What Makes a Good Game Proposal

For our assignment we were tasked with creating a game proposal for our game idea, and with recently receiving the feedback and responses about this proposal today from both our peers and tutor I will discuss what makes a proposal good! Considering a proposal's main purpose is to sell the idea of a game to a developer or publisher, where a much more detailed games design document is later produced once funding is acquired, it's important to try to 'wow' them in the very early stages of the game's concept so you can get everyone on board with the idea..

The most critical thing about a proposal is that it must be eye-catching and have a clever idea which stands out from the rest of the competition, this is why we include the short 'hook' near the top of the document as well, in order to draw in the reader and encourage them to want to see more of your great idea on offer. To follow on from this as information received in my feedback from Tom and Sue, with this task a proposal shouldn't be too long or wordy and just cut to the point, a mistake which I made with my own original draft version: making it 11 pages long. A good proposal length is anywhere between 2-5 pages as you don't want to just bore the reader with too much information as they may just stop reading and completely discard your idea completely, but you want to have a core concept in place that can really impress them in that relatively small amount of text.

There are other important pieces of information needed in a proposal too, as talked about by Forbe writer and editor (Turak, 2013), it has to be well planned and prepared. To quote them: "Every great plan or proposal must have teeth, and putting teeth into your plan or proposal means making projections. Projections that put you squarely on the proverbial hook for achieving bottom line results." (Turak, 2013). This essentially means you have to find a way to stand out from the competition and show you have a firm grip on your idea, and this very much applies within the games industry too with confidence that it will succeed in such a crowded marketplace.

I feel my proposal followed a lot of these guidelines well, since my game concept has a very clear-cut target audience with a well discovered niche in the games industry- a shooter game that can be enjoyed by younger children. It shows everything it wants to be and what the game ultimately wants to achieve, while still acknowledging any issues or limitations that may occur. However, a final thing to note as published by (James, 2014), is to research the customer, developer or publisher that you're pitching to! It's no good presenting a cute and cuddly game for kids to a big company known for gritty 18+ rated violent games, so it's critical you also know what type of company would want to publish your type of game and whether or not they'd be on board with the idea, as you avoid major disappointment later on down the line.