If you’ve invented a game (a complete and finished game, not just an untested idea for one) and you would like to submit it directly to a game company, the first thing you need to do is find a company that accepts unsolicited submissions. There are not many companies that will deal directly with the inventor(s) of a game without going through an agent (see Working with a Game Agent for more information on why that is), and the ones that do are usually small, up-and-coming companies that are looking for new games that have the themes in which those companies are interested. For example, if a game company specializes in sports games, it doesn’t matter how good your abstract strategy game is, they won’t be interested.

So your first challenge is to find a company that accepts unsolicited submissions and accepts games with the theme that yours has. This can be done by checking the website of each game company you can find and see if they offer submission guidelines for game inventors. (Or search the internet using keyword phrases such as "game submissions".)

One note at this point: Some companies don’t want a game submitted to other companies while they review your idea. It’s a standard professional courtesy within the book publishing industry that authors looking to get a book published pitch their work to one publisher at a time and wait for a rejection before moving onto the next publisher. (This is because of the tremendous amount of time and effort required to review a manuscript.) Authors not willing to follow this "rule" may have trouble getting future book manuscripts considered by any publishers that expressed interest in a previous work, only to be turned down because a deal was already struck. This same courtesy is expected by some game companies, but not by all. Since games are "inventions" more than written works (although the rules to a game have the same legal copyright protections as any book), whether you wish to follow this courtesy or not is up to you. Personally, my feeling is, expecting a game inventor to wait weeks or months to find out what one company is going to do before pitching the game to another company is a bit much, especially since very few new games get accepted by game companies in this manner.

Getting back to submitting your game; one thing you have to make sure of is that you follow the specific submission guidelines provided by each company. You cannot create one generic proposal that can be sent to every company because each one has its own criteria for what they want to see first in order to decide if they want more information from you. What will not be wanted initially is a prototype of your game. A basic overview is all most companies will want at first. No samples, no photos (there are some exceptions here), and no rules... yet. Because any rules and artwork you have created are copyrighted (without even filing anything with the government), companies don’t want to accept this material without specifically asking for it so as to avoid any legal headaches in case they reject your idea but coincidentally were already coming out with a game with graphics or rules similar to yours.

The game description you’ll provide will typically include the type of game (board, card, dice, etc.), proposed theme, target market, age range of players, time needed to learn the game, time needed to set up the game, time needed to play the game, the components in the game (board, cards, dice, spinner, timer, pawns, etc.), a brief description of game play, and the winning conditions. This is what you’ll first provide to a company, and what they’ll use to determine if they are interested in learning more about your game. If they want more, next you’ll typically be asked for a copy of the rules to your game, so make sure you have a complete and thorough set of rules that someone could use to learn how to play your game without you needing to be there to explain things. Additional information may also be requested with the rules, such as pictures of your game. If your game passes this next hurdle, then you will be asked to provide a prototype of your game to be playtested (with a liability waiver too, of course).

This may sound like a time-consuming process, and it is. But thousands of games are invented every year, and for companies that accept unsolicited proposals, they get flooded with these new ideas and it takes time to sort through them all. If you are determined to get your game picked up by a company in this manner, and you believe you have something that has marketable appeal, keep at it! And good luck!