Pitching the game to stand out Thread

Hey

I'm currectly in situation where I'm attending a course where you improve your company business model. Now with the course has come a idea of pitching the game idea itself. So without further banter, would you be intrested of this game if someone would pitch it to you? (the game itself cand be found here so you don't think I'm making up everything).

Pitch
Have you noticed that there's a problem with turn based strategies? They often are slow and start to repeat themselves after some point. Galactic Conquerors offers a solution to this problem with a new vision how the turn based strategies could be made. As a result you'll get more fluent gameplay and you can focus to the relevant things.

What's your opinion? Would that tell enough for you as a game player / developer to get your intrest or is there something else? This was a large debate this day while we were teached by the coaces.

On not so relevant part, if you could participiate on our developing process it'd be appreceated. We have a simple form in google drive that takes about 5-10 minutes to fill. Google Docs form

Because we all have our own opinions, don't assume my reply to be a de facto answer, but I don't see how assuming everyone sees this problem, as if everyone plays them on a constant basis, will help you. I don't play a lot of turn based strategies. In fact, the last game of that nature I played was 4th Super Robot Wars on the Super Famicom and that game went pretty well for me. To ask if I have noticed this problem would assume I play them a lot, which I do not. In my opinion, your pitch needs to be addressed in a more general form. You are pitching to a specific group and this isn't going to reach many ears. How do you know everyone plays turned based strategies? If you are pitching to people who do play these games on a regular basis or it's their favorite genre, that would work, but by the way you said "would YOU be interested", as in me, a person who does not play turned based strategies, you are aiming for a general crowd.

Edited by: Toolkitz

I agree that your pitch is far too specific, a pitch is to generate interest in a game not make assumptions about the target audience. Instead maybe jump straight to discussing what sets your game apart and leaving out the whole "have you noticed there's a problem with the genre... " stuff.

I echo what the other 2 said. I'm not expert so take what I say with a mountain of salt. The goal of a pitch is to sell your idea quickly, to get people excited, not to cast aspersions on the audience or competition. If you absolutely must, get it out the way quickly and get straight to your solution. Don't raise a problem and then tease us with the answer.

So, instead of "TBS is slow and boring, ours won't be." maybe something like "Our (something something something) feature means the game is fast, fluid and varied!". Same idea without the insults. Likewise, don't ask us to take you on faith unless you have a reputation. Going "our game will be different and the bestest ever, just trust me on this. It will be awesome." tell us why it would be awesome.

Yes there's valid point that this pitch assumes you've played TBS games earlier, which I too find a problematic. The pitch should be targeted to whole player audience and now it sounds just as you Toolkitz and andrewty07 said: it's for specific audience. Perhaps the solution would be in that the pitch were more focused to gameplay and such instead of the problems I've pointed out now, as I understood from your answers would be a better way for this. It's intresting to see how much there can be difference between pitching the game idea to VC's and to players.

I'm curious about the pitch, but skeptical since it offers no other information. It's almost like seeing a scam ad where someone claims that you can work at home and make $4,000 a week!

I also don’t like pitches that make claims saying “we have a solution to this problem” without saying what that solution is, it seems a little hyperbolic and a lot of people won’t trust that you actually have a solution without evidence. That being said, your entire solution to fixing slow repetitive turned based strategy games is likely something that is impossible to describe in full in a few sentences, so I’d advise picking one or more of the main contributing features and just saying something positive about that.

Just as a hypothetical, maybe write it something along the lines of “Our game features an adaptive AI so it always offers a unique challenge to the player.” Whatever your design actually is, with this kind of phrasing you provide a concrete solution to the problem of repetitiveness without turning off people who already like turn based strategy games the way they are.

I’d also add that I think stating the perceived problem at all is probably the wrong move, just in terms of whom you’re appealing to. By default, most of the people who are going to actively look into buying your game are already going to be fans of the genre, so if you start by saying that there’s a problem with games in that genre and that yours is different, it might have the effect of driving away those customers. If you’re looking to appeal mainly to people who generally like turn based strategy games but sometimes find them too repetitive, then you should say so, but say it in a positive way. For instance, saying “Our turn based strategy game is fast paced and dynamic” conveys the same information as saying “other turn based strategies are slow and repetitive, but ours isn’t” however the former sounds much more appealing to everyone.

Yes the way one has to create the pitch is essential. What I've learned during the course is that the things should be allways said on a positive way as you GaldorStudios pointed out. The hard part allways is how. Because in those both cases you stated there can be problems depending on how the customer sees things. If we would say our game is x & x one might think: "Here we go again, another living in utopia." but in the latter example customers could think that we're just being arrogant fools. Pitching the game is a hard job when you start to think about it, you have to take so many things into account and yet you should keep the pitch within the time limit (ever tried to pitch a game with one word? You should try it).

But as a question from these answers. Can you actually stand out with the content of the pitch anymore when pitching the game idea or is the how you pitch that makes your game to stand out from the masses?