Board Game Publishers

[Krammer]

Now I know this is an independent role-playing game site, but I was just wondering if anyone has any idea of any publishers that accept submissions for strategic board games (in the fashion of Axis and Allies... or Risk). I've got a game I made that I really think has a chance on the market, but I just can't find anywhere to submit it. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Trevis Martin]

Since this site is about indie-publishing in particular I have to ask, have you looked into publishing it yourself?  Perhaps some of the folks who have self published CCG's could give you some partial insight, depending on what your game invoves.

best

Trevis

[Ben Lehman]

If anyone has any insight about self-publishing board games, I'd love to hear it.

yrs--
--Ben

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hello, I don't have much insight myself, but know a few people who design indie board games. One of them is a close friend and swears by this site:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com

I'm betting if you don't get any decent ideas here that you will find a wealth of information there.

[Ben Lehman]

Via Board Game Geek I just found the Board Game Designer's Forum which has oodles of information both in its forums and its "web resources" section.

http://www.bgdf.com/

yrs--
--Ben

[Ben Lehman]

And, from there, here is the best site I found:

http://www.gamebuilders.net/

It's very heavily focused on the distribution model, but it doesn't seem that there is anything like the non-distroed RPG field for board games.

yrs--
--Ben

[Trevis Martin]

There was a boardgame just across from the Forge booth at Gencon Indy last year published by a couple of brothers unter the imprint Gorilla Games.  The game was called Battlestations.  You could maybe contact them if you needed some advice.  They seemed pretty friendly when I talked to them.

http://www.battlestations.info/

best

Trevis

[daMoose_Neo]

CCGs and board games are, believe it or not, unrelated in design and construction (aside from the obvious board games tha include cards). Hence, hang out there- Forge and myself aren't going to be useful-

Resident CCG Guru signing off.

[MatrixGamer]

I've been contemplating making some boardgames along the self publishing route. It is fairly simple to do it badly - but why bother if that is the outcome? Doing it well...takes work.

You have the following technical problems.

1. Making boards
2. Making counters/tokens
3. Making a box
4. Printing rules

The competition are German Board Games (that have a high level of production value). I don't think this is insurmountable in a small press game but it is hard.

I do all my own production in house so the following thoughts are how I'm thinking of doing it.

BOARDS: Board game boards are make using the same materials as hard back book covers (book board, printed paper that is laminated on one side (run two covers through at a time back to back). The board is covered with a thin even coat of white glue, color printed paper is laid on it and the item is set aside to dry under a weighted board (so it will not worp.) The sides are glued over using hot glue or some other quick drying glue. A back piece of decorative paper is glue on the back and the board is left to dry again. This is a non folding board but a folding one can be made if the two boards are glued with a gap between them that is left. This hinge allows the board to close.

COUNTERS/TOKENS: I'm opting for counters because they are made th same way as the boards. Laminated color paper, glued to a board. Once dry, the board can be cut into individual counters, using a paper cutter (one that cuts through a ream of paper in a single cut).

BOXES: This is the toughest problem as far as I'm concerned. I'm personally thinking about making a series of hinged boards that wrap around into a square. The top and bottem will hold the boards in with a ribon.  The game will need to be shrunk wrapped for store sale.

RULES: This is the easiest step. A computer printed booklet can go in with the boards.

Equipment needed: A color and black and white lazer printer, a hot roller lamination machine, a mat cutter and/or large paper cutter (at least 32" wide - the standard size of book board), glue, weights and pressing boards (just pieces of wood really), a shrink wrapper.

This could cost $2000 to $3000 to buy these items used. Not cheap I grant you but less that a single short print run from a board game printer.

It will also take time and practice getting good at doing the tasks at hand. If you put in the time then you will have the capability to make short runs of your own (and other people's) game. When you establish a track record of sales you might be able to sell it to a larger company.

As I did when I wrote about home printing, I grew up in a print show and have spent years learning the skills on how to use the machines. I have an out building set up as my shop, so though I remain an amatuer I'm pushing the edge of that lable. What I 've described is soable but not effortless. If you are not a craftsman at heart then don't do this. Personally I am. I love being able to make real looking things out of paper and glue.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

I got my National/Smyth sewing machine working last weak for the first time - Cool! Nothing like 100 year old machinery!

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Krammer.

Have you thought about following the Cheapass Games model. Simple boards printed on cardstock and sold in an envelope for a low price? Dice and counters not included because the customer probably already has them.

[guildofblades]

Hi All,

On the issue of board game production, I might be able to field a few questions. The Guild of Blades has been producing board games in one format or another since 1998. These days we produce them almost entirely in house. We have a production process we have been refining for several years now and continue to do so.

[Ben Lehman]

Ryan --

Boy, do I ever have questions for you.

I just wrote a draft of a board game / RPG, and I am chewing over the financial possibilities of printing + selling it via my little indie company.  I have some questions:

1) What is the cost per unit for board game printing?  Clearly, this depends on print-run size.  I'm mostly interested in the smaller end of the print-runs, because I don't feel like gambling a lot of money on any one thing.

Cost here would include:
a) A board
b) Some components (pawns and tokens and such)
c) A deck of cards

2) Is there anything equivalent to the buy-directly-from-the-creator's-website in the board game field?  Are people comfortable buying a game off of the creator's site directly, or are they mostly interested in purchasing through distribution channels?

3) How much is the cost of distribution and warehousing, generally?

4) Are independent board-game companies often stuck with a lot of excess stock, like many RPG companies are?

5) Any other advice?

[guildofblades]

Hi Ben,

>>1) What is the cost per unit for board game printing? Clearly, this depends on print-run size. I'm mostly interested in the smaller end of the print-runs, because I don't feel like gambling a lot of money on any one thing.<<

Well, the cost od production will entirely depend not just on production quantity, but also production style and components to be included in the game. My company has board games for sale that cost us just $.42 to make and others that cost us over $5 per unit to make.

With regards to production, if you are looking to completely outsource production, including packaging and all, then you are most likely looking at a realistic minimum print run of 3,000 to 5,000 games. Board games just aren't quite like RPGs were you have POD options or even can get a small 500 to 1000 book run. However, if you have the various items produced separately and then to the actual assembly of the games yourself, you have a fare chance of being able to buy up the various printed components in quantities of 1,000 or smaller. But then you are stuck with the labor of putting them together yourself. And finally, there is the in house production option, which is the direction the Guild of Blades has gone. We bought a variety of printing and bindery equipment and produce the vast majority of the games we sell ourselves, from the printing of the box art (a full color wrap placed around an otherwise blank box), the game "boards" (which are currently simply color sheets laminated....we've tried short run in house board backing and it was simply too ineffecient), the game rules, etc.

>>Cost here would include:
a) A board
b) Some components (pawns and tokens and such)
c) A deck of cards<<

Realistically your components are likely to include:
1) A board
2) Pawns & Tokens
3) A deck of cards
4) Dice
5) Rules
6) The Box Itself (one of the more expensive parts actually)

If you are after a real board, then you only have two options. As I said above, we don't even try at making real boards now. We print (photo copy actually, using a commercial grade color copier) our "board" pieces and then simply laminate them. But another option for short run in house boards would be to order blank chip boards, either 8 1/2" x 11" or 11" x 17" then use a copier or printer to print on full sheets of laser label stock, then adhere the labels to the chip board. This can look pretty good, especially if you then laminate the combined sheets.

If you are looking to have a board made for you, odds are pretty good you are looking at $1 to $1.50 per board with a production run around 3,000 units. If you go the in house route with stickers, you would need:

1) Stickers bought in bulk. We can buy a case at a time (1000 stickers) for just $.08 a sticker. Assuming a fairly small game board of just 17" x 22", that would require four sticker sheets. Cost $.32

2) A means to print full color on the stickers. For around $400 you can get a good boarderless photo printer that gives you options at using ink refill kits rather than always buying new ink cartridges (the cost between refills and new cartridges can be huge, in some case 17 times more expensive for a new cartridge). But using such a printer will be slow. Maybe only 1 sticker printed every three minutes. Sure, you can set it to print and walk away and come back a half our later and have 10 stickers printed, but you can see you'll never be able to use this option for higher production levels.
Anyway, the best cost per sheet here I have found works out to be about $.04 a sheet. So $.16 to print four sheet.

Or you can look to buy a commercial grade full color copier. Those you can get new or semi new (used previously on a short term corporate lease) starting around $5,000 to $7,000. Or you can buy them used on ebay or from print shops for the $700 to $2,000 range. Toner bought in bulk is marginally more expensive than ink in bulk for refill kits. So  per sheet cost here runs around $.05 a sheet. So $.20 to print four sheets.

3) You will need blank chip boards. You can buy 8 1/2" x 11" chip board at .22 thickness for as little as $.025 a sheet. Or you can get .60 thickness (this is about the thickness of the cardboard used in hard cover books) for around $.06 or $.07 a sheet. Say $.07 a sheet times four sheets = $.28

4) A laminator, assuming you want to go the full nine yards for best appearance possible (not saying you need or even should do that...we don't). A used laminator can often be bought for $400 or less. Just shop around. If you shop around for good deals on the lamination, an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet should only cost about $.04 to laminate (or less). So, $.16 more.

5) A trimmer. You can use an art trimmer to cut away the surplus lamination. Depending on size, these start around $60.

So, the do it yourself, best presentation possible will run you around $.96 a board, but you end up with a LOT of labor and effort to produce them. The bonus, and this can be HUGE for a very small company, you can produce exactly how many you need and not a one more, so you could actually have zero inventory on hand (though I would always recommend having some inventory, just to fill ongoing mail orders and such) if you wanted. Thats a lot less money tied up than a 3,000 complete board game run.

But like I said, it all depends on what yu are making and what you want it to look like, and the time you have to commit. Many of our board games are a hybrid between board games and war games, so we can get away with just using our copier on the map sheets and then laminating them. Saves a lot of labor and expense and helps keep our games more affordable.

>>2) Is there anything equivalent to the buy-directly-from-the-creator's-website in the board game field? Are people comfortable buying a game off of the creator's site directly, or are they mostly interested in purchasing through distribution channels?<<

Most of the larger board game firms are using the distribution channels. We started off that way too, at one point selling through 13 distributors in the US and Canada alone. But we are still a pretty small company (2 1/2 employees) and our sales volumes and the types of support materials we need to produce to keep the fans of our lines happy just were not a good fit with the whole 3 tier distribution method. So as they stopped restocking and selling our games well, we built our website up more and worked on selling more direct. Late last year we were att he point of selling over 90% of our sales volume direct (we also make 4 times the profit off of a direct sale compared to a sales through wholesale channels) and only sold to a handful of retailers direct. This year we have been really working on our methodology and marketing to retailers and now have a couple dozen solid accounts to supplement our mail order sales, though mail order sales is still the bulk of the business volume. We do business with zero distributors in North America now. There really isn't a successful cottage industry of board game producers all selling direct, but there are a few surviving at it.

>>3) How much is the cost of distribution and warehousing, generally?<<

Well, warehousing is something you really ought to be doing yourself. Paying to warehouse your goods will cost you a lot. Perhaps more per month than you might make in actual sales when your company is still small. There are fulfillment services that will warehouse your board games and ship them to your wholesale and retail customers for you. But it will cost something like $10 per pallet per month just for storage, and a full 3,000 board game run will take up a goodly number of pallets. Depending on box size and such, maybe more than 20 pallets.

As for distribution, most distributors claim a 60% discount off your suggested retail price, just like the RPG distributors do (they are the same "game distributors" selling both. Unless you have a game format thats more akin to mass market board games, in which case you'll likely never been doing business with the hobby game distributors and be forced to sell direct to retail account and/or the public.

>>4) Are independent board-game companies often stuck with a lot of excess stock, like many RPG companies are?<<

Oh god yes. Most independent board game companies will print somewhere between 3,000 to 10,000 games and I have heard many stories of only selling 500 to 1000 units over a 3 to 5 year time span. The Guild of Blades absolute best selling board game title has only sold 4,200 units over 3 editions and 8 years in print.

>>5) Any other advice?<<

Start small. Figure out a means to bring your production in house as much as possible so you don't need a 3,000 print run. Look to buy stock boxes from somewhere so you can by boxes by the hundred rather than by the thousands. Then print stickers for those boxes or do what we do and produce wraps for them.

Produce your boards in house, or go to a paper box manufacturer and see if you can have a flat chip board printed on and cut so it will fold down to a size that will fit into whatever box you chose. I have looked into this form of "board" production and found I could have boards printed 1,000 at a time and get the for around $.60 to $1.50 a board. ($.60 if we printed 1,000 copies of four different boards at the same time). Thats still a whole lot better than needing to order 3,000 boards. But if you can, I really suggest figuring out an in house production option for the boards as well.

If you can produce everything in house and keep your inventory low, even if you ultimately only sell 100 or 200 copies of your game, you will have turned a healthy (little) profit and you can then afford to move onto produce more game. You print 3,000 board games and only sell 100 to 200 units, you will be hurting and still be at a loss.

For board game bits and pawns, there are a number of companies to try.

1) Rolco Game Parts
2) Mr. Chips
3) Chessex (we get most of our dice there)
4) Game Parts Inc
5) grand Prix International
6) Dice and Games UK

Grand Prix International has given us some pretty good card production quotes, if you have to have playing card type cards. But so far we have avoided using those as components, as I have found no way around needing to print 3k to 5K in quantity.

My single biggest piece of advice is, keep your costs low. Figure out how to produce the game with that in mind. Kep your total cash outlay low and keep your production costs per unit as low as possible as well. At the end of the day, a small company only makes money and can grow if they can turn a decent profit off the games it does manage to sell.

[Ben Lehman]

Thanks a bunch!  This is really helpful stuff to read.

It seems like the situation in board games is a lot like the situation in RPGs.

yrs--
--Ben

[guildofblades]

>>It seems like the situation in board games is a lot like the situation in RPGs.<<

Well, yeah. All the basic elements remain the same. Unknown company or designer launching their first game targeting a niche market, with no distribution contracts or infrastructure in place at the time of taking that leap. Really the only difference between publishing a board game and an RPG as a small company is the amount of $$ you have to invest.

Generally in order of money required to publish, from cheapest to most expensive, the various game types are:

1) RPGs
2) Stand alone or expandable card games
3) Board Games
4) Miniature Games
5) TCGs

The only thing is, RPGs, Board Games and Miniatures all have a few somewhat viable options at publishing them in lessor quantities. Options at doing the same for stand alone card games and TCGs seem far less practical.