3,500 copies!!!! am I crazy

Question #1: What is your primary goal?

Question #2: Could you find additional ways to bring the costs down and thus make a profit with fewer copies?

I live in Westborough, MA, a town of 15,000. The local Civic Club printed up an -opoly game for the town; they produced 1,000 copies, and over multiple years have sold some 700 or so.

However, they reduced their costs by allowing local businesses to advertise on the board.

Joe (who owns a copy, a nice thank you for giving a speach on game design to the Civic Club)

thank you all,

Aaron l

Hmmm. If it' strictly related to a city, you may want to try to get a museum or some other local instution to help finance the venture. Also, you could sell spaces on the board to local businesses (I.E. instead of Park Place you could have Joe's used autos, etc.). Be creative with the financial aspect! Talk to the mayor, talk to the chamber of commerce. With a game as specialized as a city version of monopoly, you may actually find it *easier* to sell all those copies. Good luck with your game!

-Darke

If you are trying to make any money on the deal, it might be hard. You have two factors against you, the real monopoly game and demand for a your city specific version.

Do you have any information that gives you enough idea as to the desire for your city specific version?

Even for 3500 copies, would you be able to set a price that would make the game affordable for the public? And could that price compete with a standard price for a monopoly game?

I guess my big concern would be the number of copies and the demand. If you have 3500 copies and your in LA, you might have enough population to justify that run. But if your in a city with less than 100k of people, you might not have a big enough target population to sell that many copies.

Keep in mind 100k does not mean that all of the people will play games, and of the people that do play games, they most likely wont all buy a copy.

I might be missing something, but I don't see why the game being paid for means setting the price won't be a problem? Is it because you don't mind a price that means you're taking a loss?

Can you get each of the sponsors to have a display of them to sell to their customers? That will help you sell more copies and get a lot of copies out of your basement and into the sponsors space.

Have you said what city this is for?

The regional -opoly games I've seen are usually around $40 while the basic game is around $10 (there's a great source of bits). Would it make your production more practical to just produce and sell the board, title deed, and community chest/chance cards. It might well bring your retail price down more than the cost of a complete monopoly game.

Jason

Ummmmm please dont take offense, but if you want people to be able to honestly give you help, knowing facts always helps. Knowing what city you are targetting would help someone (such as myself) check into the potential market audience and then I would be able to better anwser your initial post topic of

3,500 copies!!!! am I crazy

It seems that you are a little concerned with someone stealing your idea, well I can tell you not many people on this board will go through the trouble of trying to sell any type of "opoly" game. So I hope that is not a reason you are being vague.

Also you stated in one post that you want to make profit but you also say the price you set does not matter, you say if it cost you $35 you can sell it for $40, can you? Knowing you can sell it for $40 is a big piece of the puzzle. Because if the production cost is only $15, and you could sell it for $40, you only need to sell half of your copies to "break even". It also allows you more flexiblity at setting a price your consumers will like....

I guess the only thing I can add is that if the cost of production is not a problem and you honestly feel you can set the price at $5 or $10 over your production cost and the game would sell, you have already answered your own question, make 3500 copies....

The worst case from all the posts that I can see, is that if your target audience is not large enough to consume 3500 copies you would have the remaining copies left to sell. At that point you could drop the price down to the cost of production in hopes to get more sold at cost. If that does not work you would consider selling them at that point for a charity in your community and donate the money. And the worst worst case you can give away the rest to just to help promote the companies that paid for advertising (and the production) in the first place.