“Pitching a game without ever having played games is like pitching a TV show without watching TV.”

That’s Wojtek Kawczynski’s advice to Monday night’s WIFT DigiScape panel on Making Games Make Money. The managing director of Toronto’s TransGaming Studios stressed the importance for those who want to make games to play the types of games that go after similar demos as your target audience, otherwise “it’s going to be a frustrating conversation between you and the developers.”

Knowing the demographic and what platforms it plays is also key, says DHX Media interactive producer Diana Arruda. “There are probably not a lot of five-year-old girls playing Xbox games.”

When it comes to transiting brands or IPs to games, she also noted that listening to interactive companies is vital. “Not everything has to have a Facebook account or be like Angry Birds,” she said.

Similarly, Kawczynski recalls a past experience working on a title for Animal Planet’s reality drama Emergency Vets, which his studio at the time was asked to turn into a game for tween girls. The show itself was not meant for that demo.

“Don’t take an IP with an established fanbase and make a game that’s not relatable to them at all,” he advised.

As for the ever-popular App Store, the panel agreed that one of the best things for any iOS game is to be featured by Apple. Sales spiked for TransGaming’s Garage Inc., a partnership with Breakthrough Entertainment, when it was a featured game earlier this year.

March Entertainment’s marketing and development manager Mike Drach added that because of the fragmented market and odd pricing schemes on the Apple App Store, that the growing Android market could be a good testing ground for games and apps.

“You can publish and update almost immediately, it’s faster than Apple and you can get faster feedback,” he noted.

With the number of students and recent grads looking to break into the evolving Canadian game industry, Arruda said that her experience with these folks is that they want to make cool, fun games. But she also hired someone who had taken a course on the business of games.

“But wanting to make a cool game is a good attitude to have,” she said. “Because the best games will make a lot of money.”

The panel was moderated by Danielle Engels, director of communications and marketing for Interactive Ontario.