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Making Your Own Board/Card Games?
wrinkledshirt writes "I've been growing interested in creating my own set of board games, and I was wondering if people knew of good resources for how to go about doing this? I'd love to know information on good places to get cards printed, manuals printed, plastic pieces manufactured, boards created, that sort of thing. Many companies online offer to do all of these things for you, but I'm considering doing it all separately in order to cut costs. Since I've never done this before, I'm also wondering about sources that'll give you good ideas to consider as well as gameplay pitfalls to avoid. I know google is my friend, but I'm also wondering about people's experiences in trying to do this stuff on their own...?"
Daf from #bhamcs on Quakenet ( irc.quakenet.org ) is currently making a board game, try him :)
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Check out http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121997 .htm. It discusses the interesting history of the game Monopoly. Yes, Monopoly's success made it's "inventor" Charles Darrow a millionaire, but a quite similar game, titled Landlord, was invented nearly 20 years prior.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I think we're talking more about homebrew board games, as in homebrew beer - not something you want Miller to start producing for you - just something of great quality for you to enjoy with good company.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
At that point, it's time to consider whether you want to self-publish or sell to a publisher. If you decide to self-publish, with a good game in hand, you're about 1/5 of the way to making money. Then you worry about production issues like you are now. Producing parts isn't tough unless you have to build molds in which case it can get expensive pretty quick. Boards, manuals, cards, boxes are all cheap to produce. Once you have physical product, you're about 1/3 of the way there. You still have to sell the game to resellers and to do that, you have to convince them that the game will move off their shelves better than what they're currently carrying. That's a tough road and requires a lot of patience and persistence to see it through. To get a feeling for the problem you have to overcome, put yourself in a game store and you see a new game on the shelf. Would you buy it if you know nothing about it? That's what a reseller is going to wonder and it's a fear you'll have to overcome.
So you finally land your first sale. Except you're not there yet. Somebody like Walmart or Target is going to want to know that you'll take the game back if it dies on the shelf. That means you won't see money from them until the product shows that it's moving and they're ready to reorder. It's when the second and third re-orders start coming in that you know you've got a product that'll sell. Self-publishing is a rush but most of the time you're worrying about keeping product moving more than you're worrying about developing a great game. Been there, done that.
I came up with the idea (long ago), of a three player chess game based on a board of hexagons instead of squares. I even tried to market it through one of those invention marketing companies (waste of good money.) Then I joined the Air Force and got stationed, of all places, at the Pentagon. One of the first things I did was hop on the Metrorail to Crystal City and do a patent search of chess games based on hexagons instead of squares... I found at least twenty design patents for such games. And since the WWW has come into existence I've found at least 20 more such games. So much for my idea. =P
Turns out, creating a chess game based on hexagons instead of squares that has the same "flavor" as regular chess is no easy task at all. I am still trying to find the right combination of boards/piece arrangements.
you checked out Cheapassgames or any of the GamesWorkshop games?
Seriously, no joke. I've done some amazing stuff at Kinko's with heavy paper, a color copier, and lots of glue. Heck, I signed five artists to my repping business on the strength of a Kinko's-produced promotional materials.
What kind of game are you making? I'd caution you against book-full-of-charts war/tactics/role-playing type games. They were popular in the 70s, but computers have more or less killed people's patience for that sort of thing.
The best games can be learned in 30 minutes, have no dice, or a very small chance element, can be easily portable, and play best with about 4 people.
Settlers of Catan (simple version, no expansion packs) is the best board made in the past thousand years. Chess & Go win in their respective epochs. If you aren't familiar with all three, you should take a pause before doing any further designing.
Other honorable mentions: Poker (some states allow poker gambling, but not other forms, since it's a game of skill and not luck) Bridge, Diplomacy, Nomic (not a really fun game, but useful as a designer to get you thinking about games)
Monopoly and Risk are terrible games. They both last about two hours longer than is actually fun. Their strategy is about three inches deep, and they rely *heavily* on luck.
Also, if you can come up with the next Asshole, the world will be in your debt. We always need more drinking games.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Hello,
This is slightly off-topic but I thought I'd bring it up. A friend gave me the Monopoly 60th Anniversary Edition in 1995. That's the one with the nice board, brass tokens, ivory dice, wooden houses and hotels instead of plastic, etc.
Sometime in mid-1996 I was discussing the currency exchange between the dollar and the Russian ruble. The person I was with said something like "sounds and looks like Monopoly money" when I showed him a 500 ruble bill. To make a long story short, on my next trip to Russia I exchanged enough US dollars (around $40) to get real bills and coins for almost all the bill denominations for the game. For some (i.e. $1) we use the bills that came with the game.
Now, when we play Monopoly, we play with real money. That might be an interesting twist if you can find a currency that makes this affordable.
Cheers!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
A game I invented in high school.
http://www.Viragotech.com/solo_euchre.gif
Right. A game publisher is more interested in playability and fun than looks anyway. Take Magic: The Gathering as an example. The developer of the game had a bunch of index cards with little photos taped on, but presentation aside, the game's playability shone through and a couple years later it's a phenomenon. :/
I too have been interested in creating board games myself, at least in a digital form... I never honestly considered actually designing them into actual retail games...
However, I agree... creating original games that people will want to play and enjoy, even board games, is a really difficult thing to do... to find something that hasn't already been done. I've come up with plenty of board game concepts in the past, and with many revisions/sub-creations from other ideas... and while the game formulas do work, are very original, and are actually fun (to myself at least), I often question what kinds of minds beside my own would play them - would you have to be a strategist, a math whiz, have a high school diploma at minimum, or what? Often I find my ideas are very great, but its hard to find something that a broad variety of people would want to play, as opposed to targeting a small, limited audience... and with such limitations, would the game actually be noticed and/or sell?
I remember back in the day I downloaded a game from AOL where you were a computer company, and you had to get new technologies, and sell computers...anyone remember it? You could download it and print it out, it was quite a blast IIRC.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Kinko's is not a cheap option for printing up gaming items. The only thing kinko's does cheaply is bulk, high-speed copying. Everything else is just services sold at premium prices to people who aren't having enough done to enlist a print shop.
I've worked as a project manager for a graphic design company -- brochures, business cards, letterhead, postcards, folders, book covers, whatever. And I can tell you that by far, I have had the absolute worst luck sending customers to Kinko's. They don't have equipment for doing die cuts or full-page printing. Often they don't have staff who know what Pantone Colors are or the difference between CMYK and RGB or what an EPS file is (or any vector artwork, for that matter). They're an overgrown copy shop with delusions of grandeur, not a printer. Any real printing services they offer, they outsource, and in either case, you're paying more.
We've had much, much better luck sending customers to Sir Speedy, Alphagraphics, and PIP. If you need to photocopy something, or you're printing a B&W PDF, by all means, go to Kinkos. If you need quality printing, don't touch them.
(And I might also note: don't even set foot in the building with the file. Mail them a PDF with your order, and come in a few hours later. Every time I've tried to use one of their computers to print something, there's been some sort of configuration problem that turned a 5 minute task into an hour. Every time I've given one of their staff a disk with a file on it, a similar event has ensued -- as recently as last night, I took a friend to a Kinkos where she had a three page Word Doc she wanted printed out. We left 45 minutes later with no printed document in hand, and eventually just drove back to my house (half hour away), used antiword, and had the thing in 5 minutes. I don't understand why this is -- I'm sure that we're not the first folks to walk in there with a Word Document, and most of my friends who've gotten jobs at Kinko's have been pretty sharp. But anytime I've done anything other than copy something, I've had a bad experience there.)
Tweet, tweet.
Think about doing a "Cheapass" game. Unless you plan of doing some incredibly beautiful board/pieces, there's no need to do anything special. Just hire a print shop (A real one that does cheap bulk jobs, not Kinko's.) to do it on cardboard and sell it out of zip-loc baggies. If that one does well, invest in cardboard boxes for the next one.
Pitfalls to avoid in boardgames:
-Make a game that can handle at least four players, because very few people look for new games for less than four players.
- Don't make it take a long time-stay under two hours. There are some people who like eight hour games, but those people are few and far between, and they already own Risk and everything from Eagle and GMT.
Injection molding can be done at home on the cheap. All you need is plaster of paris, molding wax, tools for shaping your models, a microwave oven, styrofoam cups, and some acetone, and you can make just about any plastic part. Of course you also need a smidgen of creativity, and enough common sense to know that the acetone NEVER goes into the microwave.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!