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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...?"
1. Get a popular show
2. Have a popular character on the show make up some rules for a game (they don't need to make sense)
3. Have determined fans make up rules that fit the above specified rules, yet provide some logical game play
4. You now have your own card game
I'm pretty sure they can print everything you want except a board.
And if you get your board printed on nice glossy heavy duty paper, that should be hard to make (so long as you know how to spread glue out evenly and thinly).
Making board games is like making books or video games. First you design the game and make it quality. Manufacture a few prototypes of the game. You can do this on your own with cardboard and an injet printer. If the game is quality get it published. There are a lot of board game publishers that will buy your game if it is quality. You can go all the way from Looney Labs (Fluxx and Nanofictionary) to Rio Grande (El Grande, Puerto Rico) to Milton Bradley (Hasbro, right?) If you don't want to publish your game commercialy (couldn't imagine why not) you will need to contact a professional printer. If you hadn't guessed that costs big money.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It's really simple to grab together pieces from other board games you have lying around the house, sketch out a quick board on some simple paper, and try playing the game with a few friends. I've done this many times, and it helps you see what sort of game-play is fun and interesting, and what's not really, before you go to the trouble of making a more permanent set of cards/plastic pieces/game board. If you really do come up with a winner you think you can sell, I suppose that's the time you can go looking around for companies to manufacture it for you. And I think at that point you'd be better off going to a game company who knows what they're doing, rather than trying to farm out production to various different individual companies to save a buck, and then try to sell the game yourself.
But really: a large piece of paper, a collection of plastic pieces from various board games, some dice, and a few cards can provide for many, many hours of fun and entertainment. You're limited only by your imagination.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
- a guy made a USB menorah
- a guy made a web interface to 4,000 xmas lights and a rotating camera w/ pan & zoom
- guys are making spacecraft in garages by hand for xprize
- ??? [and etc]
And you are telling me you can't print your own manual and make your own little plastic figures? SHAME ON YOU!- It's quite possible you've got a printer in the neighborhood without having realized it. Depending on the type of shop you could get most of your needs met there -- manual, cards, playing board, even the container.
- For playing pieces, wood adds a touch of class that plastic can't match; check your local craft store and see what kinds of things they've got that you can glue together. You can do just about anything with a source of wood and a Dremel.
- Another possibility for the playing board is to design your board on the computer and print it to an iron-on transfer, then iron that on to the cardboard. Or you could make a series of stencils you can spray-paint through (one for each color) for mass production.
- Use dice. They're cheap and plentiful.
Good luck. This sounds like it could be a rewarding hobby.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.
Dude I got an idea that will totally blow yours away (warning, office space reference coming)
See I want to make this mat, and printed on the map will be different "conclusions" You lay the map down, and you jump as far as you can. Depenending on how far you jump, determines your conclusion.
I call it, jumping to conclusions.
find your local (if you have one) school teacher supply store. They have all kinds of game tokens, dice, spinners & what-have-yous. A good paper store is handy for getting the game board backing.
I print the game boards on multiple sheets on a colour printer, glue them to the backing and then laminate them a the local copy station.
This works for simple board games for her grade 1-3 students. Should work fine for your prototyping stages. Custom plastic is going to cost you, though. You might want to look into paperboard cut outs if you want to make and distribute it yourself.
http://nwbagpipes.com/
One of the guys I work with does game design as a hobby. (Joe Huber, first published game Scream Machine by Jolly Roger Games) He buys poker decks in bulk from BJs and prints out stickers that cover the face of the cards. If the game uses a board, he usually just hand draws one on card stock. He's also purchased parts from the local science museum or used parts from widely available board games, i.e. money/markers from Monopoly, etc.
It should be noted that these are prototypes and he's usually not making more than one copy of these games.
"You can put a man through school,
But you cannot make him think."
Ben Harper
I know that part of the fun in your case is creating the board itself, but without a good game behind it, you're wasting your money.
Consider first creating or purchasing a standard "piecepack", which is to board games what a standard deck of cards is to more specialized card games like Uno. It's a board and standard set of pieces that you can use for dozens or even hundreds of different games.
The piecepack website has rules for a bunch of different games that can be played with it (nearly eighty at the moment). You can browse through those to see what makes a good game and what doesn't, and even make up your own game and submit it for peer evaluation.
Then, if your game seems fun and people like it, you could pony up the extra money to have custom boards made.
Have fun! Families playing card and board games are rare nowadays, so my hat's off to you!
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
After you design it and are sure it's both playable and fun.
Go out and buy several board games that look like it has what you want as an element.
A board game where the board folds the way you want and is about the right size.
A board game with the generic pieces that are like what you want.
finally when you get to wanting cards done, Kinkos can get you game-cards that are the quality of that in a Monoply game. if you want cards that are like a deck of playing cards, I.E. coated, do a search for playing card makers on google.
finally after you get your graphics laid out for your board, Kinko's again can print it for you and then simply cut/glue it to the donor board, then buy the thin-sticky clear plastic to put over the board surfaces.
I've had a version of Uno called Glastnost-UNO made (you have to love playing when you have a mutually assured destruction card! and other evil cards like last card multiply by 10 for use on draw cards.) made and we made a nuclear capable version of Risk (including little bomb pieces for nukes to deploy, and Pog style markers for dangerous country/no troops can move) for playing in college back in the 90's and we were able to get it looking 100% professional by having playing cards printed at a US game card house (I had to order 20 decks of cards, but hey the game was a blast!) and modifying existing games parts for my own use.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The name of the game is 1000 Blank White Cards. Now, maybe its just as much fun with green cards, but that would be a completely different game :)
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.
Watch for the following pitfalls:
Parts of the game are worthless.
There are ways to do the opposite of what you're supposed to and benefit from it.
If the game includes secrets, there need to be tools to encourage players to keep them.
The game shouldn't "elminate" players slowly. Yes, I know monopoly does this, but those that are eliminated usually leave/sleep/watch tv and I think that's why games like Pictionary, Scattegories, or Trivial Pursuit are more popular.
Different, but not revolutionary. Just like most video games, you're better off doing a variation of something most people are familiar with than something new and/or complex.
You need to be able to sit down, read the rules, and understand the game in under 5 minutes.
Good luck.
at amazon -- great book on the game industry, pointers at publishers and a few do-it-yourself tips...
Try what the Cheapass Games people did. Make the board out of big pieces of paper, swipe pieces from other games, print the cards on a laser printer using card stock, and so on. As long as the game itself is entertaining, the looks won't matter thatmuch. Once you're sure it's a good game and people want to play it, then you can think about getting fancy.
My dad owns a one man game company and his web site has a page about this.
:]
Here.
His games have made it into Games Magazine's top 100 games list more than once, so he might have some reasonable advice.
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.
The cards you just need a few heavy duty laser printers for. You need to decide if you need colored stock or colored print. If it's colored print your looking at decidedly higher costs. You can also contact a large printing company, the smallest they'll fire up the presses for is going to cost you about $1000-$5000 but that will get quite a few full color cards on good stock cut and ready to go on a palette.
Your next tackle is game pieces, where you go for this is a bit trickey, it depends on your pieces. Decide if they are something you can design and make a physical impression of yourself or if you need an artist to do it for you. Either way contact a few plastics companies FIRST to find out what they will require of you. You can find information about completely doing this yourself on the web, what your wanting is information about molds and injection of plastic in molds, the base equiptment to create hundreds of figures can be has for under $1000 but you have materials on top of that, and still have the problem of likely needing an artist for the design and cast of your pieces.
As for the boards, your not going to be able to run them through printing presses, what you need to do is find the stock for your boards. If you can find a company that will do the boards lock stock and barrel great, you'll likely want to go with that (you will of course need to design or have an artist design your board), otherwise you'll need the stock. If your game can be played on a basic rectangular or square board that doesn't need folded that will make your life easier, otherwise you will have to get someone to play ball or do it yourself. Could get pretty tedious depending on how many of these you intend to produce. Then you'll need to refer back to the presses for stock that will stick the boards, or simply print on cheaper glossy stock and then you can use cold laminate or laquer to adhese them to the physical boards, there are laser printers that are designed for wide stock as well and could be used for when you need it and/or aren't using segmented boards where your image could be chopped up into multiple sheets you could use your regular laser printers for.
As for the packaging, there are numerous companies that do this relatively inexpensively if you are producing these in any quantity.
If you go the route of getting the equiptment yourself then of course the advantage is that it can be reused (although running thick card stock on a regular basis through laser printers will result in a fuser change or a new printer every 3-6months, at that point toner flecks will start to appear on prints).
If you go the route of industrial style companies they front all the equiptment and labor for the task they perform, however they will have minimum runs (it's expensive to fire up a press or make molds). If you go that route remember a couple things, at this level of the game you CAN negotiate, your not walking into a grocery store where there is a price tag on everything and that's how much it costs. Repeat business is great, but sell them on concept of repeat business on other products (later boards), they will generally want to do as much as possible in a single run (since the expense for them is setup to produce your item, and running off a few more later means setting up all over again). It's better to do 5000 now than 1000 each month, and cheaper for them so your talking down will yield more fruit.
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Davak
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!
Spray mount is definitly your solution. What you want to do (cost-efficiency-wise) is make the interim drafts of your game using spray mount and a sheet of heavy cardboard. Now by heavy cardboard, I do not mean 'hack the side off of a moving box'. Larger stationary stores sell well-compacted, pre-cut sheets of cardboard. So you get one of those, and you wrap the back in paper (christmas present style, folding in around the corners) and then slather on some spray mount. When you put your front on you want to line up two corners and use a ruler to press it across.
Sure once you've got a well-designed game that flows, you can probably afford to put out for a pro job, but cards and the board front can be pretty easily made with a nice color printer (go to a copy center if you have a crappy one).
As far as plastic molds, I'd just hit a second hand store and buy orphaned peices for a while. No use getting nice ones made till you're doing a final draft.
Note: it's really easy to make pewter or tin figures. I mean you can melt that stuff with a candle. Make a nice mold using plaster, rubber, or fine clay and make some metal peices a la Monopoly or Clue.
I have a mod point left, but there's no rating for "Amateurish Bad Advice." I often hear this paranoia about IP theft from unpublished writers, but in my 19 years as a professional game designer in paper and computer games, I've never seen any IP theft of any kind. It's a combination of (a) small stakes (at least in the paper game business); (b) wide reliance on work-for-hire contracts that let a publisher buy all rights anyway, legally; (c) a tight, clubby industry in which a bad rep would get around instantly; (d) generally small publishers who can as little afford a legal battle as you or I. Etc. If you think a printer has time or bandwidth to pirate game ideas, think again.
As for "use places like WOTC, etc. as distribution channels" -- maybe you're confusing publishers (Wizards of the Coast et al) with distributors (Alliance, Diamond, et al), or maybe you're thinking of the Wizards retail stores. But in any case, this is misstated advice. A small publisher makes distribution agreements with regional distributors or, for very marginal operations, publishes in .PDF form for download from online sites such as the highly regarded RPGNow.
A prospective publisher would do well to attend one of the big gaming conventions, like Origins, Gen Con, Toy Fair, or the GAMA trade show in the US, or the Essen fair in Germany -- the world's largest game show. Ask around, get the basics. It's not hard, and the advice will be a lot better quality than you'll get on Slashdot.
(I hope this doesn't come across as a gigantic free textad on Slashdot. :-)
:-)
:-)
Hi there, I'm Scott Starkey, designer of the card game "The Mother Lode of Sticky Gulch." My game was honored by the GAMES 100 this past year, a lifelong dream I accidentally hurdled. I would be happy to dispense a little bit of advice.
If you're just starting out, probably the "home-publishing" method could probably work for you. There's a few companies out there that are doing print runs at Kinko's and lovingly hand-cutting their product and selling it. Advantage: Very small cash outlay at the start. Disadvantage: Product might seem a little "cheap." (Cheaper than Cheapass?) Also takes a lot of energy to do each deck.
Secondly, there's the method that I tried. If you're insane, and you've got a few thousand dollars that you'd just like to say goodbye to, you can have your cards professionally printed. There are a few printers around that will do small print runs of 1000 units or so. I went with Delano Service, because of them being geographically close to me, and they seemed to have excellent customer service. My good pal Jim Doherty of Eight Foot Llama seems to get good service in Canada at Quebecor. Fact is, there are several places you could get a game printed at, and there's no obligation to get a quote if you know what you need. In fact, it's rather fun to get quotes.
I don't want to discourage you too much, but creating a game is somewhat of a pain in the ass. You've got to compile a metric buttload of art, design each of the cards, lay it out in a way that's pleasing to the eye, design an attractive package, write clear and consise rules. Most games are designed by a team. Me, I was lucky, because I was already an artist, but it was still an uphill battle. Then once you compile all of the artwork, you might find out that the printer needs all of your art to be 300 dpi CMYK instead of 60 dpi RGB, and have to do it all over again, like I did.
Of course, I didn't realize, after getting the game printed... printing the game is the easy part. Yeah, I'm designing games as a hobby. But now I have to become a marketer, promoter, and salesman. Fact is, I'm a horrible salesman, and I don't like pushing my game in people's faces. Also, if you're running a business, you've got to keep voluminous records of travel, expenses, taxes. It's all mind-numblingly boring, for something that was supposed to be fun!
You might go to a convention and expect to sell a bundle of games. Don't kid yourself. I dropped $500 on half of a GenCon booth last year and sold a scant few decks. Chatting with some of the other boothites, it seems that most companies that go to a convention do not make back their investment at the convention. However, it does serve as good advertising. Having a presence at a convention puts a product in the public eye, which is good. But it doesn't really add up in many direct sales, unless you're Wizards of the Coast in 1992.
I might never make back what I invested. Sales haven't been spectacular, despite having been honored by GAMES. It doesn't really matter, though. It's a wild ride. I am now a game designer with a mote of prestige. I've fulfilled a lifelong dream. It's my biggest gambit of all: I wagered a few thousand dollars that there are 1000 people out there that would buy my game. I get the feeling that very few people make a profit at this game. However, if I justify it as a "very expensive hobby," it takes the sting out somewhat.
You might check out the Board Game Designer Forum, where a bunch of folks of a similar mindset to you and me hang out and talk about the process of creating games. We critique each other's works, and have weekly chat sessions about various topics about the craft of game desi
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
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.)
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