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In two weeks, I’m headed to Indianapolis to check out Gen Con for the first time. Gen Con is a huge tabletop gaming convention! I’m scheduled to play TTRPGs, card games, and Warhammer laser tag. I know almost nothing about Warhammer, but I love me some laser tag. Hopefully they’ll have a fog machine, surprisingly heavy vests to wear, and laminated badges to put our laser tag code names on, which will appear on the high score screen after the third round! If this laser tag isn’t exactly like the one I went to for my 11th birthday party, I’m gonna go “warhammer” on Gen Con.
People have asked me if I’m going for work. Yes and no.
Yes
• Playing new games inspires my own designs.
• I’m attending design panels.
• I’m meeting other designers, retailers, and industry types at the show.
No
• I have no plans on pitching publishers any of my board game prototypes.
I spent over a decade pitching Hollywood TV shows. Not to brag, but I’ve had my parking validated at all the major studios. When I decided to focus full-time on games, I thought selling a board game to a publisher would be much easier. My dad almost did it, so I thought I could break the family curse or whatever and get a tabletop game published. I had the same amount of luck pitching board games as I did TV shows. Actually, maybe I did better overall in TV, because at least those executives gave me free tiny bottles of water for showing up.
The first tabletop game I tried to get published was called Switchy 500. This was in 2019. Switchy 500 is a classic roll-and-move with deck builder mechanics and an interdimensional racing theme. The player assembles a deck of cardboard “track” tiles with movement squares on them with different hazards. On the board, there’s a starting tile and a finish tile, which are a fair distance apart. On their turn, players can lay out a new tile or rotate / switch(-y 500!) out an existing piece of track, then roll a die to move their racer. Whoever makes it to the finish tile first wins! My prototype was pretty barebones with no artwork. I pitched the concept to a book and game publisher who ultimately passed on it, but wanted to hear other ideas. A friend of mine who is very much into the board game hobby playtested it for me. He piled on the critiques, but his biggest one was that the design felt old fashioned. Roll-and-move went out of style in the 90s. I might as well have made a game based on POGs.
My second tabletop flop was Triviapocalypse in 2020, a combination sci-fi strategy battle game and trivia game. I had just come off working for an HQ-like trivia app, where I presented a numbed of ideas of trivia mobile games that never got made. So I had trivia on my mind. In Triviapocalypse, players control mech pieces on a game board. They answer trivia questions, and depending on how well they do, they get energy points to move their mechs and blast others into scrap. To make the prototype, I enlisted the help of a lot of friends and family, who kindly contributed trivia questions to what I thought was a winning concept. I pitched this to the same book and game publisher as before, who really liked the idea, but before we could move forward, they axed their games division.
During the pandemic, I pitched Triviapocalypse at a different board game convention called Metatopia. They were an online show that year, and there was a game pitching competition, which I won! My prize was a chance to pitch the game to many publishers at a speed pitching event. For two hours, I gave my ten minute spiel to various publishers while demoing Triviapocalypse with a playable online version I made in a free variant of Tabletop Simulator. The response to my pitching style was enthusiastic, but ultimately, no publisher wanted to make it. I had to follow-up multiple times to get any kind of response from any of the publishers. I had a database to track responses and when I last heard from potential buyers. Most publishers rejected the game because it was trivia, which was an undesirable genre for them. One publisher had a very astute observation on the idea. There’s little market overlap between a game for hardcore gamers (sci-fi strategy battler) and casual gamers (trivia). As fun as the prototype was to play, who was the audience?
My third attempt was a solitaire strategy battle card game called Killer Robot Tech Support in 2022. Players are faced with a row of killer robots that have special abilities. Every turn, another robot enters the field. In the player’s deck are tool cards, which they use to fix the robots and clear them from the board. They also have special cards like “code” to give the players special abilities of their own. To win, players have to fix all the robots before they conquer the board. I was very excited about this pitch. An entertainment company signed on to represent the Killer Robots brand in non-games media, especially comics. I sent KTS out to all the companies I speed pitched Triviapocalypse to. Most of them said the same thing. They played it and they liked it, but it just wasn’t for them. One publisher who initially showed a lot of interest took two years to get back to me, saying he didn’t think the game had enough “oomph.” Oomph!
My most recent attempt began last year. I got inspired visiting the Comic-Con booth of a comics publisher I love and admire. They were already producing Tarot decks, so I thought maybe they’d be interested in publishing a card game. Their books have incredible artists, and the founder has a soft spot for Magic: the Gathering, so I came up with a game that has similar deck building strategy battle mechanics, but would serve as a showcase for their cartoonists.
In Body Slam, players have fighters that spread out over six cards: head, arms, legs, and torso. Each body part has a set of corresponding move cards (attacks, blocks, and specials), which combine with each other to form a deck. So you can mix-and-match fighter body parts to create a unique deck and fighter. Players target their rival fighters’ body parts and break them. When a part is broken, the player can’t use their corresponding move cards unless the part is healed. Once enough body parts on a fighter are broken, a fighter can land a killing blow on the torso and win the match.
Body Slam did awesomely in playtesting. Players got really into it, sometimes viciously so! Unlike my other games, I got a little temp art made for it, to show how big the fighters would look splayed out over six cards, instead of being crammed into a box inside one card, like many similar games. The founder was very encouraging and wanted to make it. After playtesting it with me, they emailed me saying they wanted to move forward… but then the company got besieged by financial problems. Our conversation went cold.
I thought about shopping Body Slam to other publishers, but I promised myself – after 20 years of pitching games, comics, TV shows, scripted podcasts, you name it, and virtually no successes – that I could finally stop pitching and make games for my own enjoyment, instead of for the twin mirages of money and validation.
Maybe someday I’ll kickstart Body Slam. I would have to figure out if I want to go through the gauntlet of crowdfunding again. I’m not 100% convinced it will be worth it to me to do all the labor of publishing a big commercial game project by myself. Design, production, marketing, shipping! My partner Amanda and I ran a book publisher for many years. We ran a Kickstarter for a TTRPG. That was a lot of work and not nearly enough profit in the end to save our struggling bottom line.
So, what if I made a card game for myself? What if I made a game that’s uncommercial at its core? A game anyone could play with just the rules, stuff they already owned, and their imaginations? I made that game. I’ll share it with you next week. I’m going to post the beta, and crucially, not pitch anybody!
🎲 Your Turn: Have you pitched your creative projects to companies? Are you more successful than I’ve been? Have you had your heart broken by a rejection? Did you get a major win? I’d love to hear from you. Reply to this email or tell the whole world by leaving a comment using the orange button below.
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