Hello!

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to London for the Pocket Gamer Connects conference. Pitching Kickabout to publishers went great, and I learned loads more about the mobile space. I’ll break it all down here, so grab a brew, and let’s dive in!
​

MEETING PUBLISHERS!

I got a very warm reception from the 10 publishers I met over 2 days, including a couple of the biggest names in mobile. I learned a lot about which might be a good fit for Kickabout. I also connected with some indie devs who successfully self publish, and learned a lot from them too (more on that later).

It was wall-to-wall publisher meetings and sessions the whole time! I bounced between 30 min meetings and sessions, finding time to eat and charge my devices when I could. Hitting a party in the evening and not oversleeping the next day is, of course, Conference 101. While I’m a veteran of GDC, and have attended other conferences like E3 and Develop, it was my first time at Pocket Gamer Connects - and I was really impressed with how well it was run. For example, they have a matching platform for arranging developer/publisher meetings that worked surprisingly well, and the density of talent and professionalism amongst attendees was high.

For publisher pitches, I made a point of getting Kickabout in their hands within a couple of minutes so they could feel the fun for themselves. I started them single player on iPhone, and after they completed that match, revealed iPad for the ideal 2 player mode experience. I also had a handful of slides ready to address design, roadmap, monetization, and partnership needs of Kickabout, but only showed these if they asked. Staying responsive to their questions made everything feel more conversational; a lesson learned from less successful pitches earlier in my career. Many of these conversations turned to next steps, including internal referrals and follow up proposals. i.e. my publisher outreach got off to a successful start!

I was also accepted into the Very Big Indie Pitch competition and the Publisher Speed Pitch session. Both were structured as 5 minute pitches to a table of judges/publishers, before moving to the next table and repeating 6+ times! Rapid fire pitching sounds intimidating but was actually a lot of fun. Saying hello, doing my elevator pitch, then simply letting them play for the remaining time while taking questions worked well. I pity any RPG devs held to that same five-minute limit! I didn’t win the competition, but someone I knew did…

MEETING DEVS!

My old game designer friend Travis Ryan won the Big Indie Pitch for mobile with his studio’s game Dash Crashy 100. I captured the moment he won and then spotted me in the audience. With that baseball bat in hand he looks like he’s gonna do me over, but I swear we had a lovely conversation afterwards!

Travis and I worked together in Manchester as designers on Looney Tunes Back in Action (2003, Gamecube and PS2). It was great seeing him after all these years. He lives in Shanghai these days; and with me living in SF, this was a rare chance to reconnect. It's neat to see his business Dumpling Design making a success of self publishing on mobile.

I met another veteran British Indie Developer at the conference, this time playing Table Tennis at the conference’s 20 year anniversary party. My friendly opponent was Rick Woods, who explained he’d been making small mobile games with his wife in Norwich for 14 years under the name Exobyte Games. His indie dev strategy was to target a niche genre where he can own the search keywords - in his case the “Coin Pusher” machines popular in seaside arcades! This strategy succeeded, providing the financial freedom to fund a new passion project he shared with me.

I came to this conference to learn about the mobile space, having been mainly in console and VR so far in my career (aside from Slope, which has 1 million downloads on Google Play store). It was educational to see how Travis and Rick make self-publishing work, and they’ve both been very supportive of Kickabout and generously offered follow-on conversations as I learn more about the space.
​
​

STAYING WITH FRIENDS!

Finally a big shout out to my London hosts, Emma and Jim! It was amazing hanging out and lovely to spend time with them and their family. They lined up Guitar Hero to play with their son Bertie, who also turned out to be an expert level Kickabout player - as he beat the hard difficulty 3-0 on his first attempt! As a football-mad gamer with his own foosball table, Bertie is exactly my target audience... and has ensured I add expert difficulty to my roadmap!

All in all, it was a fantastically productive trip. I’m now connected with a good number of prospective publishers, and feel better equipped to navigate the journey of bringing Kickabout to market.

Thanks for reading, and keep an eye on my social channels, which you can find at robkay.com​

Bye for now! :)

Rob​
​