Elevator Pitches

I am probably better at elevator pitches than I am at designing. So, I thought I would put a few pointers together that should strengthen your elevator pitch game. 

An elevator pitch is a short paragraph designed to get someone (usually a publisher) interested enough in your game to listen to a full pitch. Stylistically, elevator pitches should follow the ABC's: accuracy, brevity, and clarity. Be brief, be clear, be to the point. If your elevator pitch is a little lackluster, the first thing you could try is cutting as many words as possible while still sounding professional. Leave out all superlatives and generic adjectives or adverbs, such as "fun," "unique," or "very." One way I like to start writing an elevator pitch is to write a potential tagline for my game and expand on it. For example, "Urban Decay is a city unbuilding game that combines tile-flipping and pattern-building" developed from "Urban Decay: A City Unbuilding Game." 

The most important information should be in the first sentence. Don't bury the lede. I like to combine the thematic hook of a game with the major mechanic(s). Normally, I would recommend stating the thematic hook as a question, but I don't think that is necessary with an elevator pitch. Instead, just stick to noun + verb + thematic win condition/player goal. A thematic win condition would be something like "makes the best hats" rather than "gets the most points." "Noun" refers to who the players are and "verb" is what they are doing in the game. NO world-building lore in elevator pitches.

Include the mechanic/genre most gamers would use to describe your game in your pitch: party game, auction game, social deduction game, etc. You want to set expectations as much as possible. If your war-themed game is auction driven, you need to say so or you may inadvertently set false expectations. The point of an elevator pitch is to convey as much information as possible in a couple sentences, so it's vital to use the knowledge publishers already have about games. 

I also like to include player count, game length, and general heaviness. These elements tend to get shuffled  into the second (or third) sentence if the first has gotten too clunky. I tend to think of this type of sentence as a postscript of additional information: it needs to be fast and informative. (e. g. "Deadly Dowagers is a medium-light 30 minute game for 2-6 players.") 

Depending on how much I need clarity over brevity, I may have a another sentence that expands on either the theme or the mechanics. This sentence could be before, after, or between the other two. In my Urban Decay example above, I would probably want to add a little more about the theme: "Players destroy buildings, grow forests, and spread waterways as nature reclaims an abandoned city." You may want to mention a mechanic that makes your game unique instead of expanding on the theme. However, the first question an interested publisher will ask is "what makes your game unique?" I'd, personally, rather give a clear impression of my theme in my elevator pitch and be ready for follow-up questions about mechanics. 

Learning to communicate the substance of your game efficiently and evocatively is an important skill for a designer to have. Elevator pitches are one of the best ways to hone that skill. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.