Reflecting on pitching games and technology

A big part of the early days of a startup is presenting (or pitching). You always have to be ready to jump into “sales” mode. Anytime I get near an elevator I go through my talking points.

The concept can be great, the deck water tight but messing up the execution can kill it. The pitch is much more a conversation than a presentation so you need to be prepared for people to ask you questions about stuff you have prepared in later slides or just go on a completely different tangent. The key is to hit all of your points, keep the energy level up and last but not least, ooze confidence.

Pitching does not come naturally for me so I have to practice… a lot. If I have a pitch coming up I try to use every chance I get to practice. I get most of it done by pitching to my dog when we are out walking in the lava-fields. I messed up a pitch once because I was late to the meeting and out of breath so its good to practice while walking (But it’s mostly because we are alone out there and I like to be moving).

After founding Arctic Theory I’ve done quite a few pitches for all sorts of people. Anytime I get a chance to pitch to someone I do my best and then reflect on how it went and what I can improve.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on the way that I speak about our technology, particular with non-technical people. I get super excited about all the potential and all of the ways we are breaking barriers that I have been fighting my whole career. The technical artist in me is like a kid in candy store!… well more like a kid describing what they’ll do once the candy store has been built.

I realised a few weeks ago that when I do my presentation I tend to get lost when talking about the technology. GenOS(our simulation technology) in particular. I think our technology is awesome and get super energetic when talking about it. The audience picks up on the energy and really wants to join me. But thats when I start talking about all the technical things that are involved and lose the crowd.

I guess thats fair, most people don’t get the same kind of kick out converting particle simulation into time-stamped JSON files or optimising point cloud data so it can be replicated in real-time to thousands of players.

Last Friday I did a pitch where we had re-focused our messages a bit, and one of the points was to de-emphasise the technology pitch so that we can focus more on the game. The only mention of GenOS is in a footnote, and it’s just the logo. I even practiced that bit(with my dog) making sure I only briefly mention it.

When I go through the pitch with the real audience and the footnote is coming up I say something like this:

The game is set in a massive world, inspired by arctic environment where geological. ecological and climate changes have a huge impact on how the world evolves and the player experiences it

I go through our tech, and mention that GenOS is what enables us to do the geo-eco-climate changes. And I get a question

How does GenOS do climate changes for gameplay?

My eyes light up!

I dive into the technical part, show the tech videos, and geek out about it. I get super into it and the people in the meeting as well! I even managed to ride this level of energy through the rest of the pitch. I even managed to have fun talking about the timetables, hiring plans and cap table.

I guess what I’m taking out of this is that I have to think about the audience and what gets them excited. I’m presenting the same content but the context and lead up to it was different. When I talk about how awesome the technology is and hoping that everyone would see what it can do through my eyes nobody was able to follow.

Last week I re-framed this so people understood what the technology does and what it enables. That worked way better than diving straight into how it does it. That also put me in a position where I’m in the role of the expert who can answer the technical questions.

Next time I’m talking about all of the awesome things that I’m going to do in the game. Animal migration based on temperature changes, volcanic lava flow blocking trade routes and devastating avalanches messing up infrastructure. Then I (casually) mention that GenOS is the technology that enables me to do that.

I’m pretty sure that’ll buy me at-least an hour of geeking out about the tech.