"Famous Last Words"

Protecting Your Design Ideas at Pitch (May 2006)

Dear Jim:

I am a junior high math teacher and game-playing fanatic.

When I was in college I studied computer programming and now read books on game design and development in my free time.

I have been working on a game design and it is ready to be shown.

How can I make the contacts and protect my ideas and materials as I find a developer or hopefully a publisher to work with?

Dear K-12:

First of all, I applaud you on your wonderful interest and initiative. It is great to see game players infiltrate society at large! I am sure your love of game playing and your own skill set means you bring enthusiasm and passion to your students as they study math!

The bad news is you will find it extremely difficult to build interest in your game design at what has to be regarded as an early stage of development.

Game publishers are hesitant to review materials from unknown sources. Unsolicited material is often returned, unopened. Publishers are acting defensively to protect themselves against potential claims that they took ideas or materials from submitters without permission or acquiring rights. These sorts of claims are very common in the motion picture industry.

Developers may be a little more receptive – but you have to remember that most development companies were founded by people like you who have a passion for games and are stocked with their own ideas for projects.

The farther along your presentation, the more likely it may find a receptive audience. Use your math and programming skills to put together a demo. Even if your graphics and animation skills are minimal, some sort of demo to show the game play can help your presentation.

The best way to make the contacts necessary to “pitch” your game is to attend game industry events where you can meet publishers and developers up close.

IGDA local chapter meeting and the Game Developers Conference (GDC) represent excellent networking opportunities. E3 is another huge event, but is extremely difficult to get into if you are not already affiliated in the industry. When you meet someone at one of these get-togethers, it says you are serious about the industry.

If you go to GDC try to set up appointments before you go to the conference. Research the companies and the people with whom you want to meet and make initial contacts at least 90 days in advance. Appointment books fill up and you may find yourself frozen out of meetings if you do not act early.

While that is not to say you won't be able to “button-hole” people in the corridors and between sessions, this kind of contact has far less impact than a sit down meeting where you may be able to discuss your work and show your demo.

The IGDA has an excellent resource, called the "Game Submission Guide", that helps to more fully outline the pitching process.

When you finally get your meeting, you will probably be asked to sign an agreement.

There are two classes of agreements that are commonly utilized.

The first, and more benign, is the NDA (for Non-Disclosure Agreement).

An NDA is an agreement between two parties in which confidential information disclosed in the course of meetings or discussions, or material provided by one party to the other, will be treated as confidential, not disclosed to any unauthorized person, and will not be used by the party to whom it is disclosed for any unauthorized purpose.

An NDA can be unilateral or bilateral. In a unilateral NDA, only information disclosed by one party to the other is treated as confidential. This form of agreement protects the disclosing party from misuse of its information – but gives no protection to the other side. The party who signs such a unilateral NDA without any further agreement would have no protection for its own confidential information disclosed to the other side.

If you are asked to sign an NDA as a prerequisite to your meeting, be sure it protects information that you disclose to the publisher or developer. For this purpose, you will need to make sure the NDA is bi-lateral.

The second class of agreement is the Submission Agreement.

The Submission Agreement is also a unilateral agreement – that is primarily written to protect the publisher or developer that provides it.

While there may be some language in the agreement that prohibits use of the submitted material by the publisher or developer without a subsequent agreement between the parties, the Submission Agreement may require the submitter to agree and acknowledge that the publisher or developer is engaged in its own active internal program of design and development, receives ongoing submissions from a variety of sources, and may have the same or similar material to that of the submitter in its pipeline.

In its most one sided varieties, I have seen Submission Agreements that grant rights to the material to the receiving party, and prohibit the submitter from pursuing a cause of action if submitted materials find their way into products of the receiving party.

These Submission Agreements may, in some cases, be negotiable depending on the level of interest in your material.

Some companies go so far as to have several different off-the-shelf forms and provide the appropriate level of form (ranging from extremely one-sided to more balanced) depending on the level of interest in, and the reputation and track record of, the submitter.

In the end, the games industry is like any other creative industry. Relationships are important and built up over time.