Strange the way fate sometimes seems to play a hand. We found it rather serendipitous that the Game Developers Conference (GDC) occurred almost immediately after our initial publisher’s project rethink. GDC is now THE event that every major player attends, and a great time to concentrate our efforts on making new friends. And San Francisco is a lovely city too 
We spent the few weeks prior to the show setting up meetings with just about every major industry publisher. I’d like to take a moment to apologize to the poor biz-dev folks that were hounded relentlessly this past month. It must be tough to be in business development, but particularly before these shows when they get deluged with countless requests for their precious time. We went at them full-bore, too. We made phone calls. We sent emails. Lots and lots of emails. We printed out a marketing booklet. We put together videos, including a sampler video that we put up on YouTube. In the end, we had roughly 75% of our time booked, and had meetings with about 85% of our desired publishers. We went to San Francisco with open minds and a full agenda.
We have a great team that put a lot of energy into our GDC setup. We paid an eyebrow-raising sum for a 10×15 expo-suite, and decorated it with some slick furniture that caused the other eyebrow to raise! We printed out a large amount of concept art and put it up on the walls just like we have in our “war room” back home. We brought 2 screaming-hot PCs and had them linked up so we could demo multi-player. No mini-fridge, but definitely on the list for next year. We obeyed strict union rules and only carried one box in per person. We spent Monday getting everything set up, and then the meetings began…
Our pitch was a strange one, in that we were not just pitching Blackstar. We were looking to discuss the team, tools, technology, pipelines, and processes, as well as the IP. We wanted to show some measure of all of our capabilities, and take the opportunity to talk with everyone about what type of business they were interested in.
We talked about all sorts of possibilities with all types of publishers, big and small. We found that a great many companies wanted to explore numerous IP avenues. Here was the typical pitch we did:
After quick introductions, we showed the game. Nothing helps convey what you’re about more than a playable, good-looking build of a game you’ve made. We were really happy with the responses from the very first meeting. We see and play our game all the time, so even though we think it’s cool it was nice to hear other people say the same thing. Folks liked it and wanted to see more.
Next we got into development processes. One of our fundamental philosophies is called “grayworlding.” It is a rapid-iteration technique that allows us to get to the fun before we spend big bucks on art. This received a strong reaction from everyone, and we do mean everyone, so we will be devoting the next four blogs to it.
Then we showed tools. We’re a 2nd-generation MMO company, so our tools were designed to drastically lessen the pain that we have gone through before in creating mass amounts of content. They are very powerful, very hot, and those that knew what to look for responded with glee. Actual glee!
Finally, we showed a couple of prototypes for some other pitches that we have been working on. There was a lot of discussion around these other products too.
Our meetings typically lasted an hour-ish, back-to-back. A lot of days our only lunch was some fruit we snagged from the morning’s buffet knowing we would work through lunch. We talked about our studio, in one form or another, 33 times. It was exhausting, but oddly enough it kept getting more and more meaningful for us. By the end we were tired and some of us were a little sick, but we all felt great. It actually became a joy for us to talk with folks, to share what we were doing and ask what they were doing. And we became 100 percent confident about our future, no matter what project we do.
We feel happy and fortunate and so very optimistic. Thanks so much to our team who has hung in while things have shifted around. It’s far too early for us to know exactly what we will be up to, but please stay tuned, and we’ll keep you posted. Next up… grayworlding!
