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Selling Invisible Fun – Game pitching seminar



Date Posted: January 16, 2017

Northern Ireland Screen invites you to Selling Invisible Fun, a game pitching seminar presented by Brian Upton on Tuesday 24th January from 6:30pm-8:30pm at the MAC Theatre Belfast.

Making games takes money, so if you’re an independent game developer, chances are you’ll eventually find yourself pitching your game to an investor—someone with the funding to turn your creative vision into a reality. Usually this pitch occurs early in the project, long before a single level has been built, or a single encounter has been scripted. So how do you sell a potential partner on your creative vision when there’s nothing for them to play? How do you sell them on your game when the fun is still invisible?

This talk is about how to pitch games: How do you convey the feel of a gameplay experience that still exists only on paper? What do publishers look for in a game pitch? What information is important to lead with? How much detail should you go into? What common mistakes should you avoid? And how do you sell yourself as someone who’s able to deliver on what you’re promising?

Seminar times

  • 6:30pm – 7:00pm – Registration
  • 7:00pm – 8:00pm – Selling Invisible Fun
  • 8:00pm to 8:30pm – Networking

Who should attend?

Game producers, studio heads and developers looking to take their content to market to find partners and promote their projects.

Students studying game development or animation may also find these sessions useful.

Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis, please RSVP early to avoid disappointment. Register now to secure your place.

Please let us know if you have any access or communication needs, prior to attending this event and we will be happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that we can make to assist you.

For any further information please contact [email protected]

Brain Upton

Brian Upton started his professional game career at Virtus Corporation in 1995 where he worked as the lead engineer on Tom Clancy’s SSN, a PC submarine simulator. The success of SSN led to the creation of Red Storm Entertainment, which he joined as a founder. At Red Storm he served both as the creative director for the company, and the lead engineer and lead designer on the award-winning tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. A few years later he followed up the success of Rainbow Six by designing the ground-breaking military shooter Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.

Upton departed Red Storm in 2002 to join PlayStation’s Santa Monica Studio as a senior game designer. During his time at Sony, he collaborated with third-part teams on games such as Fat Princess, Warhawk, Sorcery, Escape Plan, Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture, Bound and Here They Lie. He has served as a member of the advisory boards of the NYU Game Center and the UC Santa Cruz Games and Playable Media program, and given design talks at USC and the Laguna College of Art and Design. He left Sony in 2016 to start Game On The Rails.

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