OUR LAST COMMUNITY EVENT OF 2022
Last Wednesday we organized the final workshop of the year for the studios of our incubation and acceleration program. We talked about how to pitch to publishers and present confidently. Essential skills for every game studio!
Sam De Boeck, our relationship manager kicked things off with a presentation on how to pitch to publishers. Many of our studios are working on their first couple of games and many of them are exploring the option of pitching to publishers. The goal of Sam’s talk was to give the studios a simple but practical blueprint consisting of three phases: research, pitching, and negotiations.
‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there’
Following this presentation, Jill went into more detail on how to present confidently. You can have the best pitch deck in the world but if you can’t sell yourself and your game, nothing is going to come out of it.
It is not enough to simply tell studios how to pitch to publishers. There has to be practice! Therefore, we gave our studios some homework. Pitch us your game as if we, the audience, are the publisher! In the presentations, we focused on the hook, USPs, and game aspects. What makes your game unique and how do you present that in a simple, clear, and visual manner? A great exercise to iron out imperfections. We stimulated peer feedback on top of the feedback from our in-house coaches to really involve each participant in the process. We’re all in this together after all sharing the same goals!
No event is complete without a proper lunch. So just like The Last Supper, we had a big table full of people and lots of random things to eat. It was a pleasure seeing so many like-minded people talking and enjoying themselves accompanied by great food and drinks. After lunch, we created one big circle and reflected on 2022 in a click-pause event during which some very inspirational stories were told.
‘Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow’
After lunch, we created one big circle and reflected on 2022 in a click-pause event during which some very inspirational stories were told. Having your own game studio is hard. That’s why it’s so important to talk and share stories with each other. It can be a lonely road to the top but know that you are not alone! At the end, we set our goals for 2023 and toasted on the new challenges ahead!
Of course, we had to organize a playtesting session for our studios’ games. We love to organize regular playtest sessions as it’s the best way to gather valuable feedback from other studios as well as know what your peers are making and how they are progressing. It’s a fun way to stay up to date with each others’ work. Once again, we were pleased to see the amount of progress they have been making!
2022 was a very important year for DAE Studios. We came in touch with many talented developers, welcomes studios in our network, created a new way of working, finetuned our program, … The list goes on and on and we’re only getting started! We look forward to seeing what 2023 will hold for us. We’re ready!
DAE Studios is a spin off from the Howest University of Applied Sciences initiated by the educational program Digital Arts & Entertainment.
Nelson Mandelaplein 2,
8500 Kortrijk
Belgium