What GenCon Taught Me About Board Game Pitches

0:00 Hey gamers, this is Liz Davidson from Beyond Solitaire, and I am back from Gen Con with a lot of thoughts about the convention. Um, you know, as usual, Gen Con was awesome. I love watching the city of booths like come up, and then I feel bittersweet as they're torn down. Uh, I've saw friends, I played games, I bought more games than I bought at a Gen Con in a long time, uh, because one of my colleagues brought a car, and so I was able to just like stash my All Play Back in his car and fill it for the trip back with him. Uh, so that was great. Um, but this is also my first Gen Con as a creative director at a publishing company. And so a lot of my Gen Con was focused on this new experience of thinking about how to take pitches from designers. And so there are three things that happened this weekend that kind of made that all come together for me. One is that I was on a panel hosted by, uh, Elizabeth Hargrave, and I was on there with Helena Hopewell, Brian Borneuf, and Josh West, and we talked about, you know, getting your foot in the door with publishers at the Design Academy on Trade Day.

0:58 I also took pitches as a publisher for the first time, and that was a totally new experience for me. That's not something I've ever done before. Uh, you know, see somebody's game and have them want my assessment of it in terms of whether I want it. It was a really intense experience I've never had before. So, I'm still thinking about that. And this is also the first time that I as a creative director at a company have put down our new game on a talking table and pitched it to people who are curious and passing by Gen Con. And so what makes a good pitch is very, very much on my mind. And so I want to, you know, kind of as like a record of my own development of thought, and also because I think people might find this interesting, I want to talk about it here just really quick. So, I'm not going to talk about any specific person or their game unless it's mine or I'm related to it because, um, that's not what this video is about. But I will talk about some trends that I saw and some thoughts that I had.

1:50 So, I would say the first thing when pitching a game is you need to boil it down to what is the game about immediately. Um I found that when I was taking pitches and, you know, having pitch meetings, people really wanted to kind of talk around their game or like back slowly into the point of their game. And this may be a me thing. Some people may have a better attention span than I have, but in about 30 seconds, I'm gone. So, I need to know immediately what is this game about, and I want to know that you know, and that you can and that you can sell me on it. Uh and so, you know, talking to me for a good 10 minutes while you're setting up the game, but you still haven't really told me what the game is about, that's not something that's going to work for me because I'm already gone. Um I think about this in my own games, too. Like, now that I've like looked back over my own work, I'm like, oh yeah, Night Witches, Soviet female pilots bomb Nazis. Okay, pretty clear what that's about. Uh Queen of Spies, which had a retail drop date at Gen Con that was amazing for me. Um you know, you're running a spy ring in World War I Belgium. You have very limited time and resources. Good luck.

2:51 Okay. Like, that's it's very clear what this game is about. And, you know, it makes me think back to when we greenlit Cart in the studio. So, Cart started as just a pitch that um I decided Alida could work on as we were looking for what to do with our schedule. And, you know, the pitch was the Fort kids have grown up, and now they are going to have a crazy cart race through the neighborhood backyards, and they are going to have to balance between actually going fast and impressing the other kids who are watching the race. I thought that was a great pitch. I knew a game could be designed to that, and that it could turn out really well. Uh and so, I greenlit it knowing that the premise of that game was so strong that with a good designer, which Alida is, a strong game is going to follow. And so, Cart is in its finishing stages, and it's going to Kickstarter next month. I'll like put a link in the show notes below for that. Um do follow it.

3:40 I'm really really proud of that work. But, what I'm saying is that pitches go better when there's a very strong premise that you can express immediately and excite the other person. The other recommendation that I would have for pitch meetings, uh based on my own experiences, you know, I think this is very different for some publishers, uh but I I really like to see the game in action. I want to get my hands on it as quickly as possible. Um I know that we live in an imperfect world where, you know, sometimes a sell sheet or a video is all you have, but if I can get my hands on a game in person, my odds of understanding and appreciating the game go up a lot. So, I really want to see your game. And I spent a lot of minutes at the at the table during meetings this weekend looking at games that were set up and waiting to be able to play them. Um but the designer was doing a little bit too much exposition and not enough like, let's play. I want to play the game um because I don't think that I can really understand what you're going for until I've actually had my hands on the game itself. And so, if you have the opportunity to pitch somebody in person and they're willing to play a few turns of your game, I think that you should get their hands on that game as quickly as possible. You should do a rolling teach and you should be pointing out interesting moments in your game during that rolling teach. So, oh, now you have a choice and there's a trade-off here.

4:51 Like, I will see that so much easier than if you just sort of talk to me about your game for a long time. So, I would be giving examples and key moments in that game as quickly as possible. And then the other thing that I noticed this weekend, um that was very interesting, is that I saw a lot of games where the designer wasn't sure about what theming the game should have or they were hoping that maybe I would have a development answer for their game that um you know, they were looking for maybe a publisher to kind of take a partially made game the rest of the way. I think that that is something that works with a lot of publishers, but for me, um that was something I ended up not liking because I want you to have a theme for your game because I think that mechanisms that are intimately tied to a theme are more interesting. And I would rather have a game with your weird theme and your weird voice than get like a mishmash of mechanisms and then have to figure out what the theme is.

5:48 I also saw games that were unfinished because there were designers who were hoping that a publisher would see the promise of the design, pick it up, and then fix any problems in dev. And that's also something that maybe this is because of the way that I've designed with David Thompson, um I didn't really know what to do with because David and I get our games as far as is humanly possible before showing them to a publisher. Um we really like to have our hands on a lot of the development ourselves. The idea of just handing something off and hearing nothing about it and having no input um is kind of weird to me at this moment just because of the way I've done my own designs. Like even with Pax Pamir and Lions, which is which has a great developer in Joe Dewhurst, is going to have a long development process. Like we are in touch with Joe, testing with Joe, and like giving feedback back and forth throughout the whole process. You know, I don't think the games have to be perfect before you show them to a publisher. Like certainly we do a lot of development in-house at Leader. But what I do want to see is a complete idea that is expressive of your voice, uh and that yeah, maybe I see places for development, but you haven't brought me something where you're throwing your hands up and expecting me to fix it.

6:55 Because to me that just kind of doesn't feel right. Um I want to be excited about a game that you've brought truly as far as you can, that is a complete vision from you, and that I want to be able to like kind of turn and look where you're looking and see what you're seeing. So if you're not seeing anything cuz you're waiting for me to see something, then I'm automatically not really into it. So again, I know this is very different for other publishers. I mean, I think that there are games that get rethemed all the time. Uh I think that there are designers who have really interesting mechanisms that a publisher can take and turn into something fascinating. Um but you know, when learning about myself as a creative director and what Leader is going to be as a studio under my direction, um I found this week very informative for me because I learned a whole lot about what I do and don't want.

7:45 And what I do want is for a designer to have a really interesting vision that I can bring to life and that we can be excited about together. But I don't want to have that vision for someone. I think that's especially true because Leder is a studio where we have designers in house or I'm a designer. And so I want a compelling reason to take in something external that we can't make at home. So I want to see something quirky from you that we can do together. The other thing I have been thinking about is because I spent a bunch of time on talking tables this weekend. You know, I think that during pitches people want to talk a lot about rules and about mechanisms, but I think during your initial pass where you're telling somebody about a game that's actually a bad idea

8:26 because you get bogged down and I think that people who want to know about a game aren't actually asking what the rules are. What they're asking is how am I going to feel when I'm playing this game and like what are some of the exciting moments that I'm going to have when I'm playing this game. So for Root Homeland you know, obviously that was our our game that we had for sale as our new release at this con. I did not get down into the nitty-gritty of exactly how everything worked. I instead talked about how each of the factions functioned and like the basics of what they're looking for. And then with Cart, you know, I know that that game is going to be exciting for people because of the responses I was able to get at the talking table. But you have to set people up for success to understand what it is you're talking about. So I would always start with the basic premise. You know, Cart's about a bunch of kids in junk carts and with zero parental or parental permission they're going to go racing through the backyards of their neighborhood and they're going to hit the bottom of that hill come hell or high water. There's a lot of stuff in the way. So people immediately understand like okay, this is going to be a messy race with a bunch of obstacles and it's going to be goofy cuz it's about kids. Like it's it's an immediate sell.

9:28 Then I would bring up a couple of the key things about the game that make it interesting. So first, you'd think that getting to the bottom of the hill first is going to win you the race, but not necessarily true cuz there are crowd goals, and so the rule of cool will prevail among children. And you know, if you win the crowd, you might win the game win the race even if you didn't really win the race, so to speak. So people automatically grok that. Okay, this is going to be like a little bit of a variable victory condition thing. Then I would point to our speed and control dial and be like, "Okay, so this is also a game where you start slow because gravity powered, there's no engine, but slow speed means more control and you're using control to power your cards, which includes the ability to turn left and right." Uh and then as you speed up, you lose control, so you need to plan those high-speed turns or else you're going to bump into something because you do have to either go at your full speed or bump into an immovable object.

10:20 Um and so, you know, a special mechanism about the game gets shown off. And so instead of going through every single rule or this is how you turn or like let me take you through the turn structure, I was pointing out like, "Okay, here's the premise of the game. Here's something special about winning. Here's something special mechanically that is different from other racing games." Um and people were able to kind of understand where that game was going and then decide if they wanted to know more. And so I was actually thinking that in pitches I would have like to see something like that, too. Like an overview of the game, something special about how you win um if there's something special there. Uh and then, you know, what are a few little points mechanically or design-wise in this game that are really interesting and that also tied to the theme of the game.

11:05 Because then by the time we actually get to where I'm trying to play a turn, I'm locked in, I understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, I understand some things I might want to do. And coming into a game with that understanding to me is a sign that somebody explained it well. And so, you know, this has taught me a lot about what I'm looking for in the future, especially when I put out pitch forms and get responses. Um you know, I'll I'll know what I'll know a bit more about what's going to excite me. Um I also have thought a lot about my own pitching and my own demoing and my own talking table patter um because I'm trying to give people the things that I think they should have cuz it's what I would want. So, this was a really interesting Gen Con in terms of just learning about myself, learning about how I understand games and what I see in them. Um and it was overall a really exciting time. I'm looking forward to translating a lot of what I learned into future game development and um game consideration.

11:59 And so, that was the prevailing thing in my Gen Con. Lots of pitches. Um to everybody who's out there trying to get their games out, I'm doing it, too. I totally feel you. And good luck to us all. Happy gaming, everybody.