How to brief a branded game without wasting the budget

Branded game development is one of the most expensive forms of brand activation. Not because of the technology involved, but because of what goes wrong before a single line of code is written.

At Livewall, we see it consistently: a brand arrives with an enthusiastic idea, a tight deadline, and a brief that raises more questions than it answers. The result is usually a game that ships late, costs more than planned, and does not hit the objectives that were originally in mind.

This article is not about game design. It is about what you, as a client, need to have locked down before you ask a studio or agency for a proposal. Because the quality of your brief determines the quality of what you get back.

Define the mechanic, not the concept

The difference between a mechanic and a concept is larger than it sounds. A concept is: 'a game where players discover our new product range while walking through a virtual shopping centre.' A mechanic is: 'collect-and-win with daily return as the activation trigger.'

A game studio does not need a concept to get started. They need a mechanic. That mechanic determines the cost, the timeline, and what is technically possible within your budget.

For Mitsuba Spice Rush, we deliberately chose a simple arcade mechanic because the goal was not complex gameplay, it was fast participation on a trade show floor. The mechanic served the context directly. That is exactly the kind of decision that belongs in the brief, not in the design phase.

Set the goal before you choose the platform

Most briefs start with a platform. 'We want a game on our website.' Or: 'it needs to work on mobile too.' Those are technical choices, not goals.

A goal is: 'we want 40% of participants to leave their email address.' Or: 'we want daily return visits over three weeks.' Or: 'we want users to spend at least four minutes active on the campaign page.'

Without measuring first-party data collection or specific behaviour change, a game is simply entertainment that you are paying for. That can be a valid choice, but make it a deliberate one.

What works:

• Connect gameplay to a measurable outcome
• Define your primary conversion (sign-up, share action, purchase intent)
• Decide in advance what success looks like at seven, fourteen, and thirty days

For Wehkamp Wanna Have Days, the goal was daily return during a specific campaign window. That single objective shaped everything: the unlock mechanic, the prize structure, the notification strategy. Everything flowed from one clearly defined goal.

Know your audience beyond 'our customers'

'Our audience is consumers aged 18 to 45' is not useful information for a game designer. What is useful:

• Are they playing on desktop or mobile? (This determines interface complexity)
• Do they have a high threshold for downloading something? (Then everything needs to work in the browser)
• Are they willing to invest ten minutes, or do you need to hook them in thirty seconds?
• Are they active gamers or people who occasionally play a casual game?

For HEMA Stapelgek, we knew the target audience was already using the HEMA app. That gave us a different starting point than if we had needed to activate a cold audience. The context of the audience shaped the entry barrier decisions in the design.

The more specifically you describe who you are trying to reach and in which context they will encounter the game, the better a studio can match the mechanic and UX to that reality.

Success criteria are not an appendix, they are the core

This is the element most frequently missing from a brief. Or it appears as: 'we want lots of participants' or 'it should go viral.'

Success criteria for branded game development must be specific, measurable, and agreed upon in advance. That means:

• How many unique sessions are you expecting?
• What is the minimum session length that demonstrates success?
• What percentage of players should move on to a next action (purchase, sign-up, share)?
• After how many weeks will you evaluate the result?

If you do not know the answers before briefing, that is fine. But it is then the agency's job to help you define them. At Livewall, the first conversation about a game is almost always about goals, not design.

What we also see: brands that define success criteria only after launch. There is then no baseline, no context, and no way to learn for the next campaign. That wastes both the budget and the insights that a well-executed gamified activation naturally generates.

The five elements of a strong game brief

To make this concrete: these are the five things every brief for branded game development must contain before you ask a studio for a proposal.

1. The mechanic (not the concept) Collect-and-win, quiz, arcade runner, puzzle, predict-and-win. Choose, or ask the agency to advise based on your goal and audience.

2. The primary goal One concrete behaviour change or measurable outcome. Not two or three.

3. The audience in context Not demographic, but behavioural. Where do they play, when, on which device, with how much attention?

4. The success criteria Concrete numbers, or a framework within which the agency can help you set those numbers.

5. The constraints Budget (or a range), deadline, technical integrations required (loyalty platform, CRM, app), and existing brand guidelines.

These five elements give a studio everything needed to put together a realistic proposal. If one is missing, something gets rewritten during production. And that always costs more than a thorough brief would have.