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How Do You Get a Board Game Published?
cyclomedia asks: "I've been dedicating a little of my time to devising a strategy board game, pitched somewhere between Checkers and Chess but probably not as deceptively complex as Go. Without giving too much away I can tell you that there's a nerd factor within the game itself, possibly leaning the possibility of marketing towards the Games Workshop end of the spectrum, but without the 80-sided dice and Orcs. The next step in my plan is to see if I can actually create a prototype made of coins, stickers and cardboard, and then to attempt to teach the rules to my wife (she's a Trek fan, hence the marriage). If I get past that stage, presumably I can't just show up at Hasbro with my jerry rigged setup and expect an enthusiastic response. So, what do I do?"
As you obviously have no idea what you are going on about.
Games Workshop uses 6 sided dice in their system, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as an 80 sided die!
You can try different approach. Try publishing your game on Net. Something like printable table (in pdf for example) and some cutout pieces. Let people play. If it's good enough, and people like it you can approach some game publishers. Not to mention that this approach will give you loads of beta testers, for free. So you will be able to improve a game in a process. Use Slashvertisement.
And as everybody knows, it's better to have a game you like in nice box with good quality pieces, so they will buy it afterwards, thus guaranteeing some sales.
And be patient, very patient... I wish you luck!!!
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
I know nothing about the board game business... ...but team up with someone who can draw and/or design well. Scanners and inkjets are dirt cheap these days. If your prototype looks like a product instead of a school project your chances of getting published should be orders of magnitude better.
Playability is important, but without looks you can't appeal to Joe Sixpack.
.: Max Romantschuk
Check out The Making of VIKTORY II, one guy's tale of creating and self-publishing his strategic board game. He is crazy persistent (and has some past experience) and manages to knock out a pretty professional final game.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Publish it yourself, selling it through a website. Offer a downloadable demo of some sort, e.g. a PDF of a board and some of the pieces. You can start doing both of these things for a very small investment, and you can scale up your publishing infrastructure according to demand.
A friend of mine is doing this at the moment. You can try out his board game by printing some levels and some of the pieces, and then, if you like it, you can buy the actual thing by cheque or Paypal. Seems to be doing well, he's making an expansion set at the moment.
Another thing you could do would be a computerised version of your game, offered for free online. That could be an excellent advert for the board version, but it would take a bit more investment...
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
...might be a good idea.
Admittedly, I have only met one game designer, but his strategy was to produce the game himself, and sell it at Cons and Comic Shops.
His key piece of advice: When you sell a copy, document it! Give the buyer a receipt and keep a copy. I believe he said (though please forgive me if I am remembering wrong) that no one really got interested until he had 100+ receipts in hand...demonstrating that the game was already starting to be a success.
You could always talk to the people behind War on Terror - the Board Game. It sounds like they started from much the same position as you are in.
It may also help to follow the example of people like Cheapass Games and print your games on inexpensive material - very plain cardboard and the like, don't include dice or tokens in your packaging and encourage people to scrounge an old monopoly game for those things, and etc. The game itself may not hold up well to pressure, but if it's a good game, then maybe you'll get a grant to print it on heavier material anyway.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
This article caught my interest because I've been in a somewhat similar situation, though I've been pursuing it for the past six years. Here is my story, if anyone is interested or might have further suggestions.
:-)
I spent considerable time writing a two-player strategy board game. In fact, I've spent over five years play testing it with different people and refining the rules until it became quite fun and playable. I've developed notation for it as well, so games can be played by correspondence. It would appeal to any chess freak (of which I consider myself one) though aside from requiring two players there is no similarity. It has a beautiful and unique board that a friend and I designed. My goal in creating the game was to introduce a game that could trigger new and different ways of thinking in a collaborative strategy process toward central transcendence goals as opposed to one of conquest (such as chess or go).
Yeah yeah, it may sound complex, but no more so than chess, in fact it has fewer rules and as any serious strategy game enthusiast understands, it's not so much the rules as the intricacies of play that inspire.
I've researched many board game companies in earnest. I looked for those that produced quality designer games (Gigamic, for example) to large multinationals (Megabloks). I wrote nice introductory letters to them. I included overview teasers of the game concept without revealing too much (just to get their interest but protect my idea), and I included my own game NDA from a lawyer.
The responses I got were typically that the companies wanted me to send the rules but would not sign an NDA (in other words, once receiving the rules, they'd potentially be able to develop it and never give credit where credit was due). That is a reality, an experienced, professional game designer warned me about it.
From the game company's perspective of course, they've got to be careful too. They live in fear that if they see something submitted from outside their company, and just happen to be developing something similar on their own, that they'll wind up getting sued. One company persistantly asked me to send them my prototype (of which I made several) but refused to sign the NDA for this very reason. Some companies have their own NDAs, and I've found that sometimes these are sufficient because they seem to have wording that protects both parties (but not always!). At one point, Megabloks signed an NDA with me and they play-tested my prototype but unfortunately my game was just totally out of the realm of the sort they publish. That's to say that even though game companies may like to get good ideas, most are really closed to anyone that is not already in their industry or better, employed by them.
So I'm still looking, considering saving my money to self-publish it, but it's not cheap and I'm not wealthy. My other dream objective for the game, which I have yet to fully lay out in detail would be to form some sort of co-op that involved a few free and open source developers, which would be interested in making a networked electronic (client/server) version of the game (like all those FICS/chess servers) that exist. I would love to see it spread all over and feel like having an electronic FOSS version would really help popularize it in terms of getting a company interested in distributing a physical version of the game. I've always felt that it would be incredibly appealing to sell a physical board game with an online subscription included and a FOSS version makes sense if not for the philosophy for the simple fact that it would be the most efficient way to jumpstart its spread. I dunno, maybe someone is interested in collaborating on that.
There are lots of complex and long games out there, quite a few games in the 18xx railroading series are complex and take a few hours to play. Settlers of Catan. Risk 2011. The Warcraft and World of WarCraft boardgames. Star Fleet Battles. The board game industry has it's share of "easy" or "quick" games, but it also needs the complex games...
Don't get discouraged, keep playtesting and refining the game and your prototypes, make sure you keep ahold of any patents/copyrights/trademarks that result from the game's creation, and keep pitching it at board game companies til it sticks... baring all that, if you get to a point where you cannot do any more refining or playtesting, and no other company has taken it on, go ahead and found your own company.
http://www.deepthoughtgames.com/ is a low volume board game publisher. They might be able to help you out in getting your game looking "professional", and perhaps using eBay, or another "storefront" website, you can start selling your game, the costs would be relatively low.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
In my own case I got an artist/friend to do the artwork for a share of profits and published the game myself. I used Paragon Packaging, because most other companies just deal with paper and cardboard. I needed tiles. Min run: 5,000 Cost:$50,000 I would warn you this should be a labor of love. Be sure to factor into your spreadsheet damaged games, dealers that don't pay, etc. etc. In my own case I have lost about 25K on the first 3K games though some of that might be because I choose to compete with a classic Scrabble. This is a tough slog. Peter http://www.wildwords.us/