Pitch Perfect: The Ultimate Guide to Pitching Your Board Game Prototype to Publishers

Thanks for the video. Sadly it arrived 3 days after the Pegasus Spiele Designer Day.

I think it's unlikely I'll ever design a game....yet I still find all of Adam's videos fascinating.

As a fellow board game designer, I would say that Adam has done a fantastic job of summarising the pitching process!

Great video again! Do you mention to a publisher that your are pitching the same game to others? I guess maybe they assume it, but how do handle it several show interest at the same time? (a good problem to have, for sure)
And more a technical detail: what software do you use for prototype artwork, assets / print files, etc?

your sister is my teacher

Hello! I really like your videos! I am a new graduate and am thinking to create a business for language card games. Would it be possible I can have a chance to share my ideas with you? Thanks!

I just watched another video (GDC) which described the environment for getting a game published very difficult as literally 1000s of boardgames are published each year. The year before covid hit i pitched my game at a few conventions and sent sell sheets out to dozens of publishers i thought would be interested. I got so many rejections i began to think THAT was the game, you know, collect then all! Then covid hit, conventions locked up, tabletop game clubs in my area shut down. Since then I've designed 3 more games but in the back of my mind are all those 1000s of games already getting published... Uhg... I think about moving on to something else but then i wake up with another idea for great game and plough back into it.

Long winded - sorry...

I wish there was a business where you could practice pitching your game and they (having already had games published, like yourself) would charge a fee for this service, helping you prepare your game for pitching. Like piano lessons but for pitching games.

Thank you so much for your insights into this process! I'm a first-time board game designer and really just starting to explore how in-depth the process is. I look forward to watching more of your videos! Is there a good resource for identifying different publishers, and is there an easy way of quickly identifying whether or not your game would fit within their brand? For example, my game is conversation-based, so if there's a publisher that only publishes war-based strategy games, I'm guessing I won't be a good fit. Do any resources provide the 'type' of games the company typically publishes to narrow down the list a bit further? Hopefully that makes sense, and thank you for your help in advance!

Great video - some excellent advice!

Hi Adam - Great video and really appreciate your insight into this complex process. Would you ever try to pitch your game to publishers remotely (e.g., by email, Zoom, etc.)? I have a very niche game that I'll be pitching to publishers this year, but I can't afford the travel costs to some of the big conferences and festivals this year. Thanks so much for your video and for sharing your experience here!

Great Video Adam. I'm planning to go to some board games conventions in the UK in 2022. Could you recommend which ones are the best ones? Could you mention three of them?
And are you aware of any board game convention taking place in Northern Ireland? Or Wales?
I am designing a Card Game.
I'm based in Dublin Ireland.

Thank you very much! Keep up the good work you've doing.

This video was very helpful for me and I took notes. Hyperbole is incredibly dangerous and overused, which is why it's hard to take serious when it gets used. It should be used sparingly. I am actually wanting to get my game into the VR space. I think that's a great place for it but I hope that's not putting a damper on traditional board games but becoming another fun option.

Question! When it comes to artwork, what route do you take? Do you hire an artist straight away once your concept is confirmed to put something together to show? Do you get some art publicly available online with maybe a commercial license? Do you do your own rough art or not art at all? I'm thinking of going the Kickstarter route and using assets publicly available from an artist I found online who offers commercial licensing, however if I did go that route would it be a waste of effort and money if I later find a publisher who wouldn't want to use those assets anyways, or would it better my chances as they will have a good visual representation of the idea of the final product?

I know I have commented on this video before but your videos are so meaty I tend to watch them multiple times...
Thank you again for sharing your real-world pitching experience. In a previous life i was a French horn player in various symphonies. Pitching seems very akin to auditioning with one critical difference. Feedback. Auditions would either say "congratulations you got the job" or they would say nothing at all. That lack of feedback was always tough to swallow.
I pitched a game at a PAX unplugged feeling every but as anxious as at an audition. But very quickly i realized this was a different experience. Publishers were always polite and usually very friendly. I was pushy and annoying. Still, feedback was always positive even when it was critical. All my pitches were rejected, but all the feedback gave me so much to think about.
In the symphony world i learned that success is sugar, but failure is beef and broccoli. In the boardgame world I'm leaning failure is beef and broccoli with gravy and butter😊.

hello there is it at all possible to chat privately somewhere at all I have a idea about a dragonball z based game and was wondering if you could give me some information about the process I may have to go through

Do these pitches ONLY happen during convemsions? Thats what it sounds like...

This is extremely informative with many useful tips. I've recently designed a board game which is certainly an improvement over my previous game. Ive found that it's more fun too. Though I think it will be a very long time before I approach publishers with my game. I'm still doing internal play testing and have not done any blind play testing as yet. Here in Australia, those kinds of game conventions that you mention are extremely rare so I would likely use the e-mail / zoom / skype approach.

Adam, what tips do you have to keep your idea protected before pitching? Thanks

Such fantastic information in this video. Thanks Adam. I'm hoping to have a board game design out there someday. So far I've got a game that doesn't fall flat on its face after the first few turns! Just got to make it fun to play now...

You have been so helpful -- throughout the process of designing my first game, whenever I've Googled a question, more often than not one of your videos pops up to answer it thoroughly, expertly and candidly. So thank you! And a thought: I'd love to watch a fly-on-the-wall video where folks can see your entire journey from inception to an actual published game.

Love your content man! Thanks so much :)

LOL I'm a working actor as well... I hope you know how helpful your videos are. As a first-time board game designer, there are things in this video I never even considered. You really make people like me feel welcome - which at times has felt like the biggest hurdle. So thank you.

Great information! I'm watching this video again as a review for some possible pitching tomorrow.

Hi Adam, big fan of your videos, thanks for the content!

I'd like to present my game to publishers, but don't think i can make an expo. Is it much worse to just do it online via mail etc.?

Hi Adam, I'm a geology professor and a member of the Cymric diaspora in the New World (from Bettws and Llangwryfon back in the 1840s). I'll pick up your book on Amazon. How niche-y can games be and still be viable as marketable products?

We need a shark tank for board game pitches 😅😅😅

Do you have any tips on finding publishers that are looking for game pitches or typically like specific games?