When Nicklas “Cece” Cederstorm from Massive Entertainment says that he rolls around the floor pretending to be shot and shooting at people when pitching a game, you believe him.
Clearly his approach has paid off - he is part of Massive’s concept group which gets to work on game concepts that have been approved for production all year round. “We get to do all the fun stuff over and over again” said Cederstrom. “It’s like a honeymoon all the time.”
But Cederstrom is big on putting the right spin on a game when pitching it to marketers - something he says the team has learnt from experience.
“You need to be manipulate people into thinking this is the best game ever,” said Cederstrom.
He advocates a one page pitch with full colour screen shots, bullet points with key concepts and some more indepth text explaining the background story. “You need to get them instantly” he said. “It takes time, but it’s well worth it.”
“The marketing department has the power to make or break your game.” His advice is to do all the work for them - have the tag line, know your audience - that way they look at it and see their work is done.
But Cederstrom realises not everyone has the resources he does. When it comes to selling a game yourself he says the best thing is to be yourself and show your passion for your product. Something he does anyway. He says he gets to pitch to the scary suit people who love their little Palm Treo’s and are much more likely to play with them than listen to him unless he grabs their attention - hence the diving under tables and shooting up people.
But he also recommends a good powerpoint presentation with lots of “eye candy”.
“Eye Candy is the shit,” he said, just in case his point was not made.
There you have it, and well clearly its worked for him.