WHATS UP, it's almost 9pm and I wanna do another rant about the cost of making board gamessssss

So let's start at the beginning. Let's say our friend Heidi is designing a game. She's working on it in the evenings, after work, and playtesting it on weekends at local shops.

She wakes up, goes to work, tweaks card balances at lunch, works some more, goes home and tweaks some more, prints and cuts out new cards, sleeves them, plays games by herself, repeats, goes to bed late.

She's learned how to streamline card creation with InDesign, through @DanielSolis' fantastic Patreon videos, which she pays for access. She's bought a printer, cardstock, a paper cutter...

She's worked on her little, 52 card game for over a year now. And she's taken it to probably 17 play test nights at her FLGS? Playing it, and other people's games, to be fair to those that play her game.

She has put probably 500 hours into this game over the last year, and who knows how much money. And that math is based on actual numbers from designers I know with similar sized games.

She takes it to an Unpub or a Protospiel and people really like it. Like, REALLY like it. So much so that publisher signs it! For simplicity, we'll say the contact is for $2000 now, and 1% of sales after 3000 copies have sold.

But now, Heidi's work is basically done. The publisher has paid her the initial 2k and now they have the game, to theme and tweak just a lil'.

Their developer, who makes minimum wage, plays the game with a variety of people. Takes it to game nights and shows and puts it through its paces. Let's say they play 20 times, an hour a play, at minimum wage.

They decide it's ready for art. So the publisher hires an artist to make, let's say... 26 unique pieces of art. It costs the publisher $120 a piece of art. Oh, plus a $400 cover.

While the art is being made, the developer is still playing the game. Showing it off, asking for thoughts, trying to figure out its price points.

The developer also writes the first draft of the official rulebook. Maybe the publisher outsources the editing and final rulebook writing, but the developer takes the first swing.

Then, it's ready to print! The publisher has a manufacturer they've worked with and like (because this rant is long enough I dun wanna explain manufacturer shopping). They call up the manufacturer and book a printing slot.

Manufacturers book slots like fancy hair salons - No Walk-ins Allowed. You need to book your slot to have your game printed weeks, if not months, out. Because this is just a card game, there's no fancy dies or molds needed (thank jeebs).

Publisher books the slot for a 52 card game with box, and orders 3000 copies, the minimum order size for some distribution companies. It will cost $1 a game, to physically make.

So, to be insanely basic, this print run will cost $3000 to make. BUT! The printer is in Asia. It'll cost $3500 to get the games to the distributor's warehouse in the US. So now each game costs $2.50 to actually make and get to the warehouse.

This cost doesn't already include the check to Heidi ($2000), the art ($3520), or the developer's work ($1000), OR a rulebook editor/graphic designer ($300). Those costs bring each copy to ~$4.44 a copy.

The MSRP of this hour long game for 2-4 players, with 52 cards? Let's make it $20, cause why not.

So the games arrive at the distribution warehouse which buys the games from the publisher at 35% of MSRP, so $7. This means the publisher has made, off this first print run, $2.56 a copy. So $7,680. Honestly, most of that is already spent.

The publisher has to pay the rest of their staff, in addition to convention fees advertising for the new game, review copies, etc.

But the game. It's now at the distribution warehouse, where game stores can purchase it from the distributor at 50% of MSRP. So Heidi's FLGS buys 10 copies, at $10 a pop, to show support for their local designer. They get free shipping for spending $100.

The distributor makes $3 a copy off the sale, so $30, which they basically lose immediately paying their warehouse staff, the shipping fees, etc.

The game store will make $10 a copy when it sells, which will go to cover their costs (employees, taxes, rent, power, POS systems, accountants, etc.). That's IF they don't offer a discount below MSRP, which some stores do to compete with online resellers.

Online resellers will buy the games from the same distributor, but because their facilities are often just big warehouses, they don't need to pay the high rent of a shop front. So they sell the game for $15, severally undervaluing the game. Also hurting local game stores.

THEN there's Amazon resellers, who are even worse. They buy the game from the distributor and then immediately ship it to Amazon's fulfillment center. They don't even HAVE a space to pay rent on, so they list the game for $12.99, earning them $2 after Amazon fees/taxes.

Now the online game retailer is forced to push their prices lower to compete, and the local game store with the helpful employees and safe gaming spaces have to deal with customers who learn about Heidi's game from them, and then buy on Amazon while standing in the store.

Amazon resellers make bank by ordering lots of different titles and selling them through Amazon's fulfillment centers. Those $2 a game (sometimes it's more like $.50 a game) adds up when all you're doing is freight forwarding for 4000 games.

And yes, they really do this. We had an issue once where a retailer tried to order $7000 in product. Instead of being excited, we were cautious. Sure enough, his listed retail space was a mailbox at a UPS store. And his store was just a pretty website that linked to Amazon.

We could have made $7k that day. No skin off our noses, right? 7k is 7k, no matter who we sell to. BUT what that person does with those games can hurt the entire ecosystem of the industry. It allows people to undervalue our products, stores, designers, publishers, and industry.