Board Game Design Lab - Making a Plan
I was recently interviewed for Gabe Barrett’s Board Game Design Lab podcast (Episode 275). We talked about building a business plan for your project.
If you’re a creator, are budgeting for a game, want a better understanding of costs, or are just interested in the business side of game design, I think it’s worth a listen. I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a couple of the things that we talked about.
Why have a plan?
Having a plan gives us guidelines within which to operate and helps inform our decisions if things go wrong. It allows us to create something wonderful and protects us and our consumers.
By understanding the costs, and risks associated with bringing your game to market, you can understand the impact when things go wrong, and understand the framework within which you can fix things.
What are the costs in making a game?
There are four major costs in bringing a game to market, that I like to think of in two buckets.
Bucket 1: To Market Expenses
To market expenses are all the expenses that lead into your crowd funding event. They are essentially fixed costs that you are hoping to spread across a large enough print run to be palatable (and profitable. They fall into two categories:
Development costs: this is mostly illustration and graphic design, but also includes things like meeples for your prototypes, and printer ink.
Marketing expense: this could be a couple hundred dollars for a website, or a hundred thousand dollars in for videos and Facebook advertisements. These are the expenses to get word out about your game. You need to have a game plan for how you are marketing your project and what that will cost.
Bucket 2: Production and Freight & Fulfilment
These are your variable costs based on order quantity. Production is exactly what it sounds like – the cost of producing your print run. Freight and fulfillment is what it costs to get your product into the hands of your backers: freight, duty, fulfilment fees, and shipping.
When you understand your variable costs, you can figure out what you need to price your game at, and what your per unit variable profit margin is.
Planning around break evens?
Using your per unit variable profit margin, and understanding your to market expenses, you can back into the number of games you need to sell to break even. I made this super simple model so that you can play around with your numbers.
Example of a KS Model
Thinking about your project this way helps us frame what we need to do to be successful, allows us to understand if we are spending our resources (time and money intelligently), and importantly gives us a framework for understanding the risks to our project if things change. If freight costs go up, you can plug that into the model and see how it impacts your bottom line.
For more reading on the major costs, and understanding break evens, check out this article: Making Board Games Your Business
Any Budget?
The most empowering takeaway of investigating gaming company business models, is that you can create something great with pretty much any budget. But, you need to understand the constraints withing which you are operating.
A $2,000 illustration budget won’t get you professional commissioned illustration for an entire TCG. A $1,000 marketing budget won’t get you paid previews at all the biggest YouTube channels.
But, with that $2,000 you can query illustrators for their back catalogue, and you can license royalty free artwork. And with a $1,000 marketing budget you can start a blog, you can do one or two paid reviews and a bunch of free reviews, and you can make a prototype and take it to your local board game café.
Building a plan gives you a framework within which you can operate and informs you of where you need to either raise more capital, develop your own skills, or find the right partners.
What is your plan, for your project?
