Production help for large game.

There are some companies listed under Web Resources -> Professional Services. I strongly recommend you contact them directly; any estimates on cost that someone here could give would be just an estimate. There are so many variables in getting a game printed that it's best to give your exact specs to a company and get a quote from them.

Setting aside cost concerns for a moment, this seems to present a table-space concern. If all 5 players have 4 boards each, plus the game board, there's not a table in the world big enough to hold all that. Even if the game is great, you'll lose some sales if its impractical to play it.

I'm not sure, but another factor you have to keep in mind is the per game cost. A general consideration is that to sell your game in a store, you have to sell it to a distributor, who buys it for perhaps 40% of the retail price. That means that to make money off the game, your production costs have to be considerably less than that per game (and keep in mind that there are other costs -- eg, shipping -- than just the production). If your production cost per game is high, your retail price will be high, and you have to be sure that there's enough demand for your game that it will sell at the price you're setting.

And, of course, that you can sell through your inventory in a reasonable time frame. It's my understanding that a game that sells 2000 copies is a great success. For a big, expensive game like yours, I suspect that number may be even lower. I would caution you against ordering 5000 copies unless you have several thousand preorders already in hand.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your game!

-Jeff

I think you will have a very hard time getting even 1,500 copies of this game made for $31K. 5,000 would be near impossible. I recently submitted a request for quotation to about a dozen manufacturers and based on their quotes for my game (which had WAY fewer components and no special plastic ones), you will almost certainly need to make changes either to your specs or to your budget.

My advice is to be sure you have a very, very detailed request for quotation (with sizes, component numbers, suggested card stocks, etc.) before you submit your requests. Even include pictures of each type of component. Ideally, put it on a website so you can have each manufacturer view it there rather than filling out a bunch of separate bid request forms.

Also, yes, there are a few companies that do game design (artwork), manufacturing, order fulfillment, and sales representation, or some subset of these. I recall having seen (and even posted) some remarks about these companies, so search around a bit more on this forum, and you'll get more about these compnaies than what is just in the Web Resources section.

Good luck,
Bill

I gather from your use of the metric system and references to "A4" sizes that you're not in the USA. I could run some of your specs past my printers and vendors to generate some numbers - but would you even consider printng to standard American sizes (i.e. 8.5" x 11" rulebooks) and having it shipped back to where you are?

Thanks

OK, well you'd best add your e-mail address to your profile as the printers will be wanting to ask you a lot of follow-up questions to accurately price your parts. For example, how many pages is your rulesbook, how many of those are in color, what type and quality of paper are you thinking of printing it on, and so on?

Methinks the real summary is: Find a publisher willing to handle all the sales, warehousing, production and art worries, as well as the liabilities that come with them.