I'm in a situation where i've designed a game and i have customers emailing me through my website asking how and when they can buy the game.
But i don't have the money, and i don't want to take the risk of financing full scale production.
Therefor i think home production is my only option (apart from charging people to print off their copy from your website, but i'll ask about this in another post)
I predict i'd sell at least 10 a week, and probobly a lot more in the run up to Christmas, but i don't have the time or the expertise in this area, that's why i'm looking for someone who could carry out this role for me.
I'd be willing to pay either a flat fee per game or a percentage of every game sold.
Anyone interested in this? Or got any advice for me?
By the way i'm based in the UK, so i don't think it would be cost effective to import the games.
Are there people who would handmake games for me?
nope.
dude if you thinkyoud sell 10 a week maybe you should go for large production? also Kudos on scoring with your game, link us? :D
You can send then the PDF files containing the rules and the printout of the game and let them print it and build it themselves. But maybe you are already doing this since they know your game, so it does not solve the problem.
Or if the game is that good, you can make a prototype and submit it to a company that proceduce games from free lancers. But you will have to convince them that your game is good and it's worth being produced.
I think handmaking is only possible for selling in a remote local area where the people pay more for the time it took to craft the game, rather for the intellectual content. Or a place where everybody sell handcrafted material.
Just an idea:
If the game can be made from wooden pieces only, you could try to contact a school for woodworking and have the students make the game as an exercise.
Then again, you making profit from their work could pose a problem, and I'm not sure if a school should have a part of your profit wheter they pay their students or not...
Just an idea, maybe not a school but some or other woodworking course/project/outside-school-lessons exist that would like this kind of thing...
(It needn't be woodworking eather, paople learning to work printing presses could work too... I don't know what components you need...)
Cheese!
[EDIT]
Take into account that if the game is made as a student's exercise, there might be a few 'flawed games in you production run...
This might or might not make them more unique (depending on how badly flawed they are...)
[/EDIT]
And cheese again!
If you need someone for illustrations, look around here. If you can't find anybody better than me (which I sincerely doubt) I'll do the illustrations, we'll negotiate about the costs. My style is light and cartoony (but not too much, if I may say so). If you want some examples, just PM me you e-mail adress.
Good luck,
Michiel
Contact me with your email address (craig@wotevagames.com)
There is no quick answer to this question, it really depends on the margins of profit you expect after production costs.
I have links to printing companies, but small runs are often more costly.
There are of course routes to cutting costs on intro games.
Although outside products are not 'yet' a part of our remit, we might be open to discussion on this.
Craig.
There's no way you'd be able to sell them for christmas this way, but you can take pre-orders up front, then when you sell enough copies to pay a reasonable chunk of the production run, you have the games made.
For example if your run is 500 copies and you sell for double the production cost, you can pre-sell 125 copies, and that will pay for half the production run.
Do you have more details on the game you are trying to make? Components? Board size? Packaging you are expecting?
That's helpful Stainer. Don't know what your problem is.