Board games are a hot commodity right now, with net revenue from the industry exceeding 1.5 billion in 2018. More games are being produced than ever before, and with that comes increased competition for attention, and a lot of people trying to publish the game of their dreams with very little experience. You’ve got an idea for a game, and the time to make it happen, but that’s not enough to make you stand out any more. You need good marketing and social media chops to go along with great design skills, and tips on just where to spend your hard-earned cash to maximum effect.
Meeple Mountain has a number of resources to help you make your game great; with game design tips, ways to improve your Kickstarter campaign, and interviews with well known designers and industry insiders. The better your game is, and the easier you make it on board game media, the more your game will stand out in an increasingly crowded arena. There are key steps you can take to help media outlets ensure that the coverage your game received is accurate and helpful to the consumer.
What’s a Media Kit?
A media kit, also called a press kit, is a great way to promote your board game, offering up the essential bits of information that any media outlet might need to accurately portray any title in your roster. It doesn’t need loads of bells and whistles to be successful; things like 3d renders of your game, custom product photography, or other pricey add-ons. But every media kit should include things like a high-res image of your game’s cover, a one page document with important details about your game, contact information, and a few other items that you should already have.
A media kit should be easily available on your website, or upon request by a media outlet. A link on each game’s page is a common approach, but if you’re a new publisher with fewer titles, placing links to all of your games in a press section on your website should suffice as well. Packaging everything up in a ZIP file is the best approach as that will allow interested parties to download everything in one pass.
Board Game Media Kit Checklist
To help you make the most of your time, we’ve created a board game media kit checklist that you can run through. Don’t feel like your media kit needs to have every one of the items on this list, but they’re certainly strongly suggested. These are assets we feel encapsulate the most important things needed to pass to a media outlet like Meeple Mountain. Whenever possible images should be 4000px wide/tall or larger. You can download the board game media kit checklist at the bottom of the article, or you can use the interactive checklist below.
- The cover of your game, saved from your page layout program
- Should not include player count, time, or age information
- A photo on white background of the game ready for play
- A photo on white background showcasing the components of your game
- A photo of a game in progress
Sounds right 🙂
Great info for us new guys. And a downloadable check list to boot. Thanks for this!
Glad to help Mark!
This was very insightful. Thanks for posting this!