How to Write a Game Brief a Studio Can Actually Quote

When a studio receives "I want a game like Subway Surfers but different, what will it cost," the honest answer is: nobody knows yet. The quality of the quote you get is set by the quality of the brief you send. Here is what to include. None of it requires technical knowledge.

The one-liner

Start with a single sentence: what the player does and why it is fun. "A cooking game where you run a food truck and serve increasingly absurd customers before time runs out." That sentence tells a studio the genre, the loop, and the tone before they read anything else.

Reference games

Name two or three existing games and say what to take from each. "Movement like game A, art style like game B, progression like game C." References replace pages of description, because both sides can go play them. Being derivative in a brief is not a weakness. It is shared vocabulary.

What makes yours different

One short paragraph. A twist on the mechanic, a theme nobody uses, an audience being ignored. If you cannot name a difference yet, say so honestly. A good studio can help you find one, but only if they know it is missing.

Scope signals

You do not need a feature list. You need to answer a few questions that move a quote more than anything else:

• Single player only, or multiplayer? Multiplayer can multiply cost
• 2D or 3D, if you have a preference
• Levels designed by hand, or endless and generated?
• Does it need accounts, cloud saving, or social features?
• How do you imagine it earning: ads, purchases, or unsure?

"Unsure" is a perfectly good answer. It tells the studio where to advise you.

Budget range and timeline

Founders often hide their budget, fearing the quote will magically rise to meet it. In practice the budget range determines what a studio proposes: the same idea has a lean version and an ambitious version, and without a range they must guess which one you want. Give a range and a deadline if one exists, especially if the deadline is real, like a funding event or a season.

What happens next

With a brief like this, a serious studio can come back with a real proposal: scope, price, timeline, and usually better questions than you expected. The whole document is one page. An afternoon of writing saves weeks of back and forth, and it marks you as a client studios want to work with.

When you are ready, this is exactly the information our Share Your Idea form asks for.