Eren posts something

Welcome Horusr!

To answer your question: low-quality board games don't have as large of a market in the US as they might in Turkey. you can buy mass-produced copies of some of the classics (Monopoly, Clue, Battleship, and the like) for about $10-15 at mass-market stores, but that's probably not quite the kind of thing you were thinking of, since they're still relatively good quality (due to mass production).

For the cash-strapped board gamer, there are quite a handful of cheap games available as "print & plays", meaning that you use a household printer and download the game, and use parts from other games to play them. Many projects on kickstarter.com do this, and allow you to play before you purchase a game form them. Others will simply design for print and play, like james Ernest at http://www.cheapass.com/

However, I think that your experience is greatly different from ours, because, well, I have a household printer, meaning that I have the ability to do so without paying someone. Having lived in Chile for two years, I know that such things aren't so common outside the US (which likely explains your $2 costs for board games out there that you cut out yourself).

So, in a sense, they're very similar, but then again, they're a bit different as well. Hope that helped :)

Hey Eren

Coming from a country where many people still don't have no electricity or running water, I think I can understand some of your difficulties. Because of this, my brother (who posts here as Midnight Carnival) has a design philosophy of making games that can be played only with readily available components - like standard playing cards, ordinary 6-sided dice, counters/pawns borrowed from other commonly available games like chess or backgammon, and so on. Of course, this makes it very easy to set up playtests such games - all most people will need are the rules, although nothing stops you from making a prettier version with custom components later, of course. I think it could be an easy approach to try to get into inventing games (and even if you don't make any money out of your first inventions, you can freely release the rules and let anyone who wants to play it, which will not only help other impoverished gamers and maybe get you a little publicity if you're lucky).

Just a thought

Andrew