How Do You Get a Board Game Published? 123
cyclomedia asks: "I've been dedicating a little of my time to devising a strategy board game, pitched somewhere between Checkers and Chess but probably not as deceptively complex as Go. Without giving too much away I can tell you that there's a nerd factor within the game itself, possibly leaning the possibility of marketing towards the Games Workshop end of the spectrum, but without the 80-sided dice and Orcs. The next step in my plan is to see if I can actually create a prototype made of coins, stickers and cardboard, and then to attempt to teach the rules to my wife (she's a Trek fan, hence the marriage). If I get past that stage, presumably I can't just show up at Hasbro with my jerry rigged setup and expect an enthusiastic response. So, what do I do?"
Re:Other way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Come back when you have something (Score:5, Insightful)
2) You haven't taught it to anyone else, meaning
3) You haven't even played the "game"
4) You're already comparing it to chess
How about seeing if it's any good before you start thinking about selling it?
5) You don't want to give any details, because
6) You're worried about people stealing your idea
7) Which you haven't even shown to anyone else, which means
8) You haven't even done any basic steps towards finding out if it's worth stealing
How about embracing open development? Or at least a little less closed than "I need to do everything myself. If I ask the opinion of others, they might steal my idea! Which is definitely on par with chess! But not go, because I read that was awesome"
Do I sound hostile? That's because I am giving you advice and you don't want to hear it. Why did you ask for it?
Rule #2142 of start-up business... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Come back when you have something (Score:5, Insightful)
"pitched somewhere between Checkers and Chess but probably not as deceptively complex as Go"
He (she?) obviously meant it in terms of the simplicity of the rules, and perhaps the amount of thought required for each turn. He doesn't expect it to become the next chess.
That said, if he hasn't even played the game, the whole discussion is pointless.
He should also try to explain the game to somebody with less patience than a wife. Some critical friends, for example.
Re:Do it, but be persistent (Score:3, Insightful)
With all due respect, my god, that game looks complicated. No wonder major publishers turned it down.
If you have a game with lots of rules and intricacies, I suspect you'd just about have to publish it yourself. I think that the big manufacturers are more interested in games that have mass appeal: games that are really simple to pick up and play, that take maybe five minutes to learn the rules and jump in, and that can be played by (and are at least somewhat interesting to) at least mid-teenagers.
I'm not saying that there isn't a market for other games, just that such games will never reach the mass appeal of something like Monopoly, Sorry!, Trivial Pursuit, and so on. And if one of the big companies is going to invest the money into manufacturing, marketing, and distributing your game, it's reasonable for them to expect to have to have at least a big enough market to recoup that investment and pay its CEO.
So if you go to publishers and they turn you down flat, don't take it personally. Someone like Hasbro is probably not the ideal company to publish your game anyway. If I were you, I'd seek out smaller publishers.
Oh, and you mentioned a "nerd factor" and your "Trek fan" wife. Keep in mind that if your game includes someone else's intellectual property to any great extent, you're going to have to deal with licensing issues as well.
And speaking of intellectual property, for god's sake, make sure you patent your rules, copyright any materials in it, and trademark your logos and designs. I am not a lawyer, but if you're serious about selling your game for profit, you really need to invest the money into seeing one first. If your game is as good as you think it is, you definitely don't want to see your game being sold on store shelves by someone like Hasbro after they tell you that it sucks and would never sell.
Re:Do it, but be persistent (Score:4, Insightful)
There are companies like Cheapass Games [cheapass.com], Loony Labs [looneylabs.com](thoguh I think they do all their stuff in house), Playroom Entertainment [playrooment.com] to name a few off the top of my head.
Also, the simpeler you can make the physical pieces of the game the better off you are I think. Can the "board" be cloth or some such? Will the pieces idealy be simple or complex (checkers, WH40K pieces, or soem where inbetween)?
The other thing to do is to go to Cons (SF/F and gaming). So long as they have a gaming room (for board/card games) you can find a good number of people who are in the field. Most of them will be Reps, but even they are good to talk to, and some times you will run into the actualy developers (or other people more closely tied to the company), especialy at larger cons. Just make sure you have a working copy of your game (I would suggest tryign to make it look good, over trying to emulate a proffessional distribution).
Good luck!
Re:Come back when you have something (Score:2, Insightful)
Or for a real acid test, write out the instructions as you would expect them to be in the published game, get some friends to play it with nothing but the instructions and video them. That's all the help someone buying the game will generally get.
If you're heavily involved with something, other people will miss things that seem blindingly obvious to you.
Re:Just for the record (Score:2, Insightful)
die 0:
1-3: +0
4-6: +1
die 1:
1-3: +0
4-6: +2
die 2:
1-3: +0
4-6: +4
Add them up and you get a number from 0-7. Add +1 to make it 1-8. Or modify die one to evaluate to +1 | +2.
Yeah, my friends never got it either. Probably didn't help that I kept referring to 'die 0'.
GenCon Indy (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a few people have said it but I'm amazingly surprised at how FEW people have said it! Take your game to GenCon Indy. It's the biggest gaming convention in the world. Buy a 4 day badge and go sit in the board game room and put your game out there. Set up near the end of a table that is near a doorway into the room. Stand by your game and ask people as they enter the room and inevtiably walk past your table if they're interested in playing a game with you. You'd be surprised at just how many people WANT to play random games with random people. I have played random games with random people every year I have gone all because they came up to me and asked, except last year because no one asked. It will give you a lot of exposure to people, free playtesting, and you'll have a good idea of how many people find your game interesting. About twenty six thousand people attend GenCon Indy so you're bound to find people who will be more than willing to play your game.
Tell the people who play that it is a new game that is still being designed. A lot of people will jump at the opportunity. I constantly hear people trying to pull bragging rights with something like this: "Yeah, that brand new game that just came out, I played it years ago with the guy who made it. I even gave inspired rule X when I did Y." There is an entire species of gamer looking for opportunities to jump on situations like this.
You can even go so far as to print out small feedback cards and ask the people who have just played your game if they would be willing to fill it out. Some will fill it out and some will not. But, any gaming company will probably already understand the basic percentages about quantity of feedback and be able to determine how many people actually played the game. Additionally, you can keep your own tally of how many people played.
You can also try registering it as an official GenCon event. You can setup a one hour game event that just repeats all day and costs people one ticket ($1.50) to play for an hour. You just setup on a table assigned to you by GenCon and people don't register for the time slots, but they stop by with generic tickets to play your game. I and everyone I know always buy about $20 - $30 in generic tickets in case we see something we want to play that we didn't know existed. This will help give you a real tally of the number of people who played your games and GenCon staff should be able to give you an official tally of the number of tickets you collected. This can be used when you approach a game manufacturer to give them an idea of the game's potential for success. Do this for a few years and see how it goes. Don't be dismayed at low numbers the first time around as it may take a few years to build up awareness. Also, don't be afraid to get on the online forums (including GenCon's forum) and start advertising your game. Let people know it will be at GenCon and let people know what to look for and where to find you.