When you’re making a game, there are several things you can do with it:
- Publish the game yourself
- Pitch the game to a publisher
- Keep the game as a learning experience
- Share it with just your friends and family
None of these are bad options! You just need to choose the right option for you. Keeping the game as a learning experience takes the least amount of effort. Pitching the game could mean that you find a great publisher and then have an awesome (or not so awesome) experience with them, or you might not find a publisher that’s interested at all.
The self-publishing option tends to be the one that takes the most work and it requires a variety of skills to do well. However, there are different levels of self-publishing! The two major options are print on demand and printing with a manufacturer, either overseas or in the US.
Print on Demand
When you put a game up to be printed on demand, you upload the files to a site like The Game Crafter. Whenever anyone buys the game, the game gets printed and sent to the customer automatically! There are definitely some reasons why you would do this:
- You don’t have to put the money down for a full print run or pay the freight to ship the games overseas.
- You don’t have to store the extra games anywhere.
- If there’s an issue with the files, you can just reupload them instead of making a mistake that could cost a lot of money to fix.
- It’s relatively easy to make a profit this way, as you don’t have as many upfront costs.
- You can get the game to your customers much faster than waiting for a print run to complete and then waiting again for the game to be freighted across the ocean.
- This option is much easier and requires less work.
While there are a lot of positives to print on demand, there are some negatives as well!
- The cost of each game is much higher than it would be compared to doing a full print run of the game.
- The components are usually limited to certain box sizes and component types and colors. For instance, there might only be one option for red cubes instead of being able to choose the exact red you want.
- It can be a hassle to upload all of your assets, depending on who you’re printing with.
Manufacturing Overseas
When you’re printing overseas, you have to choose a manufacturer to work with, send them all the files, manufacture the game, freight the game to wherever it needs to go, then deal with all of the extra copies of the game.
This way is definitely a lot more work! First off, you have so many choices to make! For instance, you can make your box size just about whatever you’d like it to be. This can be both a positive and a negative, depending on what kind of person you are. You’ll also have to prepare all of your files in a way that works for the manufacturer and use their templates. Each manufacturer could have different templates, so you’ll have to make sure to ask for new templates if you switch manufacturers.
There’s usually an amount of back and forth on the files, as they have to be very particular and everything has to fit the manufacturer’s standards. Once the manufacturer is happy with the files you’ve sent, they’ll send back a digital proof for you to look at. Once that’s great, they might also send you a physical copy for you to go over. For the physical copy, it won’t be an actual manufactured copy; you’ll probably get blank components that fit the quality of what you requested and then printed components that are of lesser quality. You might have to pay a certain amount to get the proof copy, but it’s definitely worth it as you can identify issues before you’ve printed a few thousand copies of your game.
Once the physical proof copy has been approved, manufacturing starts and usually takes 1-2 months to finish. After that, the games will wait to go onto a boat, eventually getting on one or more of them and journey towards their destination. This can take another 1-2 months, then the games will have to go through customs, which can be fast or very slow. After that, they might travel on a train and/or truck to their destination!
Here are some really good things about manufacturing overseas:
- You can get exactly the product you want. With print on demand, you might be limited to certain box sizes and components, but when you’re manufacturing, you can make a ton of choices about the end product, including things like card weight, card cores, colors, sizes, and materials. You can even get things like custom meeples, which are very specific to your game!
- Manufacturing the game will most likely mean that the quality is a bit higher than that of print on demand.
- You can get a spare box of components to replace missing or broken components, which is especially nice if you’re a game designer. Your manufacturer might alternatively give you an extra percentage of games so that you’ll have spare parts.
- The price per game is A LOT lower than that of print on demand, so you should theoretically be able to afford to sell your game into distribution and to retail stores. You can also make a lot of money if you end up selling a good portion of the games you make. This also means that it’s much cheaper to send copies to reviewers.
- You can get extra copies made to sell at conventions, but you’ll have to be realistic on how many copies you can sell. While you might have a lot of success selling your game, it also takes effort and you could get stuck with a garage full of games that you don’t know what to do with.
Here are some additional costs that can be associated with manufacturing overseas:
- You have to be able to pay for a full print run before you can start selling your game. This is typically at least a few thousand dollars, but can really vary depending on how many copies you want to print and what will be included in the game.
- You’ll also have to pay the freight for shipping the game across the ocean. This can be especially costly now, as prices for freight have risen dramatically since COVID began. When paying for freight, you’ll also most likely have to organize a truck to bring the pallets of games to wherever you end up storing the games.
- If you don’t have a lot of space to store extra pallets of games, you might need to buy warehouse space or get a storage unit, which costs a certain amount of money each month.
Here are some cons about manufacturing overseas:
- There are SO MANY choices! You might also not be told all of your choices and might need to be very good at asking a variety of questions so that you can fully understand all your options and choose the best one.
- There can be a language barrier depending on the company that you’re working with. This can make it hard to understand what changes you’ll have to make to the files and can result in a lot of wasted time.
- Getting the game can take a really long time. Not only do you have the time it takes to go back and forth with fixing the files, but it also usually takes 30-60 days to manufacture the game. Then you have to wait for the game to get on a boat, which can take weeks, then to freight across the ocean, then to go through customs. This entire process might take anywhere from 3 months (if you’re lucky) to potentially 6-12 months (or even more!).
- There can be a time difference between you and the company you’re manufacturing with. This might mean that you can only send one email a day to the company, then they’ll respond while you’re asleep, and you can respond back the next day.
- If something goes wrong, there’s sometimes very little you can do about it, other than sending an email or making a phone call.
- If there’s been a misprint, there’s most likely an issue in every single copy of the game. One small mistake can be a very large hassle and cost a lot to solve.
Manufacturing in the US
Another option is to manufacture your game in the US. This option is really only good for people that live within the US, though. I haven’t actually used a manufacturer in the US, but I have considered it! I’ve been told that US-based manufacturers tend not to be as good for plastics as Chinese manufacturers are, but that they can certainly make cards and wood-based bits well. A definite upside to manufacturing in the US is that you won’t have to pay for freighting into the US or waiting for the games to be freighted. If you have a quick deadline that you want to meet, this might be the fastest way to meet it. You also shouldn’t have a language barrier if you’re working with a manufacturer in the US, which can definitely be a plus.
However, US manufacturing does cost significantly more than manufacturing overseas. As stated earlier, the US manufacturers might not be able to manufacture all the different pieces you might need and you will probably have a limited selection of the types of things you can add to your game.
Manufacturing in the EU
If you live in Europe, you might also want to consider manufacturing from within Europe. While I know the least about this option, I do know it can be cost effective and incredibly fast if the majority of your shipping is happening in the EU.
One reason to manufacture in Euro+pe is that you can actually visit the manufacturing center and meet the people that will be manufacturing your game. You’ll be able to get the proof copy within a few days and you won’t have to wait on the games to go overseas to get to you. This option can save you months! While it is typically more expensive to manufacture in Europe than it is to manufacture in China, it might be cost-effective as you won’t have to pay for the overseas freight.
Custom Making a Game
There’s also the option of custom making the game yourself. This could work out for you if you’re really crafty and you can make your game into a collector’s item. Making the game yourself can take a lot of time and energy, which means that the game is usually rather expensive with this route.
Usually, you only want to do this if you really enjoy being crafty, you have some hardware skills, and you can sell the game for a premium. You can do things like Kickstarter’s Make 100, where you only create and sell 100 of the item, which can make it more popular and more of a collector’s item.
Final Note
You should think of your specific product when you choose how to manufacture it. While one product might be a good fit for manufacturing overseas, another might be better with print on demand. You’ll also really want to consider where you want to spend your time, as print on demand can allow you a lot more time to design, though the margins tend to be a lot lower. Plus, you don’t have to publish every game you make!
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