Designing games for brands
One of the ways to make actual money as a game designer is to create games for non-gaming brands. These ventures may be lucrative, but they are often fraught with challenges, many of which can take you by surprise. In this post, I’ll look at some of the pros and cons of designing games for brands.
Why a brand might want a game
There’s actually a pretty wide range of reasons why a non-gaming brand might want to produce a game. Here are some of the reasons I’ve come across:
- As a development or training exercise for staff or members.
- As an educational tool for use in outreach and schools.
- As a fun event for a staff party.
- As a saleable product to support a wider brand.
- As a promotional product to represent their wider brand.
- As a gift for social media influencers and press.
- As a gift for staff or members.
- As a gift for customers.
- As a giveaway for potential customers.
As we know, games are great for engagement… and engagement in a product can really serve brands in terms of positioning, marketing and social responsibility.
The Chapter Challenge: An event game for Lambda Chi Alpha designed to be played with up to 200 people.
Challenges for a game designer
The main challenge for a designer creating a game for a brand is that they will probably be the only person on the project that knows anything about games.
The first issue here is that the preconceptions of the people who are commissioning the game may be very far from what you’re comfortable with. Yes, they may say they want a game with interesting decisions, excitement and lots of replayability, but it could be that they are thinking of all of these things within the confines of a roll and move race game.
As you move through the project and you start to present ideas that are different from anything they’ve seen before, be prepared for some members of the team to push back. They may try to push you back to territory that is more familiar to them… that more closely fits the idea they had in the first place.
Prototype cards for a second training game for Lambda Chi Alpha
The bigger the brand, the more people are involved. This could mean that you are dealing with PR companies who themselves are relaying information back and forth to the brand. It could also mean that you are required to sit in multiple project meetings each week. If you’re not present, decisions could be made about the game that you’re not comfortable with or that the company doesn’t understand the implications of.
Even if there are 30 people in an online meeting about the project, you’ll probably still be the only one who has experience with games. This means that you’ll be solely responsible for educating the team in good practice in games. And here the role of the game designer morphs into graphics advisor, art director and production assistant. Don’t assume that the company will know anything about how to produce a game.
After you hand over a playable prototype someone else will make graphics decisions. If this person knows nothing about games, you could easily end up with an unplayable prototype. Illegible text, confusing colours and being unable to see information on cards held in your hand are only the tip of the iceberg here. There are so many graphic design conventions that support gameplay – many of which we don’t even think about. You’ll only start to see the problems when someone who’s had no experience starts to get involved.
Some practical tips for designers
Ask lots of questions up front. Quite a lot of problems can be averted by taking your time before the project even starts. Get as much information as you possibly can from the client about what they’re looking for. Make sure you cover the basics like player count, game length and age. But delve deeper:
- What is the theme/setting of the game?
- What role does the player take? A bear, a corporation, a company boss… ?
- What do they want the game experience to be like?
- What kinds of emotions do they want the player to have?
- Who exactly is the intended audience and when do they think people will play this?
- Are there any learning objectives that must be met? If so, what?
- How do they visualise the game on the table? Is table presence important?
- What are their production limitations? Materials, costs and possibly intended retail price.
- Is there anything they’d like to avoid in the game?
- Is there anything they’d definitely like included in the game?
If you feel like you don’t get decent information back, keep asking. This is the time to find out about their preconceptions, their essentials and their desirables.
A game created for a big US brand, that I can’t yet identify… Game launching later in 2025… watch this space!
Don’t underprice yourself. When working out how much you should charge, consider all the time you’ll spend working on the actual game design (I assume this is the bit that you really enjoy). Then factor in all the time you’ll spend doing other things (meetings, working with other members of the team, advising on aspects of game production etc). Price yourself as the expert you are. Let me reiterate – you’re the only person on the project that knows about games – that makes you very valuable. This is not entry level work. To give a bit of a ballpark figure, most of my quotes have ranged from £5,000 (for a simple card game) to £20,000 for a huge event game. You may have done work for less for games companies, but this is a different thing. Quote corporate prices.
Me and my game-specialist team for The Chapter Challenge game day (fellow game designers Kathleen Mercury, Sydney Engelstein and Waleed Ma’arouf).
Put a wider game team in place. Great game designers don’t necessarily have all the supporting skills needed to get a game from prototype to final copy. Nor should they need to have. But have these discussions up front. Where there is no other game experience, insist on working with external graphic designers, manufacturing partners and rulebook editors. It’s ideal if you know these people and you can make the introductions. Also – consider working with a co-designer who can share the decision making and project management.
Write a clear project proposal. Yes, it’s a boring job, but later on you’ll be so very glad you did it. Write down all the things that the client says they want (agreed parameters for the game). Detail all the work that you will do, with timescales. Explicitly state how many meetings you will attend over the period of the project. Then outline everything that falls outside the scope of the project – things you’re not going to do. To the uninitiated, the phrase “Game Design” may be perceived to include art and graphics. Include milestones, responsibilities and a payment schedule.
Be prepared to walk away. Even after having a number of discussions and taking the time to create a detailed proposal, if you think that this project might be a bit of a nightmare, don’t sign a contract, just walk away. Ignore the time you’ve already spent and put it down to experience.
Give yourself time before sharing. Make sure you build proper design time into the proposal and then stick to it during the project. This is time when you’re fleshing out initial ideas, creating and testing first prototypes, making mistakes and making big changes. The company doesn’t need to see this stuff. You already know what they want. You’re the expert. Go away, work on the game and get it 80% of the way there before you share it. Sharing early work just causes confusion – you have to keep explaining that ‘it won’t be like this’ or ‘I’ll make it better’ or ‘this is just temporary’. It’s hard for non-gamers to understand. Try to make sure that the project schedule doesn’t have any meetings during this time – or at least, no meetings that require you to show work-in-progress.
Think carefully about how you’ll present the game. When you are ready to share the game, make sure you’re presenting it in a way that non-gaming folk are most likely to understand. Make sure your prototype is good looking enough visually – clear text and perhaps some placeholder art to really give a sense of what each component is going to look like. The company will be trying to visualise the whole product (even though you’re just creating the game design). Make it as easy as you can for them. I’ve found that the best thing to do is to make a quick How to Play video – so that they can watch it lots of times and share with people who aren’t in a meeting. It also forces you to think about how to explain the game efficiently. After showing the game, you can explain how the game meets the objectives set out.
A screenshot from the How to Play video I made for Southern Water, when presenting their card game for the first time.
Direct the client. Explain that the client needs to print and playtest the game. Give the client a checklist for playtesting, or some structure for playtesting feedback. Also make sure that the client knows how important blind-playtesting before printing is and give clear instructions for this. It’s in your best interest to make sure that the game is as good as it can be.
I realise I’ve painted a slightly gloomy picture, but creating games for brands can be extremely fun and very fulfilling. You’re potentially able to educate a whole load more people about the power of games and get them very excited about something that you’ve created. Your game may get played by people who’ve never played a game like this before. You can stop another sub-par roll & move, or Uno-reskin coming into the world. You can create something new that people get really excited about and be paid handsomely for it. You can create something you know will see the light of day. Your knowledge and expertise as a game designer will be highly valued. You may be looked up to as a wizard.
If you are looking for a game designer to create a game for your brand, or if you’re a designer looking for further advice about working with brands, please get in touch.
I cannot recommend Ellie highly enough. From analysis to design and development, Ellie handheld Lambda Chi through the development of the Chapter Challenge. Akin to running a small business, it requires participants to balance resources against ever changing priorities. At launch, we had nearly 170 US students playing for six hours! Not one mobile phone was in sight. They were all engaged. Fun, practical and deeply collaborative, the simulation is everything we wished for, and more. It really is experiential learning at its finest. If you want to build your team, elevate decision making, and futureproof your organisation, reach out to Ellie.
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