I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that the cost for people to buy the game is about to come way down. The bad news is detailed below.
Frenemies has reached an inflection point. In the next few weeks, my team and I will have to make a decision about what is the best way to proceed. The most pressing question has to do with production. That questions is whether we do it ourselves, or find someone else to do it for us. This is not a minor issue, because both are expensive in their own way, and each carries its’ own set of risks.
If we produce it ourselves, I know we can deliver. I also know that it will meet my own standards, because I’ll be the one running it. If we have someone else produce it, we can almost certainly achieve higher volume, do so much faster, reduce prices for customers, make more money, and ultimately build the brand and product offering that much faster.
But the question I find myself faced with is - who can make this?
We’ve been scouring the interwebs to find a manufacturer that can replicate what I’ve been showing off in my pictures. I’ve learned a lot about the industry during the course of that process. I used to be rather arrogant, not to mention critical of how so many games were put together. I scoffed at the simplicity of the designs. The flat, dull boards, with flashy graphics printed on stickers, then slapped onto simple cardboard bases.
Now I get it. It’s not that the creators of these games are too lazy or cheap, but rather, to hit any significant production volume or scale, while keeping the cost under $100, that’s what the industry is currently built for. So in other words, to build an actual business that can sustain itself, you have to with with what you’ve got. I may want to do things a certain way, but simply wanting something isn’t good enough. The process I want to use, doesn’t currently exist. So I must either invent the process myself, or suck it up and go with another process that does.
To replicate a game like mine, as it is, would mean a price tag well above $100. To get the cost below $100, I have no choice but to simplify the design, thereby making it easier and cheaper to produce.
This message goes out to all the people with relevant experience, skills, and/or technical expertise. Setting up a workshop of our own, with the capacity to produce 5,000 units per year, identical to what I’ve been showing pictures of, will cost about US$250,000, which I do not have. I’ve considered GoFundMe, KickStarter, Indiegogo, etc., but perhaps there are other ways of doing this I’ve not yet considered or simply don’t know exist. If you were in my position, what would you do?
How would you proceed?