice or a prototype that you could share, use screenshots that show the gameplay and interaction between parts of the game shown in your concept art
• gameplay video: level up the screenshots and show the game in action
• soundtrack: music and sound effects can amplify the emotions of players, and they can do the same for a publisher—include them, especially with a context in which they would be used
• vertical slice: a more advanced asset, a vertical slice gives the publisher a clear understanding of what the completed game will be like when it comes to gameplay, controls, art, and sound. It should include different mechanics, friends, enemies, items, and the environment.

The best assets are the ones you have right now. The next best assets are the ones you can produce in a relatively short time and for a reasonable cost. Overall, focus on creating and pitching with high-quality assets that showcase your game's strengths and your ability to deliver great and entertaining content.

Market

Here, you should explain the market opportunity for the game you’re building and offer a compelling argument for why people will play (and pay for) your game after trying out other similar games.

In the market section, you should include:

• a few sentences on the size and current state of the category you’re in
• the potential for growth of the category
• trends you’ve noticed and what you expect the future to be like
• the market opportunity for a game like the one you’re making
• how much of the category do you expect to reach (TAM v SAM)

Think of market research and description as a synonym for the audience that will play your game. Your gut feeling will get you to build the game, but you’ll need more tangible arguments to get a publisher or investor to fund your project.

“But, will anyone play this?” The job of the market section of your pitch is to get rid of this fear by showing that there’s a substantive number of players interested in the category and the theme of your game, and on the platform you’re making the game for.

A deep dive research into a category is fantastic to have (it is one of the things we do very well as consultants in the mobile space), but it can be expensive and is not required by the majority of publishers and investors.

Metrics

Your pitch deck is a set of arguments you’re presenting, trying to make another person believe what you want them to believe—that what you’ve got is worth investing in. Whenever we try to convince someone, we reach for the arguments that appear big and strong. Sometimes they are powerful, and sometimes they’re smoke and mirrors.

Experienced publishers and investors will raise little red flags of their own when they notice vanity metrics, thinking that either you don’t know what really matters, or that you’re trying to fool them.

Joshua Lu of a16z Games wrote a post on what he finds to be fishy metrics when looking at video games pitch decks.

Examples of problematic metrics are when lifetime installs or revenue are not normalized for time, when top downloaded in a category is not normalized for competition, etc.

As Joshua points out, there’s not much point in trying to sweep the problems under a rug, as they will come to the surface during due diligence.

If you’ve got some really impressive metrics, give them context. Show what happened when a spike in revenue or downloads or wishlists happened, what changes were made to the game that increased retention and time spent playing, and other data you’re happy about when it comes to the platform you’re making the game for.

Some of the metrics that publishers are most interested in:

• wishlists across platforms
• followings on social media (actual interactions are a big bonus)
• engagement from users (active users, retention, sessions, etc)
• monetization (conversion rates, ARPU, ARPPU, RPI, etc)
• user acquisition (downloads, ROAS, CPI, etc)
• ratings and reviews

You might be at a stage where you have no metrics to show. If that is the case, focus on describing what kind of metrics you’ll be on the lookout for—and, for a start, consider how you will build your audience online.

Roadmap

The roadmap for your video game helps publishers (but more importantly, it helps you) understand what7s next, what is the planned timeframe, and what are the cost for each of the phases of the development of your game.

Building a realistic and credible roadmap requires having the following information ready:

• what is the concept and the design of the game
• what technology stack and tools will you use
• how big is your team and what roles need to be filled in

A common mistake is to view the roadmap from where you’re at right now. Instead, you should think of these items from the perspective of having the game ready for release. Your team will not be of the same size when you’re starting out and playing with ideas, as it will be when you’re polishing the game prior to the release.

The three most important time stamps in your game’s roadmap are:

1. When you started
2. Where you’re at right now (while sending the pitch to a publisher or investor)
3. When you believe the game will be ready for release

The more you breakdown your roadmap the better, as it will be much easier to plan for, evaluate, and revise multiple points in time.

A tip: if you’ve started building the game a long time ago (several years back) without much to show for it, use the roadmap to explain what happened in the meantime and why is now the right time for you to go full throttle on the development of the game.

Financing

When you’ve defined the outline and the roadmap of the game, you’re ready to consider financing. It’s important that you can look back and see how much money you’ve invested in the development of the game thus far, and how much you’ve achieved. This will provide crucial insights into what you should expect your expenses to be as you move forward.

How to calculate the amount of money invested so far?

For most developers, the greatest investment in game development is their time.

Calculating time-to-money is easy if you’ve been diligent at tracking and filling out timesheets—but most likely you haven’t been doing that. Instead, take a look at what you’ve built so far and what you’ve learned along the way, and go for a ballpark estimate of what is the worth of the time you’ve invested.

Keep in mind that publishers and investors will ask you about this number if it is outlandishly big, and you need to have a rationale ready to explain your estimation.

What if I’ve already secured some funding from other sources?

If you’ve secured funding from other sources, make sure to mention them in your pitch—publishers and investors will want to be aware whether anyone else is on board. As crowdfunding is a popular way to raise funds for creative work such as video game development, for most publishers it is important to know if your game has already received coverage and has a community of supporters.

What should i budget for?

How detailed the breakdown of your budget should be depends on the complexity of the game you’re making.

Your budget might have the same or higher number of milestones as your roadmap—you will want to break it down into chunks of time that might be defined by introduction of new tech or personnel. For example, while developing the first playable you probably don’t need a dedicated QA person, but they will become quite important when you decide to release a beta version of your game.

The most important item in your budget (in some cases, in the entire pitch) will be your team. It will also be the biggest item in most budgets. Your job as the person who runs the studio is to plan for all the roles that are and will be a part of the team, as well as for the equipment they will need to make the game.

If you’re a solo developer, things will be much easier and your budget will be much lighter—but the workload and ability to execute on the plan might suffer. The more complex the development, the more people you’ll need which should lessen the workload, yet comes with problems of its own such as people management.

After planning the team expenses, list out the operational costs. These are the hardware and software you’ll need to acquire, office space, servers, travel expenses, but also monthly contingency for all the things you cannot even think of happening on the way.

If there are services you plan on outsourcing, list them separately from the team—publishers can usually provide certain services at a high level or can recommend teams that they have experience working with. Keeping these expenses separate from your in-house team will make it easier for publishers (and yourself) to negotiate.

We’ve created a game development studio budget template that you can easily duplicate, edit, and use as you see fit. Consider it as a good starting point from which you can start thinking about and preparing your budget for pitching to publishers.

A tip from our side: always start with a bigger number. We’re not saying that you should increase your budget out of proportions, but that you should consider setting a higher financial anchor that you can initiate the negotiations from. Plan the budget of your dreams, and prepare for landing a realistic budget that will get your game developed and published.

Services you require

Besides financing, make sure to list out the services you’d expect the publisher to provide. If you’ve followed our recommendations for laying out the budget for your game, these might be the services you’ve considered outsourcing.

In most cases, they fall into one of the four main categories:

• Marketing services
• Distribution services
• Production services
• Partnership services

Remember that publishers have extensive experience with everything that needs to be done prior to and following the launch of a game. Good publishers have a checklist that they will follow so that no activity gets overlooked. The game pitch that you’ll send should highlight the activities you consider to be most important for the successful development of your game.

Listing out services you expect from a publisher are also a great segue to a conversation on what a particular publisher can provide, and whether they rely mostly on in-house experts or outsourced service providers.

About your studio and the team

One of the most important questions a publisher will ask themselves is whether the people behind the studio will be able to see the development process through. The way you describe the studio and the people will build or disturb the trust that your team is the right one for the job.

If you’re a solo dev, focus on describing the amalgam of experience, skill, insight, and passion that’s driving you and will help you develop the game to its release.

If you have a big team, focus on the MVPs—people in the studio that make it tick and who bring the most experience, knowledge, or required perspective to the table.

When you have a team, it’s also worth noting whether you’ve collaborated on projects together before, and it will be a big plus if previously you’ve released a game as a team together. If you haven’t worked together before, draw on your teammates previous experience from other studios, or successful ventures they were part of.

With big teams comes the task of managing everyone and making sure that there are no bottlenecks that might change the timeline of the roadmap. Additional issues might arise if the team works remotely. If that’s the case, it would be great if you would describe how the team communicates, manages tasks, and resolves conflicts if there are any.

Some basic (and crucial) tips

• Tables: give them labels, titles, make scales standard across the deck.
• Keep it real. Once you close the door of trust, opening it again will be like playing in nightmare mode.
• Keep it short. 10-15 slides are more than enough to get a foot through the door.
• If you have additional assets to show off, such as art or a game design document, attach those as annexes to your deck.