Pirate Game complete - now what?

Is that hilarious, or what? Perrrfect.

~Josh

Hello and welcome to the BGDF!

First of all, congratulations on making a game you and your friends enjoy playing. That in itself is already a great accomplishment!

If you are thinking about publishing the game you have to let go the idea that the game is "completed", because it isn't. In fact, you have just started. Without ever having seen the game I can already point to two things that will reduce the chances of the game ever being produced:
1) There's too many components
2) The projected playing time of 6 hours is too long

These are things you can start working on right away. Other than that: test, test, test. Not just with your friends, but also with other groups of people. Don't be afraid to ditch that mechanic you loved so dearly if it turns out people don't like it, or if it simply doesn't work. Designing a game is mostly a matter of adding things to a game, but developing a game (which is the stage you are in now) is mostly a matter of removing things.

If you have succesfully tested the game several times with different people, including a blind test where people had to play the game based on just the rulebook, then you might consider contacting a publisher.

Good luck!

There is a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie coming out in 2006. It's called Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Go to IMDB.com and check it out. This is good news for you as not only does it mean a potential resurgence of Pirate Mania, but it also gives you enough time to whittle down the game from 6 hours and reduce the number of cards. As another option, you could consider a theme change. Space Pirates, Nomad clans in the desert, or Flying Zeppelins in a Steampunk type setting could all be options (as well as pretty much anything else).

You might want to employ the help of one of the members here to tackle this length problem. It wouldn't be that difficult at all to introduce a mechanic to limit the game time, AND it would probably make it a more intense gaming experience at the same time.

-Darke

Yes, I have a rough estimate. Producing your game could cost anywhere between $1 and $100 per copy. It really depends on so many things, that it's hard to come up with a better estimate. The most important questions are:

How many different pieces of artwork do you want? The quality of the artwork will matter as well. Color, or B&W?

Do you need to produce custom made plastic ships (injection mould perhaps), or can you buy them off the shelf? How many different types?

The print run you are aiming for. Producing 5000 copies of a game will result in lower costs per game than producing 500 copies.

Remember that typically a commercial game will retail for up to 10 times its production cost. If you want to set the price point at around $50, you need to be able to produce a single copy for around $5.

Don't forget to factor costs such as shipping, warehousing, phonebills, etc, into the price.

Well, if you are thinking about publishing the game then it's not only important what you love, but also what potential customers would love. There's still a market for long and involved games, but that market is pretty small. Just take a look at GMT's P500 list. For some games it takes a very long while to get to the minimum requirement of 500 pre-orders. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try and get the game published, but it does give you an idea of how may copies could potentially sell.

http://www.gmtgames.com/p500/gmtp50.asp

This works too: http://www.google.com/search?q=gmt%20p500&sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Lol, that's what I thought about doing too, hpox. I guess I'm just not as big an asshole as you ;)

450 (as of 7/14) copies have been preordered. The preorders won't turn into actual orders (i.e., credit cards won't be charged) until there is a sufficient number to justify the print run. Still, for all practical purposes, you could say that 450 copies have been ordered.

It has taken two years to reach that 450 mark, which is a pretty long time in terms of P500 titles. There are several reasons for this: the game is well out of GMT's core audience, the initial game cost was considerably higher (it took until last September for GMT to get the game re-bid in a range competitive for its target market), and a glut of pirate games has reached the market since "Winds" made it's debut.

You asked about print run sizes. Typical "small company" print runs in the Euro games market tend to be on the order of 3000-5000 copies. I've seen initial runs for some games down in the 1000 copy range. The problem with low print runs is that some costs don't scale (e.g., artwork, setup fees for printing cards & rules, professional layout, etc.), which would force your cost per unit up.

Of course, high demand will kick off secondary runs -- for example, winning the Spiel des Jahres (hey, we can all dream!) will almost certainly spark 6 figure order volumes out of Germany. However, while printing large numbers of copies will spread out your fixed costs nicely and let you take advantage of economies of scale, selling those copies without prior demand could be a nightmare.