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[melos]

Here's the paragraph description of Anodyne. My intention is to express what you will be doing, in what setting, and what the purpose of such actions are, then muse a bit about the thing that slightly sets it apart from others - surprisingly, more traditional (design-wise) Game Boy Zelda-likes are (surprisingly) fairly underrepresented compared to other genres.


One issue I have with mine is the word "abstract". I can't think of a good word (or words) to describe the areas in Anodyne that steeped in a bit of abstract something-something (if you've played the demo, say, the intro white area..)
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Anodyne is an adventure game where you explore and fight your way through nature, urban, and abstract influenced landscapes and dungeons set in the dream world of the human Young, in order to uncover the roots of the manifestation of Young's dreams.

Anodyne explores the combination of 16-bit artistic and musical aesthetics with gameplay influenced by games such as Link's Awakening and Yume Nikki.


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oByring, I'm goig to agree with Christian on his assessment.

[pepp]

GOBS! - A colorful physics puzzler that will leave you smiling from ear to ear!

I agree with Christian: it looks like a generic description that could apply to almost any game.

This thread is really helpful and has great advices.
Let's see what you think of the short description a came up with for my game «Recursive Runner»:

Run, jump and score points! Sound easy? Sure, except there is a running and jumping obstacle to avoid: You! (and You (and You (and You (and...))))

Thoughts ?

[Impmaster]

I have no clue what it's about. A meta-jumper where you jump over yourself who is jumping over yourself, who is jumping over yourself....?

[Graham-]

Some possible tags for mine, off the top of my head.

get better at videogames

actual co-operative play

play to your fingers bleed and enjoy it

accomplish something

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Run, jump and score points! Sound easy? Sure, except there is a running and jumping obstacle to avoid: You! (and You (and You (and You (and...))))

Thoughts ?

Confusing. It looks like its trying to be clever. That's the thing that stands out the most. Also: "run, jump and score points." That describes like half of video games.

[Graham-]

I'm going to throw out an example that illustrates the mistakes I'm seeing.

description of a girl:
She's a girl who is very pretty, and about my age, with a University degree and a nice personality.

next description:
She's so relaxed that when I'm around her my mind relaxes in ways that I am unaccustomed to.

Which is more compelling? A lot of the sentences I've seen are like the first. The goal of a pitch isn't to provide coverage of _every single thing in your game_. It is to identify one or two qualities that are most uniquely compelling about it. You have to make a choice in your description, take a risk. What is the number one feeling your game will give your player better than any other? That's what you want to communicate, not its boundaries.

Note how my first example describes a large group of women. My second describes a particular person. Few people can fit the second descrip, many the first.

[Graham-]

Here's the paragraph description of Anodyne. My intention is to express what you will be doing, in what setting, and what the purpose of such actions are, then muse a bit about the thing that slightly sets it apart from others - surprisingly, more traditional (design-wise) Game Boy Zelda-likes are (surprisingly) fairly underrepresented compared to other genres.


One issue I have with mine is the word "abstract". I can't think of a good word (or words) to describe the areas in Anodyne that steeped in a bit of abstract something-something (if you've played the demo, say, the intro white area..)
---

Anodyne is an adventure game where you explore and fight your way through nature, urban, and abstract influenced landscapes and dungeons set in the dream world of the human Young, in order to uncover the roots of the manifestation of Young's dreams.

Abstract is ok: "nature, urban, and abstract landscapes." "Influenced" is redundant. "Adventure game" is also redundant, because you explain it right after.

Game is also redundant.

You fight and explore your way through nature, urban, and abstract landscapes, as the human Young, traveling through his own dreams, trying to uncover their meaning.

[gimymblert]

A good pitch is basically the 5W, in game that mean giving:
- The title
- the type of the game (to set expectation)
- the settings (to frame the context)
- the role of the player (to frame action)
- the goal and the failure state
- the mean to carry the goal and avoid failure
It goes from generic to specific, each basically completing the previous point.

what - Anodyne
what - is an adventure game
where/when - set in the dream of Young
who - (you may need to characterize it a bit more) >> ex: "a frail human"
why - who is trying to uncover the root of their meaning (implicit failure, lack of closure)
how - by exploring and fighting his way through nature, urban and abstract landscape

If you start by the end we don't get the "why" we do all of this, ie you do things BECAUSE of the goals, you can do this BECAUSE of the role. You set the stake then show what is the tools that resolve it.

Anodyne is an adventure game set in the dream of Young, a frail human, who is trying to uncover the root of their meaning by exploring and fighting his way through nature, urban and abstract landscape

Mentioning the genre is important early on because the same verbs (mean of action) can be used in different genre differently.

For exemple

Anodyne is strategic rhythm game set in the dream of Young, a frail human, who is trying to uncover the root of their meaning by exploring and fighting his way through nature, urban and abstract landscape

After such paragraph we have a clear framing of the game you can speak about your intention and the look and feel.

Anodyne explores the combination of 16-bit artistic and musical aesthetics with gameplay influenced by games such as Link's Awakening and Yume Nikki.

Then you proceed with experience flavor.

This game will leave you smiling from ear to ear!

By the way, mentioning it is game is not so superflous because

Anodyne is an adventure MOVIE set in the dream of Young, a frail human, who is trying to uncover the root of their meaning by exploring and fighting his way through nature, urban and abstract landscape

It works, it's a matter of expectation and closure too, sometimes even if the context give it away it.

[pepp]

I have no clue what it's about. A meta-jumper where you jump over yourself who is jumping over yourself, who is jumping over yourself....?

Indeed, you just described the gameplay of the game.

Confusing. It looks like its trying to be clever. That's the thing that stands out the most. Also: "run, jump and score points." That describes like half of video games.

Confusing: fair enough. I tried to get it to sound intriguing though, so it seems I failed.
Regarding the "run, jump and score points" part : of course it's generic. I used this introduction only to be able to write that this game was different enough in the 2nd part of the sentence.

Writing these texts is really a hard task... thanks for your help and advices.

[Graham-]

Yeah it's hard.

That's the issue. You're "trying" to make it sound like it's intriguing. So all that shows is your effort, not what actually makes your game intriguing. I still don't know what your game is about. You have to make that clear. Don't obfuscate it.

[melos]

Graham - yeah, thanks - I think that by virtue of the description appearingon gaming websites hte "game" is definitely redundant. The other suggestions for redundancy are useful too.

Gimmy - characterizing Young a bit is a good idea, too. will have to think of an appropriate adjective.

[Graham-]

Think of it this way. You only have so much mind-share of a potential player. Use it wisely.

[PompiPompi]

Err... is elevator pitch really relevant?

As far as I can tell, an elevator pitch is used to convince some big CEO or some big investor\business man to make an investment in your idea.

So the question is, who are you pitching your game to? And why it needs to be an elevator pitch? An elevator pitch also implies you stumble upon or got one chance to talk to this big shot and convince him in a very short time.

In other words, I am not sure what do you mean by elevator pitch in this context. It doesn't make sense to me. Is it to describe your game in one sentence? 99.99% of these kind of one liners without any screenshot or video will be completely uninteresting and uninformative.

[melos]

Err... is elevator pitch really relevant?

As far as I can tell, an elevator pitch is used to convince some big CEO or some big investor\business man to make an investment in your idea.

So the question is, who are you pitching your game to? And why it needs to be an elevator pitch? An elevator pitch also implies you stumble upon or got one chance to talk to this big shot and convince him in a very short time.

In other words, I am not sure what do you mean by elevator pitch in this context. It doesn't make sense to me. Is it to describe your game in one sentence? 99.99% of these kind of one liners without any screenshot or video will be completely uninteresting and uninformative.

I think it's useful to have an elevator pitch for talking to people in the press. They get a lot of e-mails so there needs to be a good hook before they'll be compelled to look at a video, screenshots, or demo, etc.

[Evan Balster]

An elevator pitch is also an important bit of material in marketing your game to players.  Generally speaking, you want some paragraph early in a press release that's easy for the journalist in question to copy-paste into their article.  That paragraph, or sentence, is marketing material which you want to be as effective as possible for its size.

In Elevator Pitch, you play a brilliant young game developer who can't seem to get his head around marketing.  Make screenshots, videos and press releases in order to maximize awareness of your game.  Later, rent booths at conferences and show the world your masterpiece...  just don't go broke in the process!

[bateleur]

Err... is elevator pitch really relevant?

Yes, it's very relevant, because when you write in a style where your brilliant sweeping opening sentences set the scene for the introduction of the epic story which *CLICK*

That was me closing the tab. I no longer care.

You have ONE sentence. It doesn't need to be a masterpiece of creative writing, but it needs to provide a reason why your game might be of interest. If your game does something innovative or unusual, just say that. If your game is instead an example of an existing game type, say which. That's basically all there is to it. (Well, that and a video trailer.)

Also, don't lie. Not every game needs to sell to every single player in the world. For example, my game's pitch is:

a game about building machines

...which will be an instant turn-off for some people. And that's fine, because they're right, the game is not for them.

actual co-operative play

Congratulations, that's the only line in the thread so far which would motivate me to find out more about the game being described.

[feminazi]

if ur in a elevator with some dum just tell them a knock knock joke

knock knock
whos there
publish
publish who
publish my gam

[melos]

if ur in a elevator with some dum just tell them a knock knock joke

knock knock
whos there
publish
publish who
publish my gam

100% success rate!!

[Evan Balster]

Eva J, when your life's all fast cars and rockstars, just remember who your real friends are.  <3

F15h bros 4evah.

[JigxorAndy]

Err... is elevator pitch really relevant?

As far as I can tell, an elevator pitch is used to convince some big CEO or some big investor\business man to make an investment in your idea.

So the question is, who are you pitching your game to? And why it needs to be an elevator pitch? An elevator pitch also implies you stumble upon or got one chance to talk to this big shot and convince him in a very short time.

In other words, I am not sure what do you mean by elevator pitch in this context. It doesn't make sense to me. Is it to describe your game in one sentence? 99.99% of these kind of one liners without any screenshot or video will be completely uninteresting and uninformative.

Yes it's relevant. For me it was about how to explain my game to new people I meet. When I meet new people they always ask what I do, which leads me to say I'm a game developer, and then I have to explain the game I'm developing. So that's where I wanted to work out a really short elevator pitch so I wouldn't be put on the spot every time.

[Muz]

Elevator pitch is also good for deciding what your game is about. If you tell me that your game is an epic about everything, then I'd assume that you've got no focus.

All epics have a short summary...
Minecraft: Build a 3D world with other people
Dwarf Fortress: Lead a group of dwarves to survive in a world simulator
Avernum: A classic dungeon crawler RPG set in an underground land
Unreal world: A survival simulation set in an iron age world
Touhou: Bullet hell with cute girls
Spelunky: Procedurally generated platformer that's different every time you play it
Super Mario: A platformer set in a surreal world
Sonic: A fast-paced platformer about a hedgehog
Pacman: Grab all the dots while avoiding bad guys in a maze setting
Angry Birds: A physics based game where you slingshot birds at pigs

Not all of this is very convincing (e.g. Mario/Sonic), but it gives me a good idea of what the game is about.

Something like "a game about building machines" appeals to me because I like machinery games. But I probably would filter out things like "3D dragon flying simulator" and "platformer" (including quality games like VVVVV and Sonic) because they're just not my thing. And I'd certainly avoid a game that says "An epic MMO about everything" or "An alternate of reality"

When you really get to the point, I can tell whether I'm wasting my time looking at the details. If it's truly difficult to describe, that's when you need to rehearse an elevator pitch more than anything, because there's just too many good games to spend more than a minute browsing a game I've never heard of.