Moral Dilemma!!

I guess we need to know what it is about printing in China that bothers your sense of ethics.

Do you feel that Chinese workers are exploited? Or do you feel a moral obligation to keep investment Stateside? Or something else?

I hate to sound like arrogant **** but seriously, don't let this moral dilemma hold you back. There are only two things that I could see plaguing your mind, and they are as follows:

1. Chinese/Korean/Indian/Random 3rd World Country Workers, are exploited
By whose standards? Here in the West, we have things like minimum wage (more on that later) and all sorts of amenities that we don't need. As soon as WE (yes, I'm American too) stop thinking that every other country out there needs CocaCola, Levis, Equality and Democracy, we'll stop being so HATED world wide. The people working in these places may not be making much money, but they're grateful for the job. It lets them put food on the table, maybe not 3 square meals with 20% waste and a massive upcharge for "certified grade-a bull****" but they can at least make a living. The Chinese workers in those factories might be dealing with awful conditions, etc etc etc, but they do it because it's a JOB, and if they weren't printing your game, they'd be working in some coal/steel plant under the same or worse conditions, or they'd be starving. Next time you hear some bleeding heart complaining that some worker only makes 25cents a day, go check out the exchange rate between our currency and theirs, and compare the costs of living in the two countries.

2. Keep the work in the good ol' US of A
Remember how I said that most other countries don't have a minimum wage? You make as much as you're worth? Yeah, Americans don't believe in that. Nope, we think that highschool drop-outs, junkies, and pretty much anyone who can take one day in their entire failure of an existence and stumble their way through an interview should be entitled to certain basic necessities. Umm.... why? Not everyone who's making minimum wage is actually like that, I know, but those that are like that aren't worth the air that they're breathing, much less minimum wage. There are 6 billion people on this planet, nobody is entitled to jack s***t - eventually, the planet won't be able to support us, and someone is going to starve. We've been dodging the "natural selection" bullet for a long time, but it's steadily catching up.
Companies don't have factories in the US because we have unions and workers rights, and MINIMUM WAGE, which everyone is always trying to increase. Think about it, who DOESN'T want to make more money for the same amount of unskilled labor? So companies retaliate, and send their jobs overseas to people who understand that unskilled labor isn't worth much at all. The only people who then complain about this are the out-of-work Americans, the government who now isn't getting Income Tax off those workers and has to deal with skyrocketing unemployment, and bleeding hearts who have enough money to afford buying things that are built in America by Americans.

Build your game wherever it needs to be built, and don't feel bad. This whole "1 vs 99%" thing is crap. ALL Americans are the 1%, and we need to stop imposing our notions of "a good life" on other societies. I would respect you more if you had the game produced for as little as possible, and then set it up so that you only made a profit equal to what your work is realistically worth than if you built it here in an "ethical" workplace and then cranked the price so that you could make a living off of your profits from game design.

Hi Daniel,

What's more American than shopping for the lowest price and making a profit?

I honestly see this as Win-Win-Win; The US/China bond will strengthen a tiny tiny bit, students will have a new way to make learning fun and you might start making a buck or two.

2000-3000 copy runs are still relatively small. I would suggest doing what you can to make it happen now and when that run size is 20,000-30,000, you may have the leverage to manufacture in the US and still make a profit.

...and when people say "I can't believe you printed in China!" you can say "No one in the US has stepped up to fill the void of low cost / low run game manufacturing and a happy, stable Chinese economy is a happy, stable US enconomy"