How much does it cost to develop a game?

You might rather produce the games in China or maybe in some of your "target" countries. That would probably save you a lot in production costs.

The cheapest option for the game designer, and probably one of the best, would be to set some sort of contest were interested designers can enter their game ideas. You would have the chance to specify as much as you find requiered on the educative/training aspects the games should cover, as well as any other requirements that might be of importance production wise (required components have a huge wheight in the production costs). Given that the games will be used in several different countries, you might also have some contest rules regarding the language requirements: maybe a different rulebook per language, but no text or multilingual text on the board/cards, etc., to save on production.

You can award the winning design with some cash price, or simply some copies (100, 500, 1000) copies of the game for him to sell by his own, or use for self promotion, or give away as Christmas presents. There are lots of unpublished game designers that will be glad to accept a couple hundred copies of their game in exchange for the design, and primting those extra copies would be relatively cheap for your agency.

Seo

I concur with the points already made about the issues that need to be considered with your project.

Without knowing the specifics of the project it is difficult offer too much 'concrete' guidance.

Producing a card game would probably be the most economical to manufacture and to ship globally. The language issue is certainly an important consideration, alternate language rulebooks or one multi-language rulebook.

A lot depends on the complexity and depth of learning/experience that you are looking for.

It's the old adage - start with the end in mind.

What exactly do you want the game to do/teach/promote?

What knowledge/understanding do you want the players to come away with after playing the game?

Carl

Hey..

I guess I will add my thoughts. An outline/summary is probably better than a manual. A long manual, esp. if it is technical in nature, may scare off some decent ideas. Highlight in your summary and outline what topics are most important to you.
If you are posting a contest that accepts unpublished and non-fulltime designers, make sure you detail what sort of time commitment/deadlines you will request of the winner. You would hate to get the perfect design from someone that just doesn't have the time to devote to your project.

As for getting too many results, don't worry about that too much; design your contest around it. If I remember the Hippodice rules correctly, the first round requires a single page description of the game. Basically have the first stage be somethign that gives you the idea of the game but is easy and wuick to read through; then if you get a lot the shortlisting should be easier. The short list then is a group of entrants that have to send in a prototype, or more detailed proposal.
Take a look at the GameDesign Showdown section of this forum. You can get an idea of the bredth of ideas from the prompts and also see the format that a lot of ideas take.

Prototypes aren't hard to make, depending on the finish you are looking for. I think a lot of us make prototypes for only a handful of dollars. I have a pile of various bits that I reuse and then handdraw cards.

I'm not sure how educational it actually is, but check out Terra. http://boardgamegeek.com/game/8671 According to BGG it is a joint project of Unesco and Days of Wonder, although it looks more like a project to raise money rather than teach.

As a side note, make sure you have the designer think both of culture and language. This means colors and symbols that may mean different things around the world, and the role of women in society. Most of these issues will probably be in the art selection rather than the design stage.

Andy

Two words "Card Game"

Not only will it be the cheapest to produce materials wise it is also economical to ship. Being that each copy of the game is not intended to be played as much as game for home entertainment is you can get by with a cheaper cardstock.

An open contest might get you 50+ entries. Weather you have an open competition or restrict it you should be very specific to your needs so that you are not getting proposals that are out of bounds. Game designers have wild imaginations. There are no CV’s here. What you might do is start by having people submit a CV to you and then pick from the top 10. That should not take you long to do.

What kind of time frame do you have to work within?

Since this is teaching tool spending your time learning a bunch of rules so you can lean the subject matter would be a step backwards. The game should be simple, intuitive and possibly based on pre-existing classic games that people are already familiar with. Under this premise 5 months is a fair amount of time to design the mechanics, test them and write a good draft of the rules. The production end of the equation is a little out of my area of experience so I am reluctant to guess if 3 month is enough time to have it produced even if you handle issues like artwork while the game design is being finalized.

I have sent you a PM

c