How To Pitch Your Board Game To Publishers

hello there it's Pam welcome to another board game design video uh last month's video got a great response um almost at 100 subscribers actually and once we get to 100 subscribers I can have a custom URL instead of youtube.com/ the numbers of P so yeah last month's video was about uh five mistakes that new board game designers make and this month I'm going to be talking about how to pitch your board game to Publishers if you're not subscribed already please be sure to subscribe if you want to see more board game design videos sorry my neighbors being super freaking loud out in the hallway all right so today yes going to be talking about how to pitch your game to Publishers going to be talking about it in three parts first one is how to get your game in front of Publishers the second is what to say when you're actually in front of the Publishers like how to pitch your game and then following up with Publishers at the end and so just so you know for my experience with pitching to Publishers I have an ongoing relationship with uh Hasbro Spin Master Ravensburger mindwar Cosmos Whiz Kids outset and so on so I do have quite a bit of experience pitching so I thought I would share this with all of you all right so first of all how to get your game in front of a publisher there are a few different ways you can do this um firstly you can go to a speed pitching event and anyone can sign up for these sometimes you have to submit your game and then see if you're chosen to move forward for the speed pitching event um some examples are unpub uh protospiel metatopia is a really good one as well so there are events that happen throughout the year and check to see if they're having a speed pitching event at their event they are mainly play testing events but then they also have a speed pitching event sometimes attached to it so check those three out for opportunities for Speed pitching events and if you're not familiar with speed pitching it's basically like speed dating but with pitching your board game you get about usually about 5 minutes per publisher and about 2 minutes of that should be your pitch and leaving the rest for questions and feedback from the publisher uh you lately it's been uh usually on Discord or some sort of online um platform um a few years ago it was always usually in person at the convention so just check to see if it's online or in person hopefully they still keep having online opportunities for people so you don't have to physically go down to each of these conventions to to pitch your game and so uh usually you'll be on one of the channels in Discord uh a publisher will pop in you introduce yourself pit your game they give you feedback they pop out another publisher will come in and it goes on and on like that for usually about an hour some of the pros uh for Speed pitching events one you obviously get to meet a ton of Publishers which is great but the con is that they might not be uh appropriate for your game they might be interested in in different genres or different age ranges or whatever so you can't usually they don't curate the publisher for the different types of games it would be nice if they did but usually it's just here are all the Publishers here are all the games all the Publishers hear all the pitches so that can sometimes be you know not the most efficient the other thing you can do is physically go to conventions go up to a publisher booth and introduce yourself and ask if you can pitch your game to the publisher this is obviously a pretty stressful thing to do unless you're an extrovert and you love doing those types of things I have done this at the New York Toy Fair um and it was great actually it was very stressful but I did it I went up to quite a few Publishers the Publishers that I knew could be interested in my style of games that I was pitching at that time or even just wanted to introduce myself even if it wouldn't work out with that game I knew that I would potentially want to work with them in the future so when you do this you just go up to a Publisher's booth and introduce yourself and ask if they would have time to listen to your pitch if they do fantastic be ready and prepared to pitch your game quickly uh and clearly and then always have a onepage sell sheet that you can leave with the publisher if they want to contact you about the game and it's always good to have business cards as well I will probably do a video about sell sheets but for now just know it's a one pager with the most important information to know about your game you can find a lot of resources online about how to make a good sell sheet so the pros of going to a convention and introducing yourself and pitching at a publisher Booth is that uh there's no time limit so you don't have to worry about being done within 5 minutes like in speed pitching events but the cons are that you know it can be a stressful thing going up to a booth and introducing yourself and they might not have time to hear your pitch this actually happened to me with uh mindwar at the New York Toy Fair they didn't have time to listen to my pitch but I got their business card I followed up by email with information about my game and then they asked for more information and actually wanted to see a prototype so even just getting a business card and making that contact can be a good thing the other thing you can do to connect with Publishers is just email them directly this is usually helpful if you have a contact someone who has a relationship with that publisher who can introduce you if not you can try to email the generic uh email address for that publisher on their website don't be surprised if you don't hear back uh it's definitely ideal if you have an actual person's email address so if you're able to get a contact at the publisher that you want to reach out to in your email I would include a pitch video so we're going to be going over the pitch uh and this is where sorry this light is so bright like so in this email you would want to include a pitch video so just a couple minutes long overview video of your game game as well as a cell sheet so let's say that you have set up a meeting with a publisher or a speed pitching event or something and you're ready to actually pitch your game so I actually have a template script that I use to practice my pitches I practice for if I'm making a video or if I'll be pitching to a publisher face to face okay so I'm actually going to go through my script here with you and I will share a link to this template if this is helpful for you um but I can show you what I use when I make my pitch videos when I prepare for my pitches so some of these things might seem really obvious right but I'm just going to make sure I include them because Sunrise you forget like you know your name you might be so focused on the pitch that you forget to actually introduce yourself and your name so always start with hi my name is what hi my name is Pam walls I'm borgan designer and today I'm going to show you my new and then it's good to say the genre of the game and the name of the game and then then this is where I would do a very very short elevator pitch of the overview of your game so just like one line very very short just to get them interested have a have a sense of what the game is about without giving everything away then this is when I go into the player count and so this section here definitely slow down when you're talking about this part because these things I have found Publishers like to write down because this is important for the types of games that they are looking for there's usually a player account that you're interested in an age range that they're looking for and a play time that they're looking for so these things so just just make sure you say these things slow enough that they can write it down if they want to just so you know the things in red are obviously the things that I would change for each games and then I go into I actually then go into components so these are the things that are always included in a Cell sheet I'm basically going through what you would have in your cell sheet right here you have have your uh you have the title The genre the overview the player count the age range the play time the components those are all the things and your contact information but those are all the things that you have in a Cell sheet so that's essentially what we're doing here we're basically doing the cell sheet here at the top of our pitch going through the most important things to a publisher because if you go through your components and they have a bunch of things that they are not ever going to be interested in then they know pretty quick but this might not work for them so now that you've gone through those things now you're going to more detail about how to play the game so sometimes I have a section here about setup if that if it's a bit more complicated or if it's necessary to include I would include that here if I'm a bit short on time I might not include this section at all that's up to you and then and here's how to play so obviously I don't have anything in here because this changes depending on the game uh so this is when I would flip over to my rules document some designers don't do this but the way that my brain works I actually write out the rules from the beginning of the prototyping process I write out the rules of the entire game and as I iterate and as I change I update the rules as I go some designers they play test they make changes play test everything and then write out the rules at the very very end just depends on what you do but for me I like to write out the rules and update them as I go along so this is where I would go to my rules document and I would just copy over the how to play section uh I would obviously cut out things that maybe I don't need to go in such detail in a pitch so but I would reference my uh rules document about for this section about how to play one good thing to do that I think is helpful for designers is to give an a turn example this can really help the publisher understand how the game is played if they were playing the game what would they be doing on their turn and then you have your win condition uh and that's how you play the game and then always at the end so this is more for the video rather than an in-person pitch so if it was an inperson pitch I would just end right there and just say uh all right and that's and that's that's the pitch uh let me like do you have any questions if I'm doing the video this is where I would include my contact information so just a reminder that you want your pitch to be about 2 minutes that's it's that's whether you're making a video or you're doing it in person you want it to be about 2 minutes long regardless so write this out and then read it out and time yourself and if it's over two minutes cut out some things try it again cut out some things tried again it should really shouldn't be more than 2 minutes so when I am pitching to a publisher in in person or over Discord or over video whatever I'm not actually reading off of this script line by line this is just helping me prepare to know the information so well that I can just list it off off the top of my head I usually would keep this up just off screen to remind myself if I forgot anything or just to check to make sure I remembered everything but don't read off of a script when you're pitching to a publisher face to face when you're doing a pitch video and you're recording yourself absolutely feel free to read off the script but if it's a conversation you're having with an actual human then it needs to be a bit more natural hey there editing Pam here I realized that I did not go into any detail about the Prototype how to show your prototype during your pitch I typically have a physical prototype so I just have it out on the table either during my video or during my face tof face pitch um you can also have your game up on tabletop simulator uh so you can show the publisher the a digital version of your game it's still the this script is the same regardless of if you're showing a physical prototype or a digital one uh so that's just your preference there right so during your pitch the if the publisher is interested which hopefully they are um they will ask for your contact information or they'll give you give you their contact information and ask for you to follow up so that's fantastic um sometimes the organizers of the event will share contact information with all of the designers who participated and so it's good to follow up with Publishers even ones who didn't explicitly ask for you to follow up if you feel like there's potential for them to be interested in a future game it's good to follow up with an email and just say it was nice to meet you and the most important thing when you follow up with a publisher you want to definitely ask to be added to their email list of designers um a lot of them have these these distribution lists where they send out their wish lists and different calls for submissions for G ideas uh definitely ask to be added to that list they can always not add you if they don't want to but it's definitely good to definitely good to ask and I'm on a few of these lists now and it's really fantastic to have an ongoing pitching relationship with Publishers rather than just a oneand done so if a publisher said that they want to hear from you about your game specifically after your pitch make sure you're follow up soon and give them all the things that they ask for they will likely ask for a video sell sheet and and your rules so if you already have that stuff ready to go that's that will save you a lot of time and that's good to be prepared um but it's okay if you haven't done that yet just do it as soon as you can and get to them as soon as as soon as possible all right well I hope this was helpful uh I know that pitching can be a very stressful thing but if you're just prepared and you practice you just got to pitch just got to do it the more that you do it the more comfortable you get and you'll be you'll feel so great and relieved after you do it if you have any questions let me know in the comments otherwise if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and follow me on Instagram and Twitter at party Haack games and that's it for now take care

Channel: Pam Walls Game Design

Views: 2,953

Keywords: board games, party games, Toronto, ProtoTO, Hasbro, Gaming Crate, Hold That Face, playtesting, Pam Walls

Id: mxgYPzHqHnA

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022