No One Signs a Movie Off a PowerPoint

A veteran’s reckoning with work, worth, and the dreams he owes himself

For a decade, I’ve taught my students how to pitch. Having looked at every conceivable game pitch since my time at Virgin Interactive in the late 1990s, through my stint at Hasbro Interactive, then my START! Games venture and finally, my decade at PlayStation, and being a keen student of my own psychology, I have a pretty good feeling for what matters and what doesn’t.

The larger an organisation gets, the more people need to be convinced. It’s important to find the taste makers who rely less on formal analysis and more on their instincts. Those are the people you need to convince.

Is this the most important factor in a pitch?

I used to insist on seeing a playable prototype, no matter how simple or ugly, before seeing a pitch deck. If a developer started with a deck, I’d interrupt them. I’d say that the pitch for a TV show was a pilot, for a band it was a demo and for games it should be a prototype. Nobody signed a movie off a PowerPoint... I hope...

Is the demo the most important factor in a pitch?

I taught my students how to present with authenticity, with clarity and with cogency. I taught them relaxation techniques, approaches to building rapport and the importance of a good first impression.

Is personality the most important factor in a pitch?

While all of the above are important, what I’d emphasise over every other factor is reputation. I’d take the stage and explain the importance of the beautiful English expression “Your reputation precedes you”. If you have a reputation for trustworthiness, for reliability, for delivery, and enough of your peers speak well of you, then you have a massive advantage before you’ve even walked into the pitch meeting.

The primary component of reputation is this: Is your word your bond?

My work at Strategic Content was founded on this principle, and my team honoured themselves and PlayStation in living by it.

I’ve not done any meaningful work in a year.

I’ve been through a lot, much of it not discussed in this newsletter, or even with my closest friends, but that’s because I’m ashamed.

Ashamed, because I fell into the most dangerous trap of all:

Breaking my word to the only person you must never betray— yourself.

I have postponed my dreams, the way modernity allows us to cancel a meet-up with old friends.

I applied for jobs I knew were beneath me, massively beneath me, because my primary duty, to my family, supersedes the claim of my dreams on my time. I got turned down anyway. I didn’t feel humiliated, I felt grateful, because I sense a lack of alignment the way I sense a bad pitch.

Some of my dreams, like jumping a Race Inc BMX bike, like the one from “Code is Just”, the one that was stolen, into a stream in the New Forest, are humble. Some, like creating a manifesto for technology and the value and primacy of play, are not.

I’ll be 60 this year. I’ve kept promises to companies, to students, to strangers.

Now I’ll keep the one that matters most.

I will not let my dreams down again.