Pitch Your Game with this Greenlight Template
Clarify your game concept, market potential, and feasibility to stakeholders or a publisher.
Every publisher is going to have their own needs and standards, but even when you don’t have a publisher, going through a pitch process is helpful in clarifying what your game is, its potential, the scope of the project, and who will be interested in it.
Here I’ve outlined some of the information that I’ve seen used while working with indies to get their game published, from a compilation of resources I’ve included at the bottom of this article, and chatting with indies who have completed their own pitch decks to publishers.
Game Pitch Greenlight Template
This document is meant for pitching a game to a partner or publisher in the fundraising or concept phase of the game. There will be other reviews at the prototype stage, pre-production, and alpha, beta, and launch phases.
Game Summary
This section should include the genre, a razer statement about what the game is, what the high level game loop is, any story elements, and the aesthetic of the game. If you have documents that can support your summaries, link them here or in other sections.
Support Needed
Include what type of support you’re looking for. It could be development funding, store support, marketing support, or just someone to keep you accountable.
Team Background
Include the composition of the team building the product, their background, capabilities, and when the team formed.
Design Philosophy & Values
Include the design philosophy of the team at a high level. What types of games are you looking to make and how do you want the players to feel? What’s your approach for design and iteration? What’s your measurement for success?
Audience
Include the primary and any secondary audiences, with size, demographics, and a persona for each. Include any references you have to back up your data.
Game Loop
Include a chart and the high level description of the core game loop.
Meta Loop
Include a chart and the high level description of the meta game loop and any tasks players will complete on a day and weekly basis.
Interface
Include a summary of any menus and input players will have.
Art Style
Include the proposed art style of the game, the mood, and references.
Financial Forecasting & Revenue Model
This section should include costs to build, scope, platforms, similar titles, audience, and monetization model of your game to create a financial forecast and retail pricing model.
Marketing Plan
This section should include a rough marketing timeline, community strategy, media, social media platforms, advertising strategy, and any anticipated press, streamers, or other discoverability surfaces. These can be a high level summary of approach as well.
Roadmap
This section should include a feature map of your game and a rough timeline for each phase of development including concept, pre-production, alpha, beta, and launch. Also include any information about hiring or filling gaps of the team at each phase.
Comparable Games
This section should include comparable games within the genre or games that have similar features to your game. It should also include estimated revenue and audience size of the games you are comparing and references on how you came to your conclusions.
For example:
- A Short Hike (2019)
- Gameplay time: ~1.5 hours
- Steam reviews: 9636
- Price: 7.99
- Total revenue: $2,543,904
- We are using Steam reviews as a way to measure the gross revenue of this game, where indies have said on Reddit that reviews typically account for 1–3% of the actual downloads of a game. We did not account for sale prices or other platform revenue.
Developer Resources References
I put this together for my students at ArtCenter, and wanted to share it out for other indies or developers to use. Special thanks to Bernard Yee, Scott Anderson, and Justin Link for contributing feedback/resources.
