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Disclaimer: I am by far not an expert on the things I am posting so do not take my opinions and experiences as gospel. Your mileage may vary but I wanted to share the experience and decisions with the path we have taken. I hope they can be helpful and enjoyable to some people out there interested in a behind the scenes look.

I apologize ahead of time if I ramble. I want to try to explain the process, testing, cost, reasoning for final decisions and share as much as I can about game design and creation. I’ve often seen companies make a decision and then customers wonder why a particular choice was made or didn’t quite make sense from a consumer point of view. I figured that this would be a great experience to not only communicate the process and steps we’ve taken but also hopefully providing some useful information to other designers and creators.

Blog Index

Post 1 - Forming the Team, Choosing a Name, Crowd Funding, Art Acquisition

Post 3 - Art Acquistion Additional

Post 4 - Business Decisions, They are not always fair

Post 5 - Game Boxes, Shipping and Fulfillment

Post 6 - Game Outline, The Story, Design Process

Post 7 - Creating Conflict and Faction Backgrounds

Post 8 - Working on Other Games, Black/White Box Testing

Post 9 - Kickstarter Additional, Pricing, Retailer Terms, Distributor Terms

Post 10 - Intellectual Property, Kickstarter Design and Implementation

Post 11 - 80/20 and 20/60/20 Rule

Post 12 - Game Mechanics, Copyrights/Trademarks, Starting at the Beginning

Post 13 - Cutting 3d Sculpts

Post 14 - Time and Communication

Post 15 - Preorder vs Crowdfunding

Post 16 - Piercing the Shroud Boardgame

Post 17 - Starting from Scratch - Scratch Session

About Me
Casting Experience
To Seek a Publisher or to Self Publish?

The main reason to create a game is because we want to get it published, there are two main options to getting something out to people. You should ask yourself if you want to approach an existing, established publisher with your design or instead would like to “self-publish”. It is usually one of the first decisions a designer should be making as both methods have their pro’s and con’s but the decision could affect how you will design the game as well as the work to put into it.

Getting Published

Many game designers get their games published by an established publisher. The competition can be first as there are thousands of designers all competing for the attention of a handful of publishers which may produce games like your own. Not all publishers are actively accepting submissions. Participating as part of a “Publisher Dating” at a convention like GenCon or Origins is a good place to start.

One of the main advantages of seeking a publisher is that you do not assume the financial risk, this is transferred to the publisher who you sell your design too. This also lets you basically accept a check and get back to what you may love, designing more games. You usually don’t have to worry about artwork (generic is good for demoing) or creating an intricate prototype.

There are disadvantages to being published as well too. You essentially are signing terms to release your design to the publisher. That can mean your game may not be published in the theme you designed, they might completely redesign the concept and theme of it. You could have made an awesome game about clowns but they decide instead to retheme it about dragons and you really wanted to make a game about dragons. You may not agree with changes they make to the rules as well.

It could also mean your game may not see the light of day. This usually isn’t done to be malicious but games do get shelved for many reasons. The priority or focus, the market could change so one project would be shelved while others get priority. When negotiating you always want to ensure that if after X amount of time something is published or released rights can return back to creator/designer. This is also a good idea just in case the company who did the game, for some reason, went bankrupt or disbanded and it doesn’t leave your game in limbo.

An example of this is Snow Tails, a board game done by Renegade Game Studio. It was originally out of print for a few years, rights to the game reverted back to the game designer. They were then approached by Renegade who wanted to republish the game. After some changes, updates and now the game is re-released.

Having a game publisher pick up your game is a great option for many. They don’t have to spend time manufacturing, selling, setting up distribution, shipping, acquiring artwork, writing rules and more. It means you can focus more on making more games, instead of spending all the time just working on one or two. It however isn’t always the best option.

Self Publish

If you don’t want to release the rights to your game and you want more of a creative role in the process there is always self-publishing. This route ends up being the most expensive route of the process as you have to rely on yourself and your network vs an established network. You need to look at how much time you will invest in it as well as money.

Do you need artwork or a graphic designer? Are you getting 3d work or sculpting done? Are you doing a website, who is doing the design? Where are you getting testers? What about distribution, advertising and promotion? After you have worked out your costs what about retailer pricing? These are all things you need to consider and more.

Self Publishing ends up being more about business than game design to some degree. It does take a good business mind to be successful when going down this path. Most of the negotiating and connections are done by yourself though.

For example when looking at distribution and someone asks you what your “retailer terms” are, they are looking for your wholesale price. You need to be aware of all the costs in your game from the plastic bags to the dice and how much it cost to produce. A retail buyer will want to know the wholesale price, how many they have to order to get that price, shipping cost, do they pay immediately or in 30 days (net 30). Keep in mind most retailers will want to double the wholesale price to make a profit on the game. Other things to look at game contents, box size as those can change how or what a retailer will order. Be aware of retail prices of games, their contents and how you plan to ultimately stack up to them.

Watching this with keen interest. Thank you for putting it up.

I'll have another update tomorrow. I will probably be making at least one post every day or at least every other day. Depending on if there are questions as we go along, it'll probably be quite a few posts before we're caught up to current days events.

The idea is start with the beginning of the idea, concept art, include even some of the current costs we've paid for manufacturing, reasons for decisions. I'll try to sprinkle in some Kickstarter pro's/con's and cover a bit on making game prototypes for publishing, what needs to be worked on, etc.

There is a lot of spread out information on various parts of game design. I figured I'd try to keep and provide a full picture as seen from our eyes to give at least one point of view.

It's really helpful this sort of thing, makes you open your eyes to the many details someone new to the experience likely has never given thought to. Even though it is likely experiences will differ, just having the experience of others ready to reference is handy to avoid some unwanted hickups along the way.

Can you share a link to your company website? I am wondering about what you are making.

kenofyork wrote:
Can you share a link to your company website? I am wondering about what you are making.

I am assuming his WWW link http://garage-gaming.com/

I am looking this thread with quite some interest, always nice to hear experiences from people who attempted/ attempting such things.

kenofyork wrote:
Can you share a link to your company website? I am wondering about what you are making.

PsychoticStorm is correct it is my link. The last website update and when we moved it unfortunately caused some issues, we've almost worked them through all... I'm just waiting on one final ticket to fix some permissions with the database. We've been grinding away on various projects and since I was going to update it, I also wanted to highlight the hurdles we've gone through so far. Give me a few weeks and I'll have the content properly updated there.

Forming the Team

Ultimately to be successful you need a good team. There are going to be a lot of points in the process where it helps to have someone pick you up and kick you in the butt. It also helps having a varied point of view and people who you can bounce ideas off of.

I started with my wife who is also a gamer and a couple friends we set out on this journey. A couple friends who I used to do rules with back during the World of Warcraft TCG days helped with testing, rule lawyering and design. Then we had a friend who was a 3D sculptor, although fresh out of school, he didn’t have a lot of experience but was someone that I could trust. I also have a friend who has a really successful local print shop. Other than artwork and graphic design, it seemed like a great team.

For probably everyone except me this adventure was probably more of a hobby, considering I am focused to make this work and the one doing the main investing. I worked with the print shop to get costs down but still keep high quality media. This would probably require me working for free but I’ve helped out at the shop during holiday rush before so this wasn’t new. I did work out future costs so that eventually it wouldn’t need me working for free. The casting we’ve worked with and had that part down. Now that the production pieces seemed to be handled we just needed something to actually produce.

When you think about it the concept of creating and publishing a game is pretty simple:
-- Develop game, write out rules, test them along with the story/lore.
-- Acquire artwork*, concept artwork for sculpting and final artwork.
-- Get sculpting done*, either through traditional methods or 3D digital work.
-- If digitally sculpted, print out 3D masters*.
-- If traditional sculpted, get miniature cut up for casting*.
-- Get masters created and initial production cast*.
-- Get tokens, manuals, print materials, boxes done*.
-- Package everything up and sell it*.

There is a bit more in between each of those steps. Hopefully I’ll try to cover them all, along with where possible delays happen. Every point there is a * is a possible place, if you are working solo, that you are waiting for material or someone else to finish. Each of those points is a place that if there is a delay, it can cause a chain reaction of delays. That is all assuming you have the initial funds to create a print run, we haven’t gotten into funding methods and minimum order quantity (MOQ) yet but I’ll cover that part soon.

There are four games that we’ve been working on, two of them are board games and two are miniatures games. We decided to go the self-publishing route for multiple reasons. One was I wanted to be more involved with the process but I also wasn’t too keen on someone changing my concept. I also think it is important to understand the full process, to be part of that, as it can be useful when you get to designing games.

Event Horizon / Interstellar Crisis

Before there was Star Wars X-Wing, Star Wars Armada, Halo Fleet Battles and Dropfleet there was Full Thrust, Star Fleet Battles, Battlefleet Gothic and a couple others. For the longest time those were the dominators of the spaceship battle games on the market. Even though a couple of them weren’t supported anymore, they were still popular. Compared to ground miniatures wargames and skirmish games though, the space games were a handful. It was partially for that reason we chose that as our starting point.

There are also design decisions on this route. Spaceships sculpting wise as the more forgivable than infantry, they are also easier to sculpt which meant I could rely on a partner who may not had full experience yet. 3D costs for sculpting ships were more inexpensive, they were easier to cast and we believe we could offer something new. I’ll go more into this project a bit later but for now I want to lay the groundwork for some things.

The Name Game

One of the first rules of design is to not be married to the game. You might think that an idea or part is integral for the game, your local area might agree but then you find out it isn’t the majority. You also have to be aware that you can’t make everyone happy so you’ll have to make a decision that benefits the majority of your clientbase.

When we chose “Event Horizon” we thought we were being clever. An event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer, in layman’s terms it is referred to as the “the point of no return”. Since conflict reached a certain point, a point of no return, before conflict erupted into full war it seemed to match. The jump drives the ships use for travel also create a gravitational field, which essentially creates a mini blackhole between the destination and place of origin. The name seemed to match that as well. Unfortunately all everyone else saw was in reference to the 1997 horror / science fiction movie Event Horizon.

You can be too clever… sometimes when you try to keep utilize the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) method it ends up being more complex. This is what happens when you have two friends that are engineers. ^_^ The end result was that we needed to change the name.

Funding / Kickstarter / IndieGoGo

Before I segment more into sculpting, artwork and additional games we should take a look at funding. If we were going to seek a publisher, funding isn’t really an issue. Since we decided to self-publish, then that means something has to pay for the work being done. Even if I make the sacrifice of not getting paid, it isn’t fair to ask someone else unless they are partner to do it. It could be the greatest idea and might even make millions, however you shouldn’t have anyone working for free… that goes for artwork and sculpting as well. No simply getting credit for being part of a project isn’t enough to compensate someone for their time and work.

That means your project will need to have funds. You have to put money into something to make something. The traditional method is to take out a line of credit, get a business loan or find funds from a generous benefactor. There are multiple ways to get funding through traditional methods. Even though I made the leap to do this, I am still working a full time job and I wasn’t allowed to take a 2nd mortgage on the house to fund my games. ^_^

I did have some money which was put aside for hobbies. I set a certain amount of my paycheck aside that goes to personal expenses and hobbies. This meant funneling that money into the business, mostly to obtain artwork and sculpting. That also meant I couldn’t get too far ahead so had to make a careful plan, prioritize what I wanted and in what order. Some of that will be a bit more evident when I talk about art acquisition.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about Kickstarter and IndieGoGo as I feel there are better posts that cover it. I will give a brief summary for those not familiar with them (are there people who still don’t know about them?).

IndieGoGo
This is one of the least popular methods. Don’t get me wrong, it has benefits for certain projects but isn’t the most popular for funding games. One of the main reasons is because you can set your campaign to fixed or flexible funding. Flexible funding means even if the goal isn’t met, the creator still gets all the money (minus fees of course). The other disadvantage is that it pulls money and charges you immediately when you back vs Kickstarter which waits until the campaign is over with. I think because of those things it gets the least amount of traffic and has a stigma associated with it unfortunately.

Kickstarter
This is the most popular method. I have been part of a three fairly successful Kickstarters, assisted in posting, administering the campaign and been part of the process. I will say it is a constant roller coaster for a creator. There isn’t a group account or admin account, so essentially we shared a creator login, but it allowed us to always have a presence in comments and post updates when needed. They were queued in an approved post so all that was left was to cut and paste when certain campaign levels were reached. I also ran my own campaign, although unsuccessful, but the experience was worthwhile.

The main thing is Kickstarter today is much different than it was three years ago. This is mostly uniquely related to the games category than any other category. Some of it due to backers having more knowledge readily available to them. Another reason is unfortunately a few people have been stung by it, not received product which has made people very cautious and can create a semi-toxic environment at times. This has made it a bit more difficult for the new or smaller guy since backers want to see more product examples, than just renders and concept art.

The advantages of Kickstarter however still make it worthwhile. You have to remember to communicate and outline the details early on. Estimating production time can be hard depending if you are dealing with overseas, no matter the estimates add on 20% more time as a buffer. Worse case is you’ll be delivering early. Don’t try an aggressive schedule for your first one. Be aware that even if you have vendors/sales saying you only need money and you are good, that doesn’t guarantee your place in a queue. Be sure you have your contracts and agreements outlined otherwise it is just cursory promise. I’ll try to cover a bit more of that when we get to dealing with other manufacturing companies.

This should go without saying but it still doesn’t happen, be sure you understand all the costs with delivering your product from manufacturing to shipping, then estimate more. I’ve seen too many projects where if the initial product they funded have been fine, but after aggressively doing stretch goals they find they underestimated not only time but money. You’ll notice Kickstarters are starting to have 2 waves which is becoming a normal thing. The first wave usually handles the initial product, while the 2nd wave are additional add-on and/or stretch goals.

Art Acquisition

I will be coming back to this topic but wanted to say a couple things and add a few pictures, afterall no one just wants to read a bunch of text… there needs to be some shiny.

Artist skill level and expectations vary greatly. You need to be clear, concise and understand the terms you set with an artist when you are acquiring artwork. Simply paying for a commission doesn’t mean you own the copyright to something. Often lower priced commissions are not meant for commercial resale, they are for people who want to pay for custom artwork (possibly fanart) created for them. If you plan on using it for commercial purposes, you need to communicate it with the artist. This will most likely cause a change in the price. It doesn’t matter if it is just concept art, not going on a box, if it is for a retail product you really want to communicate it.

Some artists will require full payment up front. This isn’t uncommon for first time customers. However that doesn’t mean you should just blindly accept someone, be sure you research them, their work and make sure they are who you want to work with. Others will require half or a percentage up front and the rest upon delivery. When you’ve developed a good relationship with an artist they might start work and collect payment upon delivery. Outline payment terms up front, know what you are paying and when you are paying.

How artists approach creating artwork can vary pretty big. Be sure you research the artists, that their styles match what you are looking for. Each artist has strengths, weakness and styles so you want to make sure what you are trying to get made they can do it. Don’t assume because they do great mecha, that they might be able to a dynamic battle or maybe you want them to create a character with some direction. They always want examples, clear information on what they are drawing to make sure what you are visualizing matches what they will actually draw. How they approach drawing the artwork may vary as well. I’m going to cover 4 different approaches by different artists but all roughly cost the same give or take about $50.

Approach A: Given some reference pictures, type up descriptions they created this piece from scratch. There wasn’t a lot of questions after we outlined what we were looking for. There wasn’t additional feedback to determine if they were going down the same route or drafts, it was just one shot drawing.

Approach B: Similar to above, we gave the artist an information packet. The packet contains reference pictures, descriptions of what we are looking for and examples. We received an initial draft which let us choose a style of outfit for the armor we were looking for. Then we received the final colored version after we picked the style.

Approach C: Again similar to above, once the information packet was received. This time we got a rough draft with poses, then another draft later with outfit choices and then the final piece.

Approach D: We got a real rough draft which I didn’t include in the examples. Then we received a primary draft with multiple options to choose from. We were able to give feedback on what we liked and didn’t like. This helped the artist get a better feel for what we wanted. Then was a third rough draft going a bit more detail on our choices, some matched and some stretching boundaries. Then a finalized concept which we went over color palette choices. Then we received the final versions.

My communication with all these artists was pretty much the same thing. When I approached them I outlined what I was planning to do, I outlined which of their pieces in their portfolio/galleries interested me and provided them with information packet to determine prices. After discussing rights for the images and payment terms we went to work. The artwork doesn’t take too long to complete and I tend to give 1-2 weeks, although some took a month due to other projects. We communicated and wasn’t in a hurry so these were fine. Each one approached things differently though and that is part of what you want to highlight in your communication. If you expecting Approach D but instead get Approach A, it is probably because you weren’t clear in what you were looking for.

That was quite interesting, how can you assure approach D?

To my standards that is what you need on a concept art, approach C is good for character art when D is finalized and set to stone.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
That was quite interesting, how can you assure approach D?

To my standards that is what you need on a concept art, approach C is good for character art when D is finalized and set to stone.

You can really only be sure you get approach D by outlining what you want when you approach an artist. To ensure you always get a proper quote for that style, your example packet should outline the process you are looking. Some artists might call it first/second pass of character designs, thumbnails or concept sheets and others refer to them as drafts. Sometimes you can look at the artist commission page to get an idea of what they would refer to each part as, they might even have broken down prices for poses, background, coloring, etc.

For me it was a bit of trial and error. What one artist might consider standard, another artist might not so it is always best to use examples. My packets when I approach someone usually contains a few paragraphs of what I want drawn, style (anime, western, cartoony), is it posed, weapons, coloring along with examples. When I talk about styles I try to not only give a reference to a picture example, but also base it off of what is in their gallery. When looking for concept character creations, I would explain that I'm looking to create characters and would like X (provide image) with choices, that would let us discuss what we liked, disliked and where to proceed. Sometimes you might be comfortable with saying you liked the drawing for "C" and other times you might say, what if we mixed this piece from "A" and this part from "B" so they might need another pass. Then you would get a final piece and colored. Be sure you tell them what format you would like it in, PSD, PNG and the size. If you plan to ever use it for print I tend to make sure it is at least 300px because that is what printers like. It also means you can resize it without much degradation or downsize it to 72px for web art.

Established artists will probably charge you for the multiple passes, thumbnails and newer artists might not. That doesn't necessarily mean just approach new artists or be afraid to approach an established artist. One artist that I normally worked with schedule is changing, they are moving towards doing a art book and prices are increasing unfortunately. It was through convention networking that I met one of the current artists I'm working with. Conventions especially smaller ones aren't a bad place to find art talent along artist alley. When I've worked with game companies at conventions they always get approached by graphic designers, pitched game ideas and I tend to keep track, cards for them all. Sometimes my first choice may not be available because of scheduling... that is the joy of relying on freelancers.

I had said I will try to list actual prices vs rough estimates. Estimates can always be a bit vague what it covers and have a large range. When someone says concept art costs $100-1500 it can mean so much more than just one piece, the style, the detail, coloring, etc. It isn't meant to mean look for lower priced art but unfortunately it doesn't help people see what the standard is.

Speaking of "Standard"... don't be lulled by anyone that something standard is just how it is. One artist a cover art image was $2000 for one piece. Granted they've done some really great work for Marvel, Blizzard but that was a bit more than a Independent person would pay. That is his standard, while another person who does just as good work would have been $500. Keep in mind standard really means 'average' and one person might be approached by higher tiered clients all the time, so their average is higher than another person. There is no real standard when it comes to determine art acquisition per say, even with payment. Some want 30% up front, others want full payment, some want 50% up front, while others won't require payment until receipt of the first pass. Digital artists vs traditional artists have different standards as well.

Keep track of who you work with, what you liked, didn't like and what you paid. That will help you determine more of the direction you want to continue going as well as what you might need to be clearer in your information packet.

Approach A: I received a total of 3 character concepts based similar to the image example in the spoiler. There were 3 images, then one image which was basically a group shot of them side by side. The originals were in .png format. I was quoted at $20/hour, which can be scary at first when you aren't sure how much time is spent to create a certain piece. If an hour quote, make sure they quote you how many hours that should be. In this case it was 18 hours of work for a total of $360, which could break down to $120 per character.

Approach B: I received one character but two drawings (front and back), which included an initial thumbnail of 3 options for the design. It was $200 total, the flat coloring was $50 while the two non-posed sketches (front and back) were $150. If I wanted extra thumbnails I could have gotten them for $25 per design.

Approach C: For two separate full body characters in a pose it was $240. Even though it was only $120 per character, it included a rough pose draft so I could choose the pose. Then a concept sheet with 3 outfit designs to choose from, which the final pieces were based from.

Approach D: We got a real rough draft which I didn’t include in the examples, hand drawn and really rough. From there we talked about what we liked, didn't like and why. Then we received a primary draft with multiple options to choose from. We were able to give feedback on what we liked and didn’t like. This helped the artist get a better feel for what we wanted. Then was a third rough draft going a bit more detail on our choices, some matched and some stretching boundaries. Then a finalized concept which we went over color palette choices. Then we received the final versions. This cost us a total of $360, $180 for the female and $180 for the male.

Really interesting stuff there in general,

and also in terms of the choices you made were they were choices to be made

look forward to reading more

I am following with much interest.

It Is Just Business

From a customer/consumer standpoint when someone pays money for a product, it was represented in a certain way, then later it somehow changed or was modified... it isn't necessarily because the business is lying or trying to swindle someone. Even when they do communicate what happened, it is easy to say, "that is just an excuse". They were presented something, paid for it and that is what they expecting. Unfortunately things do happen and it isn't always in the control of the person you purchased something from. I realize that isn't a consumer/customer problem. The reality is it happens more than you think and it isn't always within your control even when you think you've planned and been careful. Timelines, promises, services all change in the manufacturing side of things especially. Then often the business is held holding the bag and of course everyone blames them.

For that reason I wanted to get a fireteam (5 units) of 32mm miniatures created and casted. It is meant to be an initial test run. It gives us something to utilize in game videos, something more tangible to test with other than proxy units, some time to get it painted and gives an actual real product to demonstrate the direction we're going with a certain line. I knew overall it would probably take 6-8 months based on previous projects, although those were with metal miniatures and these were with resin.

In the beginning of the year around April I contacted a company who offered sculpting, 3D printing, casting and were known for their quality resin miniatures. At first I contacted them because I was under the impression they also do 2D artwork. After dealing with various freelancers, I wanted to deal one shot with someone to handle everything. This was not only meant as a test run to determine if I would do future business with them. In the end we will do the casting but I wanted the initial run to be handled by someone, since I know I'm working full time. In the case that I do future Kickstarters I wanted to be sure I had another source to relieve the workload if I needed.

I found out they didn't do 2D artwork so I would need to provide that, there were certain specifics that they were looking for. They also wanted to know my timeline, which I did say was pretty open but would like something at the latest by Aug/Sept, Oct being the latest. They said since they didn't do artwork that I would need to provide that, we went over the specifics of what they needed. Once defined they said after concept art, they could deliver 2-3 days per miniatures for sculpting. Now that seems great but I also knew that was a bit too good to be true but wanted to test this process.

In July I provided them concept art for my fireteam. It was a male and female, front and back shots with weapon designs. We wanted 5 unites for the fireteam, 3 men and 2 women done in a multi-piece part so the poses could be slightly dynamic. I didn't want them static, part of the reason is for initial costs. I knew at the time I probably couldn't budget 3 completely different pieces, but knew we could make the arms change to give them a bit more dynamic pose. I also wanted to offer a optional head piece, helmeted or no helmet. There were a couple issues where they let me know sculpting and casting could cause an issue based on the artwork, which I was aware of. Because of their schedule I was looking until Aug/Sept before they could get them to me. It was later than I was hoping because I had wanted to bring something to GenCon with me... but nothing I could do about it. I also expected it since my initial encounter was left with me acquiring art, I would not have expected to be in a queue. At this point since I thought we had a commitment, I would have expected to be in a queue waiting.

I was quoted for the 3d sculpting and 3d printing of the master £265, which was £250 for the 3d work/print and £15 for the mold for casting. Then the cost of each cast was based on the weight of the miniature, roughly £0.50. If we wanted different arms/weapons there would be a slight increase in the charge. So overall I was looking at 3 fireteams (100 sets of 15 miniatures) for a total of £4725, £3975 for the 3d/Masters and £750 for the casting. I was ready to do 3 full fireteams yet because I was still evaluating so I said we would start with one fireteam and move up from there.

In Sept I was unfortunately told that they could print and cast but sculpting they were overloaded and can't get to me until October. I had waited until this point, what was another month. It would take awhile to find a new sculptor and once I found them, they wouldn't probably be able to get to it until Dec because of their own timelines. A month seemed just fine to wait. Then October comes around and they still can't help me. It was a nice friendly email, trying to let me down easy. I was told if I found a sculptor they could do the printing and casting but unfortunately pricing also went up. Now it was £400 per miniature and 100 casts as a minimum order.

This is one example of many things that can happen behind the scenes. The good news is I didn't have a Kickstarter running, I didn't have pre-orders up so I didn't have someone waiting for items but me. However you can see how from the other side of fence, it can look like someone is making excuses. I get it too. I'm a small guy in a pond. They have a business to run, they want to launch another Kickstarter so they need their sculptors and those are going to take a priority because as a business they are looking at their revenue. Since they didn't collect a down payment, we didn't have an official contract other than an email promise, then it technically wasn't a lie... It is just business.

Could you have imagined if I had done pre-orders or did a Kickstarter? Then I would be stuck scrambling to find a sculptor and since everything was based on initial quotes, now pricing for things have changed a bit. Fortunately I wasn't in that situation which was why I do test runs. For the company I work with that is part of what we do. Before deciding on a vendor, we do small runs to see if they can meet our requirements before deciding to commit fully. It let's us set proper expectations up front.

I do know some traditional sculptors for greens that I could turn too. We made a decision awhile back to be digital though so I needed to find me a 3d sculptor. If we need to make changes, additions or change the cuts it is must easier to do with a digital sculpt than with a green. It is also easier to make sure everything is sculpted uniformly. I have contacts for a few 3d sculptors so there are some options but I'm not sure what direction yet. We have one offer for 3 male posed miniatures, 2 female posed miniatures, 1 helmet head sculpted for $1250. Then there is the cutting of the miniature to create a mutiposed pieces, 1 head, 1 torso, 1 pelvis with legs posed, 1 helmet head, 4 arms (interchangeable) for $750. Now I'm looking at $2000 to get them done and that unfortunately doesn't cover 3D printing or casting yet. It will probably take a couple months to fully complete given other commitments. Costs have already gone up a bit more than originally budgeted. What was originally meant to be done by Sept has now moved out until Jan/Feb to fully be completed which includes casting too.

I have started to digress a bit. I'll have to go back to the beginning a bit, to cover more on game design of the other games and the lessons we've learned from that process as well. Also to go into the metal miniatures we've had done from our initial test run earlier in the year. I will come back to go over game mechanics and other things from what I've called Project: Code Zero later, in the next couple days I'll go over some more of Interstellar Crisis.

I am very interested in this topic, I myself am moving into being a producer, I have yet to contact manufacturers in regards to how the boxes are shipped, from what I read you say they come unassembled and need to be assembled? I was under the impression that it truly depended on what company you went with and what your desires were for the item to come ready to be sold or unassembled and in need of yourself to do so?

Also shipping and storage is a big thing as well, I have learned of a few warehouses were you can pay a monthly fee to store your products from were orders for retailers ( and your fulfilment center for if you started by kickstarter) could be placed to you and through you , you could ship out orders from them to the ordered stores and distributors. I am interested in your thoughts on this area, I assume your starting with a miniature board game?

If you're as small as this, most likely your house/garage is your warehouse and fulfillment center.

It also depends on where you live. Here in SoCal any kind of space can be expensive.

Erebus Studios wrote:
I have yet to contact manufacturers in regards to how the boxes are shipped, from what I read you say they come unassembled and need to be assembled? I was under the impression that it truly depended on what company you went with and what your desires were for the item to come ready to be sold or unassembled and in need of yourself to do so?

Also shipping and storage is a big thing as well, I have learned of a few warehouses were you can pay a monthly fee to store your products from were orders for retailers ( and your fulfilment center for if you started by kickstarter) could be placed to you and through you , you could ship out orders from them to the ordered stores and distributors. I am interested in your thoughts on this area, I assume your starting with a miniature board game?

Game Boxes

Boxes for games come in a variety of sizes and can be handled multiple ways. I'm assuming we're talking empty boxes for stuff that you will be packing in them. Are we talking boxes for miniatures or the full game or an expansion? Some companies manufacture, will do the assembly and packing if you send them all the stuff. Others will send you the boxes that are die cut (the box has been cut for folds, etc) but not folded to you. You can also choose to have them send the boxes someplace else and then send your game items there to have them fold, assemble and pack. Do you want a box with a printed front and back, like a typical game box or do you just want the box that you'll slap a sticker/label on?

There are packaging material companies like Uline that have some pretty standard boxes, booster packs for things. You would have to assemble them and they are usually blank. You can also call local box companies as well. I use Northwest Paper Box because I can couple my orders with my friends print company and get decent deals. Before you call though you'll want to know how big of a box you want. If they already have a die cut for that size box then great but if they need to do a new die cut then you'll have to pay for that (anywhere from $50-$150 for the ones I've done).

I don't typically worry about boxes until later in the game design. I want to make sure that I know how many items I'm packing and the sizes they are coming in. Are the tokens I'm using die cut sheets and what size are they? Do I have a lot of loose items, will they be in baggies or do I need special insert on the box?

Keep in mind you want to know how you also intend to ship now and later. Even if you use a distribution or shipping company initially, what about the future? If you are in the US then flat rate is fairly good method so make sure your box will fit into their boxes. You don't want too long or strange shaped boxes because you want them to go properly on shelves in retail game stores. It is one reasons companies are starting to shy away from booster packs for smaller square/rectangle boxes because it is not only easier to ship, shelve and pack. It is good if your main game box can fit a case comfortable in standard shipping boxes. Distributors will like this because it means if someone buys a half case and other products, it is easier for them to pack. If the boxes are too big or too long a game store might only buy half case because they don't have shelf space for it.

Shipping and Storage

Fulfillment centers are great for a large order Kickstarter, if your game is going to be multiple pallets. If it is less than a pallet then it may be cheaper to ship and store things locally, like your garage or spare room for awhile. It really depends on how large of a scope you are talking about, how many backers and where your main items will be manufactured and shipped to arrive. Anything that requires a dock for delivery I can route to a couple local destinations where I can pick them up. If deliveries don't require a dock I mostly store things at the house in a spare room.

You want to think to the future, not just the now though. After you've sold a large amount of pre-orders or got a great Kickstarter, how do you plan to expand and go from there? Overall Kickstarter is great and it might seem there is a lot of money to be made but in reality most of that gets eaten up by time, manufacturing costs, shipping, etc. The real profit comes from future sales and add-ons later. How do you plan to deliver those items in the future, what shipping will you use?

Amazon does have fulfillment where you can load your pallet, ship it to their warehouse but it does require your games to have a registered UPC (about $25 cost). If you have a lot of small items, Amazon isn't the best choice because of all the UPC codes you need. You would then pay a small monthly fee for storage but could upload a spreadsheet from Kickstarter and have your orders fulfilled through them. The nice thing about Amazon is amazon prime ships for free. Although you'd charge a small shipping fee to handle the initial costs of freight overall shipping can be much cheaper than traditional methods. I would probably set up Amazon for Canada, UK (which can distribute to Europe) and the US. In the future though I'd probably ship domestically in the US because its cheaper but continue to ship a pallet/store at UK/Canada locations. This does unfortunately require separate accounts for each but it lets me fulfill things easier in the future. I can still sell from my website but then have it fulfilled by Amazon which helps with customs and fees.

Stonemaier Games did a couple really good detailed articles, which can provide better information than me on using Amazon:

How to Provide "Free" Shipping Worldwide on Kickstarter: A Comprehensive Guide

Lessons Learned: Insights, Mistakes, and Solutions for Offering Worldwide Shipping on Kickstarter

As for what we're starting with, there are a few things. We have a couple miniatures games, board game, party game and a card battle game we've been working on as well as a couple other games we've contributed that I can't talk about because of NDAs.

Maids vs Butlers: Card Dice Battle Game
A group of friends wanted a game that had more eyecandy for females than males. MvB sort of got created from that. It was so the woman could have their good looking Butlers (or Maids if that was their preference) while men could have their own. Players design and create an initial deck of 30 cards. It could be entirely maids or butlers but some do trigger on having mixed teams. The battles utilize a rock/paper/scissors mechanic, boosting attacks with dice management to trigger abilities. Players take turns as Attacker/Defender roles, playing cards until one player has won 2 trophies from another. The idea is to eventually have expansions Pirates vs Ninjas, Demons vs Angels, Elves vs Dwarves and even allow them to mix so it oculd be Maids vs Ninjas.

Maids vs Butlers: Board Game
Utilizing similar artwork but moving in the board/miniatures game realm players take on the role of a maid or butler, attempting to get the other players to lose favor with the Lord/Master of the House and get fired. There are randomized objectives that can be completed to increase favor. There are also weapons scattered through the mansion they can obtain to fight with like a wine bottle, butter knives, fire poker, etc.

Interstellar Crisis
Interstellar Crisis is a tactical miniatures skirmish game set in a science fiction universe, where empires compete for control. Players utilize blind movement system using cards to determine their ships moves. Movement uses a type of inertia system so it continues moving along its path even if you don't apply more thrust, which lets a ship glide, rotate to bring weapons to bear a different direction or to protect a damaged side.

Code Zero
Players take control of a small army of troops competing with each other to achieve or complete one of several objectives to complete their mission. The game utilizes a mix of activating, moving and shooting with one to two individual units or fireteams to create squad based gameplay. Squads are comprised of 2-3 fireteams usually made up of 3-5 units, comprising an overall force of roughly 15-30 units per side. It is designed to scale from a Skirmish level of 5-12 individual models to a larger squad based gameplay of 15-30 models.

Rambling Ramblers : Party Game
There are three decks to choose cards from: Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs. Players will draw 10 cards from the deck of their choice. The cards have single words on the top and bottom, so depending on orientation of the card you have two choices. Player 1 creates a rambling sentence. There is a limited number of transitions available so if one player uses all "the" or "a" tokens then it makes it harder for other players. Game rounds have certain objectives and topics. The next player creates their own sentence or gets bonus points if they can successfully add it to the back of the first players sentence. This is being designed by my daughter and son who are learning about game design.

That is an interesting line up for a game company and delving in both boardgames and wargames too, will be interesting to see how it will evolve.

For me boxes, at least at this time, are a primary concern in design, but I am working on boardgame ideas and these need the box, a wargame would not be so much interested in the box, still keeping standard boxes size in mind does not hurt at all.

Another important part of box design is making sure the individual contents can't damage each other an issue I've seen with several KS where either more thought (or even a different packing order) would have been better

(you want pointy minis isolated from cards, booklets, leaflets etc so they dont' get sratched/punctured)

Plus boardgamers like to store it all in one box (including expansions if possible)

Indeed, a comment I heard a lot about Decent 2.0 was indeed the foresight to have space for the expansions.

Admittedly FFG was sure that they would get the expansions and a small company might waste time resources and make the box feel empty, but, one can design the box in such a way that it is future-proofed.

One thing that companies seem to forget is to test it with sleeves. When your cards are sleeved, they should also fit into the box. A lot of times their inserts will fit the cards but after they are sleeved they'll be too tight of a fit or won't fit at all. AEG has also shown that people will pay money just for a box to house all the expansions like they did with Smash Up: The Big Geeky Box Expansion.

Indeed this a good one sleeves are usually a must, The Smash Up box was a stroke of genius indeed, the only thing I can say bad about Smashup really is they should have included an extra card for each faction for random setups (the best way to play Smash Up) and drafting maybe.

Really interested in this game,always thought publishing my own game would be pretty neat put can't exactly do it right now(I'm in school).Would be nice if you could tell me the type of lore or maybe style this game of yours would be as in something grimdark like 40k .

First I apologize for the wait for a response from myself, I have been dealing with a few things that have come up over the last few days but they are now sorted out and I can reply in full.

For game boxes I am more looking into the product box itself, and in these terms I am looking to produce one with a full artwork spread across it as the more higher end board games do with their own, like zombicide for example. So a full printing run would be required for the package product box. Good to know that their is this option in the market place of assembling yourself or having companies do this for you. shipping would be much more affordable to ship the unassembled products to us and then assemble them from here and to store them such, however this also would bring in the issue of ensuring we have all the equipment required to assemble the boxes and product. what have yourselves found is the best way to start for a new company? and yes we are a small starting up company and not a large company.

Yes box sizes are important as well as we have heard from many companies, we would be going for the more popular square boxes as they are as you have said much easier to set up on shelves for retailers and are a standard shipping package size ( I will be checking soon with Canada post to see what the standard shipping sizes for such boxes are).

For shipping and storage:

Yes Fulfillment centers will only be used for our kickstarters to ensure we can give a guaranteed shipping rate and to be able to handle any large volume of orders that kickstarter usually brings. afterwise yes I agree local storage would be a better option , either in my living area or if I have to rent out a spot for them their are a few places I could do so. We are looking at 360 industries right now for manufacturing as it is done in the states and hence much closer to us up here than getting it done in China ( we also like to support local jobs and companies in north America and in Europe).

We plan after our first product is off from kickstarter and all backers have received their product to go to major and local minor game shows to begin growing our fanbase more and selling our product through these events. Also to set up with several distributors within Canada, USA and eventually Europe who will of course help our product gain the attention of retailers. Also we would look into advertisements.

As for shipping we would have to either for larger orders look at a fulfilment center or distribution center to move our products out, or for small orders we could ship from our local postal service.

We would rather avoid working with amazon as they tend not to be very friendly with any company outside of the states on experience. so we would look for another company either closer like one we have found in vancover or another one across the border for sure, do you have any other suggestions?.

Our game will defiantly have a solid amount of miniatures in it , along with tokens, a small rule book with the game scenarios, Item cards for players , several player character hardboard sheets with high quality artwork printouts along with enemy hardboard sheets, D20s and several tiles , we are still working out the rules and game mechanics but the overall shape and game has been solidified.

thank you for your articles I will give them a solid reading through.

One of my current concerns is material to produce the games miniatures in, plastic is a very poor material for miniatures and you have to really ensure the company that casts them has a good strong reputation, their is the guy who casts the PVC minis for zombicide and the current 7 sins board games, and these are the best PVC minis I have ever seen, however the issue is their shop is over in Hong Khon and this means shipping delays. I already know of the need to special sculptors to ensure the miniatures will turn out well in PVC , we would go with no one else but : http://monster-zer0.blogspot.ca/ . He has been great to work with ( a real shame our first kickstarter did not reach its goal for he would have produced some amazing sculpts) his experience with PVC is a great asset.

However their is also Metal, yes we understand many board gamers may get very angry if we even mention metal , however we have a solid metal caster and have great experience with working in metal production. However the question is would it take off on kickstarter if we went this way? We have also heard PPs RPG board games minis had to be casted in PVC instead of metal due too distributors refusing to carry metal miniatures in their board games for some random reason, have you ever heard of this in the industry?

interesting games to hear of I wish you continued success and good fortune thank you again for taking the time to inform me with so much valuable information.

with best regards - everyone at Erebus studios

Metal minis that you have to assemble is pretty much going to kill the interest from general board gamers

(snap fit plastic might just be acceptable, but only if there are assembly is really really simple. They expect to open the box and play, not have to build stuff)

Hobby shops may still carry the game (gamers and modellers will build good boardgame pieces), but it certainly won't escape into general toy/boardgame retail

(and depending on where you plan to sell, and what the composition of your casting metal is you may get health and safely issues coming up eg lead even if it is a tiny proportion of the mix)

Edit:

Also to set up with several distributors within Canada, USA and eventually Europe who will of course help our product gain the attention of retailers.

I'd say talk to the distributors even before you have your game done, they should be able to tell you if they'd handle stuff with metal in (and possibly how they think it would do in comparison with either plastic of whatever sort, or simple wooden meeples)

Not sure this will work for a board game sized box, but if you're looking for retail printed tuck boxes, these guys might work:

http://www.yourboxsolution.com

You can do short runs and they have a huge variety of box shapes and sizes to choose from. I haven't used them yet but I probably will one day. When I asked about prices they came out to a little over $1 each for 250, and then it gets cheaper if you print more than that. For my minis though I'm switching to clamshells that are a lot cheaper

I use ShipNaked for my warehouse needs. I don't ship in big volumes, usually just a few orders a week that would be easy enough for me to handle myself, but I live in a 1 bedroom condo and just don't have the space to store everything. It's a lot easier for me to have everything in their warehouse, and if someone places an order in my online store I just forward the email to them and they pack it and ship it right away.

If you're going for a board game though, I don't think metal minis are the way to go. Board gamers want cheapy plastic minis, where they just crack open the box and it's ready to play. Metal might be ok if it's optional, like the core game comes with pathfinder-esque cardstock pawns, and then you could sell minis separately for folks to collect. If you're going the Kickstarter route, I think you'll do better with a board game with PVC minis, metal mini campaigns just don't seem to do that well anymore. And if you go the boardgame route I think you might be better off with a company like Panda who will manufacture and shirnkwrap the whole thing and send it to you ready to sell so all you have to do is take it out of the box, which will make things a lot quicker and easier for fulfillment.

The quality of minis boardgamers want has skyrocketed with the kickstarter scene pushing the envelope, cheaply plastic does not cut it easily these days.

Panda is an odd beast I have heard a lot of bad things about them lately, still some swear by them, but the negativity is evident.

I think Panda does good work,

but in their own timetable, not yours, all the while promising stuff will be done 'next week'

so ok(ish) for a retail release where you can start publicity once it's in your hands, not nearly so good for a KS that probably run late anyway if you have to add 6 months to a year of unfulfilled promises of 'soon' to the backers

By cheapy plastic minis I meant PVC, like your typical CMON game where they spam you with plasticrack I don't think most board gamers would want model kits you have to build like 40k, and metal is too expensive? either way I think no matter what material they just have to be built and ready to play right out of the box if you want to attract more of a board gamer crowd.

Yeah, while there has been a bit of a blurring of lines between the board gaming and miniatures/wargaming hobbies, its important to remember that the two are not the same market segment, and as consumers have very different desires and needs. I think this is something that many miniatures gamers in particular fail to understand when it comes to board gaming miniatures. They seem to expect minis with the quality and detail of something produced by GW, PP, CB, or Wyrd that they can paint up for display or what have you. Instead, what they receive is very high end board gaming minis which are on the low end for wargaming minis and get all huffy and puffy that they wont paint up nicely or cant be converted easily, etc.

Cmon and Sopapop miniatures are far from cheapy plastic,but now I understand what you mean, still the models they produce have quality and cannot be considered cheap.