Devolver Digital open to indie pitches at GDC, set appointments now
Serious Sam publisher Devolver Digital will hear indie pitches as part of its "Pitch Fork Parker Project" at this year's Game Developers Conference. The project is a continuation of the successful Serious Sam Indie Series, in which Devolver Digital and Croteam produced Serious Sam "indie titles" with developers Vlambeer, Mommy's Best Games and Be-Rad Entertainment.
Devolver will provide "completion funds and a publishing deal" to the three best game prototypes, demos or pitches it's presented. Indies interested in getting in front of the execs should email "pitchfork@devolverdigital.com" with details on their team and project to set up a meeting.
We checked with devs who collaborated on the Serious Sam Indie Series about their experience working with Devolver.
"The best way to explain Devolver is that when they originally contacted us, we didn't want to work for them as we value our creative freedom. We sent them the most ridiculous pitch that we had faith in - a Serious Sam turn-based RPG," Rami Ismail of Vlambeer told us. "Although we expected to be pushed into the direction of Serious Crate Box or something -- which we would decline and walk away from the table -- we immediately got an answer saying 'sure!'. What's nice about Devolver is that they understand that creative freedom is super important for independent developers - yet they buy you fancy dinner like a proper publisher."
Nathan Fouts of Mommy's Best Games told us, "When Devolver Digital first contacted us about working with them on a 2D Serious Sam game I thought it was too good to be true, and would be a constant fight to add our own special brand of weird. Little did I know they were totally down for pancake monsters and headless, topless women! It was pretty much like working on our own games except we got ask for help whenever we needed it."
GDC 2012 is March 5-9 in San Francisco, which is plenty of time to perfect a two-minute elevator pitch. Oh wait, turns out this pitch will take place in a van and last as long as it takes to loop the Moscone Convention Center. Well, that's different.
