Hellooo
About twelve years ago I made some board games had them play tested a few times and put them in the attic. Last year I got one of them out revamped it played it with only four different groupss it was real difficult getting people to commit to play.
I made some prototypes costing about $120 each and sent a copy to a friend of mine who works for a TV station in the USA, he thought the game was great and got me some interviews on TV shows towards the end of the year.
To cut a long story short we paid top money for the games to be manufactured, when we placed an order with a USA factory north east of Chicago for 5,000 games, because we didn’t want to wait 6 weeks extra for the games to come from Asia.
The manufactured games were of very good quality and I spent November and December going on loads of TV shows all over the States, spending a fortune on travel and hotels etc and didn’t sell hardly any games.
What I did do right was to get the TV shows cut up, and to make a 3 minute video of how the game plays.
www.Mission316.com Video Intro Button
I emailed the video clip to games companies, one of them responded saying it was a GR8 game they loved it, BUT it didn’t fit in with their product line, however they recommended that I try another company and gave me the email address of the President.
The President immediately responded asking me if I wished to licence the game; I responded by asking “How does that work” That is really how much I knew about games. By this time we were paying a large rent on 5,000 odd games in a shed nr Chicago.
To cut a long story short over a six month period, we negotiated an exclusive contract with them for the USA & Canada. This company are very well known and long established in the games community, with an excellent track record. They are now distributing the games we originally made, we negotiated a royalty in double figures and they also want to licence other games that I made ten or twelve years ago.
We are now negotiating with a distributor in the UK and are planning to get 5,000 games manufactured in Singapore.
The moral of the story for me is “All’s well that ends well” As a published games inventor I am now in a position to give advice. My advice to anyone and everyone is; “Don’t do what I did, I was very stupid and very fortunate, to come out of it so well”
Thank you,
John.
