By Michael McCullough
The Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, May 5, 2004

    Weedy and shy, Johnathan Skinner shuffles to the front of the room. He clears his throat and starts speaking nervously.
    But before he gets far into his spiel, his audience's eyes light up with what they see on the screen behind him: An escaped bull named Bryce walks upright, rides a bike or takes the bus around an urban landscape, setting livestock and lab animals free and otherwise acting out a vegetarian revenge fantasy.
    Skinner starts to push some of the right buttons. He pitches "Steer Madness" as a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Chicken Run, with a little Pro BMX thrown in for good measure. He explains how he means to market the game to the three per cent of North Americans who are both vegetarians and casual video gamers.
    "Why limit it to vegetarians?" asks industry veteran Dan Irish, the former executive producer of Homeworld 2. "I could see anybody playing this game."
    A debate breaks out among the assembled mentors over the merits of mass versus niche marketing of video games.
    Skinner is honing the pitch he is taking to the 10th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next week. New Media B.C. has organized this "boot camp" for game developers and other startups trying to get their big break at the industry's preeminent trade show and schmoozefest.
    For three hours every Tuesday afternoon for the past five weeks, representatives of eight small companies have been gathering with Vancouver industry veterans to try and turn bright ideas into winning business propositions.
    Some of the companies, like Skinner's four-person Veggie Games Inc., have games in development that need a distribution deal. Others are pitching software tools for other developers. Still others are contract developers for hire.
    At times during the boot camp, the mentors play the role of busy game publishing executives, barking into their cellphones as they half listen to the participants' pitches.
    In one session the participants pair up, give the pitch to each other, then try to relate the others' pitch to the mentors. At least half of the messages become garbled: one presents a game as running on Nokia's N-Gage when in fact it runs on several platforms.
    The point of the exercise is to simplify the "value proposition" and make it memorable. You often have to rely on lower-level employees to relay your idea to people above who can say yes or no so make sure it doesn't get lost in the translation.
    "You've got to boil your message down to 'Die Hard on a bus,' " advises mentor Ian Verchere, a partner with Proving Ground Media. "That's how they remember you when you call back."
    Participant Teri Thom calls her company KrabbitSoft Studios' idea for a fast-action, hack-and-slash game "humonguos online multiplayer entertainment," or HOME for short. The mentors like it, though they question the hardware platforms: PC, UNIX and Mac.
    "When you go to E3 it's a world owned by PS2 (Sony's PlayStation 2)," Verchere says flatly. If you're using other platforms, you had better have a good answer why.
    The participants learn other tips: the higher up in an organization an executive is, the less tech-savvy they're likely to be, so don't use developers' jargon, and hand out a T-shirt or a cap instead of a PowerPoint presentation or a trailer of the game itself.
    If you have support materials, leave them on the way out. Don't have people flipping through your market projections as you're trying to talk. In fact, on first contact, leave only your card.
    "The more you show the more they have to poke holes in," says Danielle Michael, vice-president of business development for Radical Entertainment Inc.
    Ron Moravek of Relic Entertainment stresses the importance of gathering intelligence on the companies and people before the participants make contact with them.
    "Phone, dig, phone, call back," he says. Look at the company's annual report. What are its goals for product development?
    "If you have a product or pitch that's going to help any of these departments reach their goals, you have a much better chance," he advises.
    None of the mentors are expecting any miracles to come out of the boot camp participants' foray into E3. With luck, some starry-eyed developers will learn a lesson in the business reality and market reality, says Radical producer Vlad Ceraldi.
    "Everyone's got a good game idea. It's more than that. It's the business side," he says. And even if they don't come away with any nibbles, they will start to build contacts in the industry that will help them down the line.
    "It's helped me figure out exactly what the publishers want to know .... It's helped me prioritize my message," says Skinner, who has been to E3 three times before while working for other companies but never had to make a pitch.
    "It was good to do this as a test," added Sasa Djolic, whose Factory One Games is trying to sell a four-on-four "street" soccer game along the lines of the top-selling NFL Street and NBA Ballers.
    The boot camp experience confirmed Djolic's belief in establishing a dialogue with publishers rather than making a formal pitch. In fact he figures he got more out of meeting the mentors and other participants than he will ever get out of E3.
    "The biggest thing for me was to get introduced to people in the local industry," he says. "I've already talked to some people here about doing something together."