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Using print and play production to publish my game

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Sun, 07/25/2010 - 19:33
larienna
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I have found on board game geek a few people that are willing to assemble free print and play board games for you and sell them.

I was thinking if it was actually good to contact them to know if they would be willing to assemble commercial print and play games that I have made.

The concept would be simple, I would need to make a contract with the guy and ask him to give me my royalties for each of my game he sells. He will have a copy of my files and will be able to create as many copy as there is demand.

Since I know that many people does not want to assemble games, I might get a few extra sales this way.

Do you think it could be a good idea?

About the contract or authorisation, do you have an idea of clause that should be important to specify. Should I really contract a lawyer for something simple like that. The basic idea would be

- for each copy sold, he must give me royalties of value X.
- he cannot distribute the PDF files
- he must give a log of his sales (date and person sold to)

any other ideas?

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Sun, 07/25/2010 - 21:31
#1
bluepantherllc
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Two thoughts

1) I would be wary of giving out IP to anyone who says they will assemble it for you - you are also trusting them to tell you how many copies they sold. Gamers are good people, but there are a few bad ones in every bunch. It's hard to get a good contract and even harder to enforce it in this instance.

2) There are places that I've used in other industries to do the labor of assembly - usually they are non-profit and have the name "Lighthouse" in their title - these are collections of folks with disabilities (in my experience they were mostly blind and some had motor disabilities as well) that have organized together to offer labor services (usually assembly) at discount prices. It's win/win - folks who find it hard to get work will get some work, and folks who need assembly services can get them done cheaper, often by local folks.

SJ

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Mon, 07/26/2010 - 00:46
#2
Jeremiah_Lee
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Andrew of PnP Productions

If you're talking about Andrew Tullsen, of Print and Play Productions, I can vouch for him. I don't know him personally, but I've had plenty of business dealings with him, and I would trust him to accurately report the number sold.

He already gives 5% (I think that's the number) of the money he brings in for free PnP games to the designer of the game. I'm sure you could work out something.

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Mon, 07/26/2010 - 12:50
#3
larienna
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Quote:If you're talking about

Quote:
If you're talking about Andrew Tullsen, of Print and Play Productions, I can vouch for him.

I think that is the guy I saw. So you say he can be trusted?

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Mon, 07/26/2010 - 17:22
#4
Howitzer_120mm
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P+P Productions

Thanks Jeremiah. :)

I currently don't have any official contracts with any of the designers on my PnP list. I give them 10% for each game sold, and keep it recorded in an excel spreadsheet.

If you wanted something more official, then I suppose I could do that, but currently the top games have sold about 15 copies each, ~$50 for the designers, and this over a course of a year or so. This is why I don't feel the need to get all official about a few dollars.

Everyone I've dealt with so far has been very pleased. I could probably grab 20 people over on the 'geek to vouch for me if you felt the need for that.

-Andrew
P&P Productions

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Mon, 07/26/2010 - 19:38
#5
Clever Mojo Games
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Add Me To The List

I'll add my vote for Andrew as a super guy and an excellent artisan from everything I've seen so far.

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Tue, 07/27/2010 - 05:49
#6
larienna
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Quote:I currently don't have

Quote:
I currently don't have any official contracts with any of the designers on my PnP list. I give them 10% for each game sold, and keep it recorded in an excel spreadsheet.

In my case, it will be a fixed amount. I am currently selling my game 10$ and get between 6.5$ and 8$ royalties per copy sold. So I would probably ask for 8$, and you add to that your production cost.

Quote:
If you wanted something more official, then I suppose I could do that, but currently the top games have sold about 15 copies each, ~$50 for the designers, and this over a course of a year or so. This is why I don't feel the need to get all official about a few dollars.

15 copies is good. Up to now, I only sold 2 in 6 weeks. Still, I think made a marketing error, so I might have sold more. As for the contract, I don't want anything heavy, I just want some sort of protection in case some troubles occurs. You never know what can happen.

Also, I do not have any production requirements, you produce as many copies as you want to produce. If for example, it is very popular, and you can only manage to make 1 game a week, then make 1 game a week.

As for my game, It might be possible to make 2 different quality of production. One that maximize generic components, and one that print them all.

I imagine that you have access to various machines like a die cutter. I made the print outs so that they are easy for a person to cut, but it might be easier for you if I reorganize my components on the sheets. So I imagine you could ask for special print outs. There is some screen shots of the sheet on Board game Geek of the current print out delivered to the user.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/737516/fallen-kingdoms
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/737512/fallen-kingdoms
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/737514/fallen-kingdoms
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/737518/fallen-kingdoms

In order to minimize assembly time, I made a instruction page on my website that shows the cheapest way to assemble my game. It might give you ideas for generic components substitution.

http://ariel.bdeb.qc.ca/~ericp/cgi-bin/boardgame/games/fallen_kingdoms/i...

Tell me what you think. I could write down a small contract and we could discuss the clauses. I'll use the same system has PNP web site. You print, sign, scan and send by email the contract.

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Tue, 07/27/2010 - 16:29
#7
Howitzer_120mm
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What you said sounds good.

What you said sounds good. Why don't we discuss this over email?
Print Play Games at gmail dot com.

I offer several levels of quality. Once I get the files, I can determine the prices for each level.

-Andrew
Print & Play Productions

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Tue, 07/27/2010 - 22:55
#8
Pastor_Mora
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Marketing error?

Hi Eric

You said "I think made a marketing error, so I might have sold more." This draw my attention as your experience could be helpfull someone here, me included.

Care to elaborate? or is it too complex and particular? Thanks,

KT!

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Wed, 07/28/2010 - 09:02
#9
larienna
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About the marketting error

About the marketting error

I am not entirely sure but I have good doubts. The idea is simple, if you look at my game profile, I currently have not comments or rating. This is because nobody owns the game.

When somebody want to buy a game, his first reflex will be too look at comments. But now, there is no way he can get feedback besides the downloadable demo.

Now there are 2 ways to get comments and feedback: A) playtest my game in my area and ask for people to leave feedback, B) have a release sale to reduce the risk of the people who first buy the game.

Since the first people who buy the game will buy my game blindly, I need to reduce the risk that they find my game bad. So having a release sale, is a solution. They will buy blindly but at a lower price. This is why my game was sold 20% off during release.

The error I made, on my point of view, is that the sale was not low enough. I should have given 50% off. The first reason is that there are many people who said that they will never pay more than 5$ for a print and play game. The second reason is that there are too much crappy games out there, so the risk for the player are very high. He has no assurance that my game is not as crappy as the others. The third reason is that since it is my first game, I don't have a reputation which could convince people that my game is good.

So if I would have sold my game below the 5$ margin for a limited time, I would have got more sales for the initial release, more feedback, and it would increase my chance to sell more games afterward at the price of 10$.

So I knew I had to make a sale, but I did not know what was the best discount. So I will probably eventually make another discount price to catch up what I lost.

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Thu, 07/29/2010 - 00:10
#10
Pastor_Mora
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Thanks for sharing

I was thinking about posting something about these release ventures, so this is good stuff for me. Thanks for sharing you experiece.

Hope your idea works out. Keep thinking!

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