Building the pitch from an idea

Small overview of the game

Vessel was born from the idea of making a tribute to the old school Resident Evil's and niche cult horror games like Obscure. Regarding gameplay, its main reference is Resident Evil 4 (2005). In essence, Vessel is a horror themed, narrative-driven, third person shooter on rails with puzzles and back tracking. Like its main reference, I aim to make it land in the frontier between action and horror.

The original idea

Usually my projects are built using a story as the main axis. This is due to the fact that my ideas are born like plots or characters and then I shape them into a medium that makes them impactful. This story came to me as a plot inspired by Mike Mignola's worlds (Hellboy and Baltimore) and recalling one of the best betrayals that I ever experienced in a book. This happened to come to me when I was playing the remake of Resident Evil 4 and thought that there was some loss in the tone despite the excellent work that Capcom did. In my head it made a lot of sense to mix both things and make this tribute.

Why did I decide to work on this idea?

Ideas on their own are worthless, anyone who has worked on any creative field can confirm this. Their value only shows when you build something around them. So why did I decide to invest my time and energy on Vessel instead of spending those on literally any other thing?

There are three main reasons:

1. I was obsessed. I wanted to build this and kept  thinking about it even when starting other explorations.

2. I saw a market fit for it.

3. I've learnt a lot during my years in the industry and I want to build a small studio. Hopefully, Vessel will allow me to start!

   
   

About the market fit

I'm a professional, that means that I'm here to make money. I'm invested in  building a game that’s  not only fun, but also  profitable. After some research I identified that horror games are now a heavily polarized niche. On one hand we have big budget AAA productions of very deep and dark stories like Alan Wake, Silent Hill, The Winters saga in Resident Evil, etc. The big productions are moving into some serious horror. On the other hand we have multiplayer experiences on the indie and mid-budget productions side, like Phasmophobia, The Outlast Trials, or Devour. I decided to present Vessel as a AA production focusing on the fun of horror. What do I mean by that? I aim to make something equivalent to Sam Raimi films (Ash vs the evil dead). So inside the horror spectrum we will be closer to a comedy than a dramatic horror.

Building a pitch to clarify ideas

With that decided I built a pitch. That forced me to identify references and think deeply on  my unique selling points. While that was a fun exercise, I struggled budgeting the production. I considered the minimum team (5-8 people) developing the game in the most optimistic way (2 years) without any time padding. I considered a salary band around 60k-80k Eur, I added 10% for music and sound, a little bit for contingency, some license costs, and, all in all, I needed 2M to produce around 2h of gameplay. I knew those numbers weren't correct, but I was struggling to correctly identify art costs. So I decided to ask someone wiser.

Showing the pitch

Once I finished the pitch draft I went to the BCN Game Fest to mostly solve all the doubts I had. I spoke  to a few publishers that brought  up some interesting questions and considerations. All of them saw potential in the project. I also spoke  to a few musicians that helped  me understand how to better assess music costs. Finally, I spoke to a couple of friends that have been doing this for several years now, one about  business perspective and the other about  art direction. I'm not disclosing the names for privacy but hopefully I will convince them to write a few lines in the blog. Those conversations literally reshaped the project.

The issues aiming for AA

Those last two  conversations were really important for Vessel. Their honesty put the project back on the right track. The main issue was trying to aim for a AA production. This created 2 problems:

1. Financially speaking I will need to ask for at least 20 times more (40ish M) and build a team considerably bigger (around 20 at least) and expect the production to last at least 2-3 times longer  (4-6 years). Because in the real world there are issues and problems and just hiring all those people alone is quite a lot of time.

2. More importantly, AA's purpose is to try to emulate a AAA result and players don't care about your budget. That means that if you manage to make  something good enough, you are set to compete against the giants. A painful example is Alone in the dark. It is a really good game but couldn't stand a chance against Silent Hill, Alan Wake, or Resident Evil.

   
   

Managing art to manage expectations

I won't take the merit of what isn't mine. I will always be grateful to have a friend who is that skilled in art direction and is willing to lend a hand. After showing me why it would be a bad idea aiming for that AA quality, he suggested aiming for  PSX looking graphics. That was simply brilliant. "Downgrading" the 3D art to something retro looking had a lot of advantages for the project:

1. It cuts the cost massively. The models aren't just cheaper to make, but also animations can be simpler, there are less expectations regarding scenario decorations, one of the big optimization bottlenecks disappears, and players are more permissive regarding the game feel.

2. It positions Vessel in another niche aside from the horror, the retro. Appealing to nostalgia with the "fun" tone gives us a pretty solid chance.

3. It opens a big space for experimentation and creating a unique visual identity.

   
   

The final twist

After exploring this new niche we found several games that performed well and are interesting like Crow Country, Fears to Fathom, or Bad Parenting. I personally think that PSX retro look will still be a niche by the time that Vessel is finished but I also feel that the peak of this nostalgia wave is happening right now. So instead of aiming for a pure PSX look I consider aiming  for early PS2 graphics a better option, since in a few years I expect the nostalgia to be moved over there.

That was longer than I expected and at the same time, I'm sure I’ve  left something out of the post. Just a final thought: Don't wait until everything you have is perfect, show your idea, talk about it. Every time someone identifies a pitfall and you fix it, you are already saving time and money. Iterating on paper is always cheaper and quicker than iterating over an existing project. Make sure you invest time and effort on something that deserves it.

Don't hesitate to ask any questions here or in  the Discord channel! Have  you ever prepared  a pitch or budget for a project ? Tell me your experience!