Game Design Term Pitch A Brief

One of my jobs is to take pitches from game designers who want to license their games to publishers. I hear a lot of bad ones, and want to help designers improve. To that end, I've constructed an example of a written pitch I'd like to get.

Four notes before I begin:

The Golden Rule: a publisher wants to publish great games that sell a lot, so your mission is to convince them your game can be both. They're not the same thing.
A pitch's only purpose is to excite a publisher into requesting a prototype, so it needn't, and shouldn't, be detailed.
For my example pitch, I chose a hard-to-pitch game, to illustrate how I grappled with problems. An easy game wouldn't be as helpful.
There are aspects of my pitch that could be improved. The worst offender is the board representation: it plays right into doubts a publisher might have. Improving it would have been time-consuming and I had limited time to write this post, so that wart stays.

The pitch appears below, and I discuss its construction beneath it.

The Pitch

A possible box illustration for Circle of Life

Hi [Name],

I'm writing to pitch a game I think can sell well for you, called Circle of Life.

You can read about it in detail here.
You can play it at Board Game Arena.

What's it about? It's a strategy game with 1-minute rules where players evolve species to eat each other in growing ecosystem.

Why do fans like it? Here are unsolicited comments I've found on the web:

"Circle of Life is the best game I have played in years"

"This game is amazing! I haven't played dozens of games but the few experiences I am having are unbelievably tense and full of surprises! The best abstract I have seen in a long time…"

"Wow. This abstract is pretty boss. It's engrossing, wildly different, and has a theme that actually works as a theme?"

"I think the game is GENIUS in its elegance & the ecosystem concept involved…"

"I am a HUGE fan of this game. It truly is a beautiful design and is in my opinion the best modern abstract."

This enthusiasm reflects an enthusiasm to play the game: Circle of Life can be played on Board Game Arena, where 4,707 people have played it 9,637 times since it launched there in October 2019. I regard this as important because I believe heavily played games enjoy word-of-mouth virality less-played games don't.

Other Evidence of Quality: It was voted Best Combinatorial Game by a bunch of people on BGG.

Circle of Life end game position — The Circle of Life board at game's end. The Circle of Life diagram around the board shows which species eat which.

Marketing for Circle of Life: I'm a professional marketer with a writing focus. If the game is published, I'll write and promote at least 20 articles about Circle of Life in its first year on the market, through my website. The value:

My last 10 posts have averaged 5481 unique visitors per post. Assuming the same for the 20 proposed posts, they'll get 109,600 uniques collectively. If 2.5% convert to sales (a typical conversion rate), I'll sell 2740 copies, not counting in-perpetuity sales due to search engine and other ongoing traffic. My traffic has been rising, so actual numbers could be higher.

You can read the full rules, and design background, here.

Best,

Nick Bentley

Notes on Pitch Construction

The challenge: Circle of Life is a luckless 2-player abstract game. Publishers are rightly skeptical of such games as products, so I must show mine has unusual prospects.

Overall structure: I made the pitch short, and I tried to make it skim-able through bolded subheadings. UX matters.

The Image

The first thing the reader sees is this box rendering. It serves four purposes:

It shows I believe enough in the game to have commissioned nice art.
It shows I'm thinking about the product, not just the game. Art is a huge sales-driver, so I want to show it can have beautiful art.
It evokes a theme. But it doesn't tell you exactly what's going on, so hopefully it makes you curious to read more.
It helps the reader start to imagine the game as a real product. That's why I use a box rendering instead of art alone.

The Introductory Sentences

"I'm writing to pitch a game I think can sell well for you, called Circle of Life .

You can read about it in detail here .
You can play it at Board Game Arena ."

This serves three purposes:

It shows I'm thinking about the publisher's interest (sales)
It telegraphs I'll keep the pitch short by linking to a more detailed source. This respects the publisher's time.
By linking to a site where the game can be played immediately, it provides a shortcut through the most time-consuming aspect of game evaluation: playtesting. This also respects the publishers time.

The Game's Name

"Circle of Life"

The name is one of the first aspects of a game's marketing you encounter, so it's important. A title should evoke a halo of associations related to what the game is about, so it informs the reader in a way they experience positively (or at least not negatively).

Ideally, the name should also feel familiar, because psychology has demonstrated we trust familiar things. An example is "Ticket to Ride". It was a well-known phrase before Days of Wonder named a game with it, because it's a Beatles song. Another example I like is "Scythe". It's a single, familiar word, loaded with (double) meaning.

"Circle of Life" takes a similar approach. It's a familiar phrase referring to the cycle of birth and death, which has emotional resonance for many. It's also the most well-known song from The Lion King.

The phrase ALSO describes my game's theme (different species eating each other and trying not to be eaten) AND its defining mechanic (a circular diagram around the board showing which species can eat which). So it does a lot of work, and the box image reinforces these messages.

What's it About?

"It's a strategy game with 1-minute rules, where players evolve species to eat each other in a growing ecosystem. "

I kept this to one sentence to show the game's essence can be conveyed quickly/easily. Whether it's strong enough I don't know. The game itself always strongly constrains this part of the pitch, which is a reason I advocate designing the pitch before designing the game that satisfies it.

There are lots of things I could have said here but didn't. For example, I could have mentioned the game's originality, a key thing fans say they like about it. I didn't because it would have sounded vague, and vague claims aren't believable.

Instead I focused on the theme. Three reasons:

the game's fans say the theme is one of the things they like most about it.
it creates an unusual juxtaposition: you don't expect an ecosystem simulation to have 1-minute rules. Hopefully, it points to originality in a believable way.
publishers worry abstract games aren't evocative enough. Leading with theme suggests this one could be different.

Why do fans like it?

The opinions that matter most are those of potential customers. So it's good to include comments from fans. A few notes on how to do this:

First, comments should be unsolicited. When you solicit comments, you pressure respondents to offer praise. Compelled praise rings hollow. You can avoid that by using unsolicited comments and letting the publisher know you have.

Second, comments should be representative of why fans like the game. If they're not, the publisher will find out in playtesting, and it'll hurt your credibility.

Third, it's not enough to have positive comments. The comments should be unusually positive. Reason: the reader already expects positive comments. If the comments merely meet that expectation, they'll seem like ignorable boilerplate.

Fourth, if you can find comments by real influencers known to your reader, they'll have more authority and trust, and will therefore be more believable. I don't yet have any of those for this game.

Finally, by mentioning the number of people playing the game on Board Game Arena, I demonstrate I'm not cherry-picking rare positive comments. A lot of folks really do like it and play it.

Other evidence of quality

You should include all concrete evidence of quality you have (presented succinctly). In my case, the game won an award, so I include it.

Marketing for Circle of Life

A publisher wants to know how a game will sell. If you can offer concrete, realistic ways to help yours sell, do. In my case, I'm good at written marketing and have a preexisting audience, so I offer those things. But there are lots of possibilities. Maybe you have an idea for a killer guerrilla marketing campaign, maybe you know an influencer who will help out, etc. The only limit is your creativity.

Important: what I left out

Note I didn't say much about how the game works, instead linking to the rules. It works best to provide evidence of commercial viability before covering rules, for three reasons:

It provides context and a reason for the publisher to care.
It'll make you stand out because most designers barrel into mechanical minutia before setting the stage.
A publisher decides if a game is great by playtesting, so you shouldn't spend much time on gameplay in the pitch. Once the publisher cares, they'll naturally want to read the rules, and if they still care after that, playtest. Give the publisher information in the order that works best for them.

The only time to lead with gameplay is if your game has a novel mechanism that's incredibly compelling and easy-to-articulate. 99.9% of games don't.

That's it! I hope this offers food for thought for your own pitches. If you think I'm off in some way, give me the business in the comments. If this post helps you get a game licensed, I'd love to hear about it.