Does anyone have any experience or knowledge in presenting a game idea to a company. If so I could really use your help / advice. Thanks in advance aureilly@yahoo.com

You''ll need a good presantation covering most of the game features, all of the main ones.
But if you want to present a game idea to a big company (like EA) then you''ll need to go down to one of there offices. They will recieve thousands of game ideas through email, but they don''t read most of them, you need to talk to people in there offices=, depending on where you live.

You didn't explain what sort of company you want to present to, why you want to present and what sort of game. Someone with experience presenting web based promotional games to ad agencies wont be much use if you are seeking to present a big budget game to a retail publisher.

Explain clearly what you need and you are much more likely to get useful help. If you want to present to a retail game publisher then the following two articles may be useful http://www.obscure.co.uk/the_pitch.shtml and http://www.obscure.co.uk/demo.shtml

Good luck

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

[edited by - obscure on April 28, 2004 7:11:00 PM]

No matter what type of game you would like to sell ... if you have a demo-version showing off the very basic features just that someone who sees it can get an idea what you want in general ... it''s always good to have something like this ...


Indeterminatus

--si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses--

Thanks for the replies.

To be more specific I would like to pitch a game idea to EA games for a sports genre game. I have no programing knowledge just ideas on paper.

Anyone have experience with something like this? Do I really need to have some type of demo?

Then you are most likely SOL. Ideas are cheap and everyone has a few they can pull out if needed. Implementation is hard. How will you implement your ideas? Do you have a plan on how your team will accomplish this if given a green light?

Note that EA is very conservative and is unlikely to fund anything risky at this point.

quote: Original post by aureilly
Thanks for the replies.

To be more specific I would like to pitch a game idea to EA games for a sports genre game. I have no programing knowledge just ideas on paper.

Anyone have experience with something like this? Do I really need to have some type of demo?

You need a demo and a team of people who have a proven industry track record. Without those your chances of even getting EA to talk to you are zero. This is a frequently, frequently, frequently asked question and for full details of what you need see http://www.obscure.co.uk/the_pitch.shtml and http://www.obscure.co.uk/demo.shtml
For full details of why they wont talk to you without these things see http://www.obscure.co.uk/faq_idea.shtml


Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

Big time publishers won't fund an idea. They will however, fund a development team with a long proven track record(ala Brad McQuaid and company) or a strong working demo that clearly shows that your team can accomplish the task.

That said, credit cards, home-mortgages, friends, families and angel investors are all you have left. Venture Capital from former organizations is a complete waste of time in today's market because they are not only conservative from the fear of another dot.com bust, they know nothing of the industry.(ie greater risk in their eyes)

Without a demo you'll never get your game published through a big time publisher, unless of course, you have a storied history, working on profitable products and have released one or more very successful games.

Kressilac
ps This all assumes big budget AAA titles. Indy titles that sell ~10k units or so are an entirely different beast. Cell phones and PDA games are also a different market.

[edited by - Kressilac on May 3, 2004 1:32:36 PM]

Its funny how the people who want so much from the industry are the ones who won''t even take the time to sit down and learn some of the skills that are needed to succeed.

Ideas and opinions have something in common, they are like assholes, everybody''s got one.