Hi,
My name is Jim and I'm the business manager at a very small family owned and operated company called The Math Gym. Both of my parents are PhD mathematicians, and they have created a company to create games in order to help people, and especially children, become more proficient at math while have a lot of fun in the process. By using games we are able to get kids interested and involved in math without the usual stress and anxiety associated with the subject matter.
We have created, and self published via an educational grant which has now run its course, a board game called The Math Gym 1-D. We have also translated the board game to a browser based game which can be found online at www.themathgym.com (7-day FREE trial available!) should anyone care to give it a try. Our issues are that as a first time game designer and publisher, our costs in building the game were quite frankly way too high. We used non-standard sized card decks (Monopoly sized), glass beads for pieces, printed heavy solid plastic tiles, the board was not cut properly for a truly flat playing surface when unfolded, and too many card decks and tiles included with the game (Trying to include everything from 1st-9th grade.).
All of this occurred prior to my getting involved with the company, so these are all things that I inherited. What I am wanting to do is retool the game in order to reduce our costs (So as to greatly reduce our MSRP.), reduce the weight of the standard shipping product (So as to reduce both our MSRP and consumer shipping costs.), and secure a publishing partner or distributer to help us produce, distribute, and market the game. I'm also VERY interested in learning to use Kickstarter as a funding method. A Kickstarter campaign may allow us to maintain full publishing control, which would then only require us to find a quality distributor. Of course our biggest issue is that as a truly educational game, we need to find a publisher who is both familiar with the market, but also has experience selling these types of games to online only stores, a retail setting, as well as a school based setting.
On the plus side, we already have a produced, play tested (I have no problems revisiting some aspects of the game.), and research tested educational game. We already own our artwork (Created by the same artist who created The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake!), and have a well known artist whom we personally know who is excited about the game and is more than willing to produce more artwork at very reasonable costs. She of course is also well versed in creating tie-in merchandise based upon artwork and characterization, so possible add-on's and very desirable Kickstarter rewards are high.
So suggestions, anecdotes, personal experiences, and just plain mentoring in helping us achieve these goals are MORE than welcome!
Thanks for the reply Tim, and I'll definitely shoot you a PM! Good luck with your endeavor as well. We need all the help we can get here in the USA when it comes to math and science education, and FUN games focusing on solid STEM principles could really help. Now to convince teachers that games should be an integral part of their curriculum, and parents that their kids can actually learn by playing games AND have fun at the same time!