I love board games. However, I think most mainstream games,
your traditional Monopoly, Trouble, and Sorry, are pretty horrible games. Far
too much relying on lucky rolls or draws and far too little strategy. Even risk
is basically just “sit in one place and build troops until you can steamroll
everything”.
Fun board games are complicated games. Ones that take up
entire tables and entire Friday nights. I started young with Weapons and
Warriors, a wonderful game with little plastic forts and figurines. You set up
your own base and then take turns firing little plastic cannons and ballistae
that shot orange balls at targets. If you hit a target, one plastic soldier
will fly off the fort with a satisfying twang of a rubber band powered trap. It
was like mousetrap only with Vikings and pirates. The other was Hero Quest.
Think of Dungeons & Dragons with training wheels. The booklet held all the
layout and flavor text for the Dungeon master (or DM) to lay out as the heroes
progressed. Pick one of four premade heroes and go smack some skeletons (which
sounds like a euphemism, but trust me, it isn’t). I always picked the rogue
when playing, and my older brother Eric got the wizard. These two were my
favorite games growing up. Now that I think about it, it’s no wonder I like
D&D so much with these awesome fantasy games training me up to be a good
strategic player.
Now I like a couple of more adult games. Settlers of Catan
is usually the go to game for serious gamers, but it’s really not one I enjoy.
Once again, too much left to luck. I prefer Agricola, a game in a similar vein
but a tad more strategic. Then there’s Seven Wonders, raising up one of the
ancient civilizations up through the ages and crushing your competitors with
battles over the eons. But my favorite so far is Betrayal at the House on the
Hill. This game was so mind blowing when Eric first described it to me. The
first half of the game is pretty simple. Your characters are all in a haunted
house and you have to explore it. Usually rooms have events- creepy noises,
ghostly apparitions, or something worse. When the players in the game see too
many ‘omens’, the Betrayal happens. The betrayal is an event that changes every
game. Depending on what omen the character sees in what room, one character
becomes the traitor and the rest become the heroes- or the victims. In one
game, the traitor finds some old notes in a lab and creates a super strong
monster which the other heroes must destroy. In another game the traitor begins
to madly play the organ in the basement, sending the house sailing through
different dimensions. Another game might reveal a blob monster, killer bats,
swarms of wild beasts, or some good old blood thirsty vampires. Overall, there
are about 56 total different scenarios. This is truly a game you could play
forever.
But one thing that stops me from trying out more board games
is the price tag. Some of these games are just as expensive as new videogames,
often ranging from $40-$60. I know that there’s probably a good reason why
they’re so expensive. But I was kind of curious as to where all the money went
when I buy a new shiny game. So I started looking at how much it would actually
cost to produce a game.
I found this wonderful website, The Game Crafters (https://www.thegamecrafter.com/) that
lets you design and produce your own board game. I never knew a site like this
existed. Now that I do, I’m actually really excited! With a site like this it
would be easy to design a game, print out a test copy for yourself, and display
it proudly on your shelf. Or who knows, print out a couple copies and go down
to the local comic/anime/general geekery convention and try setting up a table
to sell it. Actually, just as I was thinking this I found they had a page where
you could work with Game Crafters to promote the website and your own game at a
con, and they’ll even give you swag to give away! I swear, these people are the
most business savvy guys I’ve ever seen.
Looking through this website kind of gives me an idea of
general prices. The quality of these items seems pretty high as well, which
would probably mean the prices are equivalent to the usual game publishing
industry. So let’s say I have a game. It’s about unicorns trying to take over
the world with their deadly sparkle magic. Thinking of an average game, I’ll
say it needs:
6 unicorn player pieces
30 cards for power ups and spells
Two dice (with custom horn/hoof/sparkle attack stickers)
60 magic tokens and 10 bloody victory tokens
18x18 board
a medium 6 page instruction booklet with color
medium box to hold everything
The board is $10, the instruction booklet is $7, and the box
is $5. You can see how the prices of games start to rise when just the basics
like this break the twenty dollar mark. But now for the pieces. Cards are sold
by the sheet, so we’ll get 2 sets of 18 poker cards for $3. “shards” or
cardboard tokens, are also sold by the sheet. So I’ll get a circle sheet for
the magic tokens and just 10 single pieces of hexes for the victory tokens- $4
all total. The dice are dirt cheap- just $1 for the two dice and the 12 custom
stickers needed to turn them into unicorn murder machines. While I would dearly
love to find some little horse or unicorn minis, I would have to search further
afield for them. Instead I’ll just grab some 20 cent generic pawns for $1.
I have been rounding these prices just to make it easier on
myself. But, if I calculate the total, I could publish my game for around $31.
Hmm, that’s not shabby, but I would want to make sure my sparkly doom machine
game was up to snuff before I would shell out for it. There are options to make
the game cheaper, such as using a mat instead of a board or getting black and
white instruction sheets. That would actually knock the items down to $2 and $1
respectively, bringing my game down to $16. With a price that cheap, there
wouldn’t be much in the way of making my game a reality!
But… I would only get a $16 dollar version of my game if I
wanted it for myself. If I were to actually produce a game for customers I want
it to look professional. Let’s bump it back up to the old price of $31. Since I
can’t draw worth a damn, I need an artist for the cover, cards, tokens, and
instruction booklet. I would probably pay them a flat fee and I don’t know how
to calculate that into my cost. I may be wildly over or underestimating the
price here, but let’s say that adds $4 to each game sold. Since I’m trying to
sell the game I need advertising. Again, I have no idea how internet marketing
works. But let’s just say it’s an added $2 for every game if I get some “click
to pay” banners up on some websites. And finally the biggest cost bump of all:
profit margin.
I want a 40% profit margin on my game. I looked up some
calculations online, and I think this is how I manage it. I would take the
price of the game (now $37) and multiply it by .60 and add that number to my
original price. (37)(.6)=22.2, and 37+22= $59
Phew, that was a lot of math. Going through this project has really let me
understand why games are so expensive. It’s a lot of little things- all the
booklets and pieces that suddenly start adding up if you get all the bells and
whistles. And the price bump for the margin of profit is killer. That’s not
even taking into account the shipping/handling and storage that you would
normally have to worry about (Game Crafters handles this end of the business).
Even though I didn’t think my unicorn game would be that expensive, it wound up
being a mind boggling $60 if it wanted to be a viable game for sale. Even my $16
version of the game would shoot up to around $30 if I tried to sell it
So, will I ever make a board game? Probably somewhere along
the way, yes I will. But only if I’m making it for family and friends. Unless
inspiration suddenly strikes, I don’t think I’ll ever feel the need to start
making and selling games. But now I will certainly be able to appreciate the
costs of the games I see on my game store shelves.
