Hello All,
Has anyone here had any experience producing a game or parts of it in China? Could you tell us how was it and who did you work with?
Thank you,
Jose
Hello All,
Has anyone here had any experience producing a game or parts of it in China? Could you tell us how was it and who did you work with?
Thank you,
Jose
I would love to read about this as well.
Mostly about costs to production run ratios.
Carl
Well, I have a board game in production in China at the moment. I haven't received the final product yet, but the prototype they sent is very good. The printing is excellent all around, the colors are bright, the box is sturdy, the board is well-mounted. The cards are a bit thin, but that's because I went with 12-pt stock rather than true playing-card stock.
I went through MJS Creations (www.mjscreations.com), so I haven't had direct contact with the Chinese company. So far my experience with them has been positive -- they've been quite forthcoming and responsive, and everything has gone smoothly so far.
For costs/production runs, I'd recommend you contact MJS -- they can give you an estimate or a quote. They were significantly less than the quote I got from Delano (a domestic manufacturer), which was the only other manufacturer I found willing to do a small print run (< 5000 copies).
But how much did YOU spend and what did you get for that money?
Carl
I went through MJS Creations (www.mjscreations.com), so I haven't had direct contact with the Chinese company. So far my experience with them has been positive -- they've been quite forthcoming and responsive, and everything has gone smoothly so far.
If you’re willing to share, I would love to hear about your game. Also, how do you plan to distribute your game?
If you’re willing to share, I would love to hear about your game. Also, how do you plan to distribute your game?
I've started putting up a web site about it at http://www.venusneedsmen.com/ -- I've posted the rules as a PDF, and a few other pages. I'm working on a playable online demo, but that still has a ways to go. Some of the BGDFers have playtested the prototype, and I appreciate their feedback.
At the moment I'm planning on doing direct sales via the website and at conventions (I'll be exhibiting at Origins and GenCon this summer). Since I'm only doing a small print run (1500 copies), my unit costs are relatively high, so if I want to keep the MSRP competitive with similar games, selling to distributors at 40% of MSRP doesn't leave me much profit. If (Zeus, Odin, and Horus willing) I sell out the print run, I could then reprint it, which would lower my unit costs since the fixed costs would be amortized over a larger run. Plus distributors might be more interested if I've already sold a substantial number.
Excellent job on the art, Emphyrio! It sounds like a fun game with good potential.
A lot of the games shown on the MJS Creations site have some pretty dodgy graphic design, which has been a bit of a turn off for me. It will be good to see what they can do for you in terms of the underlying component quality. Post pics when you've got them and share what info you can when you can.
Best of luck with the initial print run,
Rob
Your game has my attention. Looking forward to seeing it and perhaps picking up a copy.
Carl
Having playtested John's game a few times, I can enthusiastically recommend it. It is fun to play and scales well from 3-6 players. The real strength of the game is the tight balance between the 6 planets. John has done a nice job giving them different abilities that really complement each other, and part of the fun of playing the game with less than the full 6 players is exploring the different ways that a given subset of the planets interact. (The game may be sort of like Dune, in which to really get the full experience, you need to have all 6 present). I plan to buy a copy as soon as it's available.
Oh, and just to keep on topic, no, I don't know anything about China manufacturers.
-Jeff
Sorry, did not work with any chinese company, yet... But we might be going directly there and visit some manufacturers. We will contact people from people we know first then plan the whole trip. When (or if, it's still not totally decided) we do, i'll keep you posted on what we find.
soulbeach
I filled out a quote form with them about a week ago, still haven't heard back.
How long do the quotes take?
Carl
I've posted the rules as a PDF, and a few other pages. I'm working on a playable online demo, but that still has a ways to go. Some of the BGDFers have playtested the prototype, and I appreciate their feedback.
Very nice, I look forward to seeing pictures of the prototype. What program did you use to create your rules?
At the moment I'm planning on doing direct sales via the website and at conventions (I'll be exhibiting at Origins and GenCon this summer).
Good luck with the conventions and website.
JR
How long do the quotes take?
I think it depends how busy they are. I'd say if you haven't heard back in another week, give them a call.
I look forward to seeing pictures of the prototype. What program did you use to create your rules?
I posted some pix at http://www.venusneedsmen.com/about.html (click for larger images).
I used MS Word as I was developing and playtesting the rules, but once I had them in near-final form I put them into Adobe InDesign for better control of the layout. It's expensive, but I found it fairly easy to use and much less frustrating than Word to do anything more complicated than a single column of text.
Looks great Emphyrio!
Tell us when you have it available, i'm a buyer!
soulbeach
If you'll have it available by july, count me in too. I'm visiting USA then, and am planning on buying two or three games. I'll be glad if yours can be one of them. I'll want a signed copy. :-)
Seo
The game looks sweet.
What's your price point on this? I'm interested and would also like my copy to be signed.
Carl
The shots look great and make the game look like a lot of fun. If you don't mind me asking, I'm sure all of us are curious about the per-unit costs on this (knowing that this was a very small run, of course). What do you think you the costs would have been through MJS had you gone for larger runs of 2,500 - 5,000?
Excellent work! Let us know when your online store is up and running as it sounds like you've already got some customers lined up. =o)
The cost per game ratio we got for our first product ranged from 7.42$ to 12.50$. All quotes were for games produced in China through US "brokers" (Rethmeyer, velocity source group, mjs creations etc.) for 5000 units. The costs included: box, cards, tokens, custom pawns, custom dice, die-cutting and tooling costs and packaging.
Rethmeyer was the most expensive.
Velocity ONLY dealt in China and required a 1200$ quotation fee(so we stoped right there with them, no quotation!)
Mjs(if i'm not wrong, i'm not the one responsible for contacting them) was not very professional and gave us a wrong quote, the lowest: 5.96$, but was WAY off and later corrected, saying that they were tired or something like that when they 1st produced the quote.
Emphyrio: i'm glad you got a good experience with MJS, here, it was just weird!
We contacted others as well and this is a good approximation of what we got: 7.50 to 12.50.
We finally decided to wait a year, get the basic set of the game available online 1st, do some pre-sells to familly, friends and whoever was interested to finance parts of the project. We will ask for a quote again around january 2007 and then jump in the water!!!
soul
I'm glad you're interested! I should have it available to sell sometime in June, and I'll be happy to sign copies. The MSRP is $29.95.
It's kind of tricky to figure the unit cost, but here goes.
The unit cost MJS quoted me for 1500 units was $5.98 + 1.50 shipping. For 3000 units it fell to $5.03, and for 5000 it would be $4.10. That includes the box, platform, board, rules, deck of 88 cards, and assembly, but not
the plastic rocket ships, mini poker chips, and ten-sided dice. MJS said they would have to make these custom, which would have involved an additional tooling charge of $3000+. I was able to get these components (bagged) from Rolco for $2.31 per unit, plus another $0.96 to ship them to China, so in fact I might have done better to have them custom-made.
So far we're up to $10.75. By comparison, Delano quoted me a unit cost of $11.58 for 1000 units ($8.63 for 2500, $6.86 for 5000), not including "cost of proof, freight & overrun", and they got the quantities wrong for the playing pieces (4 per unit rather than 30 per unit) even after I asked for a correction. That did include playing card stock but square corners (rounded corners added another 24 cents). Delano does manufacture domestically, however, so you can put "Made in USA" on the box.
Then there are the fixed costs. MJS charged a flat $2265 for plates, films, and dies, and I spent about $2000 for the artwork and graphic design (though I ended up doing a fair amount of the graphic design myself). I won't include the cost of Adobe CS2 or the memory upgrade to run it, since that's general overhead. But amortizing the fixed costs over the 1500 units adds another $2.84, bringing the grand total to $13.59. And that doesn't include any marketing such as convention expenses or ads. So at my target MSRP of $30, if I sell to a distributor at 40% of MSRP, I'll be losing money -- but I can make it up on volume, right? :-)
I could have boosted the MSRP to $35-40, which would yield a small profit on distributor sales. But at that price point, I think people start expecting fancier components -- full color throughout, playing card stock, maybe wooden pieces. Also I get the impression it's tough for a brand-new company with a single product to get picked up by a distributor in the first place. So for now I'll go with direct sales and see how it goes. At least if I lose money I can deduct it on my taxes.
I'm looking at the whole thing as a learning experience, and I've certainly learned a lot! But on the whole I've enjoyed it (so far, anyway), and it is quite a thrill to heft the prototype and admire the manufactured components.
We will ask for a quote again around january 2007 and then jump in the water!!!
You may want to think about the timeframe that you want your game to be available. MJS says once they receive your order, it takes about 3 months -- 1 month for proofs/approvals, 1 month for manufacturing, and 1 month to ship it back from China. I'd expect other manufacturers to be similar. In my case it took longer because I had another supplier (Rolco) involved as well. And you should allow some extra time for the initial quotes, and in case the proofs need corrections -- probably 4-5 months altogether.
So if you get your quotes in January, you should have product to sell in time for the summer conventions, if that's part of your marketing plan. Other potential target dates might include Toy Fair in New York in February or the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas in March -- obviously you'd have to start the process sooner if you wanted to hit those dates, though since those are trade shows, you might not need the final product by then, just a manufactured prototype.
I'm glad you're interested! I should have it available to sell sometime in June, and I'll be happy to sign copies. The MSRP is $29.95.........
WOW! Thanks for sharing so much detail in your post.
Thanks,
JR
Several posts above mention doing so, and Braincog relates his experiences with it over in this thread.
Yes, several posts mention it above. However, none of them mention any name of a company in China who manufacturer games or game components.
Braincog mentioned a company named FourFourFour. How can one contact this company?
Best,
Jose
You may have better luck clicking the "PM" button below one of their posts and sending them a Personal Message with the request, in case they're not checking this thread. That's what I meant to imply, sorry I was vague.
Ok. Thank you all for the information.
Best Regards,
Jose
Hi Neto,
I do remember asking for a quotation from Insight. I don't have the details with me but I will ask my partner, who's responsible for contacts and quotations, and i will give all the details i can get for this company.
Watch this thread, I'll get back to you.
soulbeach
Hi Soulbeach,
That would be great!!!
Thank you.
By the way, have you worked directly with a manufacturer in China?
Thx again,
Jose
No, we haven't worked directly with manufacturers in China. This is something we're looking into. We might go in China if we can establish good contacts there. We have a few leads for contacts but they need to be "worked in". This is one of the next steps we intend to take.
We only asked for quotations from what we call "game agents", trying to get prices for complete games: packaging, printing, tooling, diecutting...We on the other end, would receive the games, store them, sell them :)
This is our 1st game, so, our experience is still limited but growing :)
I'll keep you posted
soulbeach
This is Insight's website
I will get a bit more info later on, i'll keep you posted,. If I remember correctly, they were our No1 choice among the 5-6 quotations we requested from various companies. As service goes, they seemed also very reliable and client oriented.
soul
Do you think it would be wise to contact Insight reps in China which would make costs factory costs so to speak?
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Dear All,
I someone told me that there is a company in US called Insight. Do anyone here confirm the existance of such company?
Would anyone here know a company in China that produce game parts?
Regards,
Jose