Game a Month Publishing Idea

A very interesting concept and one that I would definitely be interested in given the fact that I can't afford to self-publish my big ideas. Do you have a time frame in mind? I have a beautiful game that I could get art for if you'd be willing consider it for your system based on the content currently there. Furthermore, I have several smaller games that are much further along in production and require very little art due to their style. If your business model would accept the possibility of two such games being mailed in one month (or a game and an expansion to the game), then I have several other matches for you, as well.

It's a very clever idea and I'd love to partner up :)

This honestly sounds like a great idea for a Kickstarter campaign. Round up the 12 games (I honestly think that fewer games would be better as it would be a lower buy in cost for the subscribers which would allow for more subscribers and a higher production run for the individual games which again would lower costs... and 12 games is a LOT of games) and put together a good Kickstarter page that highlights all the games (id push for about 5).

Find a known publisher that will back the project (no $ out of their pocket as the project wont go through until it is funded), as they have name recognition, branding and the know how to get a good finished product into the hands of the subscribers. Unless you were thinking about doing the publishing part yourself?

Either way, Kickstarter sounds like it would be a great way of moving this along.

1000 games is a standard minimum, and 2500 - 5000 is where you start seeing real breaks in costs.

I think this idea has a lot of promise. If you could partner with a good company ([12] 1000 print run games might pique someone's interest). And use standard mark-up on these simple games - you would need at least 200 subscribers - and you'd end up with 1000 of each game. (Using cost of 20% of retail - which is the lowest you'd ever really want to go). You could then create a basic website to sell what kickstarter didn't sell - and have some kind of sharing with the guy setting this all up and the designers - how ever you'd like to do that. Assuming everything sells - the second run of 1000 of any of these games would be cheaper because you wouldn't incur the tooling charge a second time.

If these are simple games, like basic dice game, and card games - the subscriptions might be able to get down to between 100-150$ which I think might be something people could get behind - like a game of the month club.

Kickstarter would be an awesome idea for this. However - having completed a successful kickstarter project - I'd just suggest that you get the large majority of your ducks in a row before you get going. Most games have a 75 - 115 day lead time from artwork submission to receiving the finished product - and that's assuming you can turn around proofs in a day (which would mean no problems - which [since I haven't gotten that far yet] I think would be unlikely). So you'd want to have the first few games ready to go before the kickstarter kicks-off, already know the quotes for production for the majority of the games, and have your manufacturer lined up.

I would definitely be willing to submit some games to get into this program - even if it wouldn't end up making a profit - because I love the idea.

If we could come up with 6 - 12 types of low component dice/card games - it would be interesting to do something akin to GDS - where people submit games, and then a group votes on which of those games to progress to the next level - and then do a lot of collaborative iteration on the games to get some really awesome products. That way people who love abstract strategy could make some of those games, those who like party games could do those, those who like theme heavy economy games could do those - etc.

This would be a huge undertaking - but I'm incredibly excited about the concept and would love to help make this happen.

If you plan ahead for the first few games in this series, you can lower your costs.

Example: choose a box size that will fit the first 3 or 4 games you will publish. Buying 3000-4000 boxes may seem like alot, but it will get your unit cost down considerably And if you can plan a whole year's worth of games to use the same box, then you can order 2500 or 3000 at a time when you need them and when they run out (in 2 months or 6 months - depending on how successful the titles are) you can always get more. You can either get the boxes blank and then color wrap them yourself, or you can ask the printer to split the graphics for the order. Either way, cheaper than 1000 boxes at a time.

Same thing for the other components - use standard sheet sizes for the rulebooks - you can get good quality paper and you won't pay setup charges for non-standard sizes. Get a standard box insert, use the same board size, etc.

One last thought - you need some upfront money to make this work. Kickstarter has worked for a few recent game companies - and it seems like this idea is tailor made for that funding mechanism. For a certain amount invested, they would get the full year subscription, for lower amounts maybe a quarterly or 6 month subscription.

Last thought, have your first few titles ready to go when you start your Kickstarter run. You will have enough to do getting them published once you get to that point - no time for playtesting at that point.

A game of month is roughly the rate of publication for a medium size game publisher in this industry. I believe that Z-Man, for example, currently publishes at a slightly higher rate than once per month, when averaged out. So... there are a couple of questions you have to ask yourself:

1. Do you want to primarily design games or publish games?
2. Does any publisher currently do it? If not, why not?

1. Publishing games is a business. You are a businessman and ultimately the bottom line is what matter. You will be working full time and you will be on the flip side of the relationship: squeezing marginal profit wherever you can and being in the unenviable position of having to turn away a lot of designers/designs. You need to really like the people and practices in the industry and start off with a good deal of capital. And, you most likely won't succeed.

2. Given all the benefits to monthly subscriptions and known revenue streams, why is it not employed (more commonly)? Publishers may know something you don't about people's spending habits and the feasibility of this kind of endeavor. Are games impulse purchases or do people rationally plan out their gaming over a year? $200-$300 is not a lot of money to spend on games over a year, but it is a lot of money to spend at one time. It is one thing to spend $25 for a year long subscription or $25 bucks for a game at store or $100 for a batch of games online and another to commit yourself to a number of unknown, unreviewed, games for hundreds of dollars.

This idea is really cool though. Just ask yourself why you want to do it and why it isn't currently being done so that you know what you're getting into.

If you could figure out a supply chain that would allow you to bring the subscription cost under $100, I think you'd find enough people willing to take a chance to make it work. But, it is really hard to achieve that cost effectiveness unless you're Hasbro. So, that's why most hobby game publishers focus on big box large margin games with expandability. Unless you can go super mass market, you need to go super niche and provide high value added products, target your marketing to your niche and rely upon a tremendous amount of volunteerism.

Well, supposing you need 180 suscribers to get out even when publishing 12 games. You'll just need 1/12 of that to publish the 1st. That's just 15 people that need to join the ride every month to keep you above surface level. So if your figures are right (I have my doubts, see below) and you have the time to pull this off, it could work.

On the long run, if you have starting funds, as said before by stocking large quantities of generic components (boxes, cardboard, etc) you could also make a difference. I would include proffesional services here also, like a graphic designer, illustrator, lawyer, etc. Granted all your games will look alike, but if they turn out cool, nobody should mind.

As a side note, I think you should brand your subscriptions (collections) by game genre/type, such as: wargames 4-2 (meaning for two players), abstracts 4-2, SOs (special other) 4-2, etc. Because, again, people may be uneasy about what they'll be getting, so this could be a way to narrow it down for them.

I don't imagine people putting up-front more than $15 per game. Not the first year at least. So, with 15 people joining every month, you get $15 x 12 months = $180 x 15 people = $2700. That's the money you'll have to work with. Good luck with that.

On the contrary, if you go for 600 suscribers, that's 50 a month, and $9000 for every game. You will be still not making any money as a publisher, just to cover for your personal and some extra expenses, but sounds more feasible. The bad new is that at this rate, your financial pyramid could end up needing some $50k in "bridge" loans (don't know how you call them) in case things don't go your way.

Not trying to be an ass here. But don't do this unless you have 3 months of suscribers on board. Kickstarter, as stated before, sounds like an efficient way to get there before getting things rolling. You'll be aiming at 150 starting people for $27k for 12 600-games print-runs.

Keep thinking!