The Board Game Industry | Start Here

0:00 you played ticket to ride at your mates house she told you about a local game store so you nipped in for your own copy of ticket to ride and you walked out with pandemic azul and code names later that afternoon you googled the best board games for 2021 and you found yourself on boardgamegeek.com a month later you proudly displayed more than 30 new board games on your shelves but opportunities to play were a little bit slim your family was getting a little bit tired of constantly learning new rules so you joined a board game club that you found online and you turned up to that first meetup and you were blown away by the vast numbers of games and gamers out there this industry has got to be big business right i'm adam porter i started designing games in 2014 and i have seven published games to my name plus a few more on the way i'm a freelancer and like most board game inventors i carved my own path learning about the industry as i went along i'm going to tell you how the board game industry works and how much money you can expect to make this is where the picture starts a child playing with their parents and siblings a teenager role-playing with their mates a party game following a dinner party or a strategy game with a bunch of hobbyists gamers venturing out to gaming meetups or perhaps playing with friends over a pint in the pub or maybe they like to play online or on a mobile app on their commute to work this is the

1:31 core of the board game industry this is the bit which really matters so where do these games come from how does the collector get their hands on the latest hot release and where can the parent pick up a reliable familiar old classic a copy of monopoly to entice their sullen offspring away from their playstation good luck with that by the way so these are the main avenues by which consumers are purchasing physical games in 2021. the largest sector of course is still the mass market sales of classics from hasbro and mattel eclipse anything coming out of the hobby side but there's certainly far more crossover than you would have seen a decade ago the most popular hobby titles are starting to hit mass market stores and it wouldn't be a surprise to happen across a copy of ticket to ride or code names in a bookstore or a toy store or even a supermarket it wasn't always this way within the hobby side of the market there are many hundreds of games being released each year not all of these are going to achieve widespread success most will have a very brief window where they'll sit on a hobby store shelf coveted by a small number of dedicated gamers they might achieve sales of a few thousand units if they're good mediocre titles will fail to reach even that relatively low bar for many hobby stores the big money comes from sales of collectible card games the drip feed of blind booster packs keeps committed players returning week after week to bolster their collection stores run events which pitch players against each

3:02 other so if i just spend a little bit more just a few more boosters maybe just maybe i could reach the top of that scoreboard a physical presence on the high street is expensive and footfall is decreasing as shoppers move online so hobby stores tend to keep their prices quite high to cover their overhead costs they have to consistently find new strategies to keep their customers coming back new ways to engage if you could buy the same product considerably cheaper online why would you spend more in your local game store for many stores this means making their store into a community so visiting the store becomes an event the shop assistants are going to look after you they guide you in your purchases how else is a customer going to navigate the thousands of bright boxes sitting on the game store shelves alternatively a game store might increase their income by incorporating a web store selling online isn't cheap packaging and shipping are considerable costs but if you manage to rise above the massive number of other competing online stores you might be able to reach a much wider customer base than you could sitting in the outskirts of a city centre down some dark alley because that was the only place you could find with rental costs low enough to be sustainable and then there's the publishers themselves some will sell their games directly to the customer via websites or even in physical stores as is the case with games workshop and their warhammer range but we'll be coming back to the publishers later so we've established

4:33 the various routes to getting the games into players hands but how do you make the players aware of these games in the first place well mass market sales have always been driven by traditional media television adverts newspaper adverts and the use of brand assets which give the game an immediate familiarity these days mass market companies are very aware of the power of social media youtube influencers play a big role in shifting toys and games even better if the game is immediate enough and funny enough that people share videos photos and tales of their games on facebook instagram tick tock and youtube an organic unforced viral video of a product shared by an accidental brand advocate can do wonders for sales the hobby market was ahead of the game with social media the proliferation of modern board games in the early 2000s is directly related to the introduction of the internet into people's lives and homes board game geek was founded at the turn of the century and quickly became a central hub for all things related to tabletop gaming gamers talk to each other online and that's how the market grows youtube tiktok and instagram have become so pivotal to raising awareness about games that becoming a self-styled reviewer or board game commentator is a legitimate career choice in 2021 it's a sphere almost as saturated as the board game market itself so it's not easy but a fair number of familiar faces on youtube are now running their

6:04 channels as a full-time job and what about you adam i hear you ask what well how much are you earning from youtube do we have to talk about that well i think we should be transparent about 20 months sorry 20 20 months could you speak up 20 pounds a month all right you happy geez publishers provide review copies of games to media channels to get the word out there but that's not their only method of raising awareness massive board game conventions like gencon in the us essen spiel in germany and uk games expo in england are great opportunities for publishers to meet their customers face to face to show off their new products demonstrate how to play and build some buzz around their titles in a single year essence spiel might feature the debut of a thousand new titles attending conventions is a big expense for publishers stalls are expensive as is traveling and accommodation and sales are often pretty modest there's only so much stock that you can shift over a weekend so most publishers don't make big profits by attending conventions the draw of a convention is the marketing opportunity it creates for you the most hyped games at a convention frequently go on to capture the attention of the media channels the game can get some really good momentum going following a strong showing at a convention talking of building momentum crowdfunding sites have become major players in the board game industry kickstarter is the most prominent and

7:35 it's a pre-order system a web shop and a marketing platform all rolled into one that wasn't how it started a decade ago kickstarter was a tool used by creative folk who couldn't afford to launch their big idea a brief outline of the project was enough to bring a few kindly investors on board and suddenly your average gamer was able to realize their dream of having their name on a board game box in 2021 if you want to fund you'd better already have a professional looking prototype you'd better have a polished trailer video and a significant social media following and several fun marketing tricks up your sleeve to attract investors but if you can pull it off you could bring in a huge number of customers in 2020 the game frost haven raised 13 million dollars on kickstarter of course the bulk of that money will be spent on manufacturing and shipping and marketing but it's inconceivable that the designer of that game isn't taking home a life-changing sum of money finally and much more modestly we have the unassuming little board game cafes which have sprung up in cities around the world these venues provide a great opportunity to discover new games most cafes have game teachers who will help you to learn the rules guide you to a title that you love it's the dream of many enthusiastic gamers to run their own board game cafe but it's often said that you really need to want to run a cafe first and foremost the board games might be your unique selling point but it's going to be the

9:05 coffee and cakes that bring in the money board game cafes are still a niche in the industry but they're such a charming wholesome little part of the board game world that i wanted to include them here so that's a lot for a publisher to manage dealing with media cafes conventions mass market hobby stores and web stores and it's overwhelming for the retailers how are they supposed to coordinate dealings with hundreds of different international publishers which of the many thousands of available board games should they stock in their store they've only got so much space and this is where the distributors come in distributors make deals with publishers and purchase stock from the publishers directly they hold large quantities of titles from many international publishers and organize them into their own catalogue which can then be shared with retail outlets it's hugely beneficial to the retailer because they only need to deal with two or three distributors instead of hundreds of publishers and then there's enough product available to fill their shelves and it works well for the publishers too they don't need to build relationships with thousands of game stores around the world they can leave that to the very capable distributors so we've dealt with our finished product we've promoted it got it into players hands but how did the product get made in the first place well let me introduce the other major player in the board game industry the manufacturer there are a number of manufacturers around the globe but the majority of games are put together in china these companies have huge expertise in this area and they're able

10:37 to build fantastic games based on a publisher's weird specifications including all the crazy wonderful components that they're asking for shipping the games is a huge logistical feat and in 2021 it's a bit of a nightmare but that's a topic for another video that i'll be posting this afternoon so who came up with the game in the first place well that's where folks like me come in the board game designers in europe these people are often called game authors and my personal preference is to describe myself as an inventor because designers too easily muddled up with many other types of designer most commonly those creating the look of a game which i play no part in inventor is also the most commonly used term in the wider toy industry and hence it's more recognizable to mass market publishers so a slot where we essentially make up the rules of the game but we don't do it alone we develop a concept and then we test it a lot behind every great board game idea there are many many play testers these are usually unpaid volunteers who just love trying out new games the undersung heroes of the board game industry you'll also notice that i've snuck an agent into the picture so agents are more common in the mass market than they are in the hobby industry and an agent is going to be seeking out game inventors and building relationships with them if they find a game idea which they think has potential they'll use their network of contacts with publishers around the world and get the game in front of the right people they might also invest time and money into

12:07 developing the game themselves some mass market publishers are really hard to contact directly they're far more likely to engage with an agent than with an individual designer so our board game industry meeple is pretty well populated at this point but they're still all lopsided they're hopping around on one leg so who else makes up the solid foundation of this industry well it's a wide range of other creatives artists graphic designers app designers miniatures designers game developers rules writers proof readers videographers marketing teams and project managers all of these people work closely with the publisher they may even be directly employed in-house and they lift the game concept to give it its identity and make the game truly special now i'd promise that i was going to get into finances so how much does a board game cost to produce and where does that money go the money that you spent in the game store well if we use the universal board game currency of wheat then we can imagine that a hypothetical board game costs five wheat to manufacture but the manufacturer needs to make a profit so they sell the final version to the publisher for 10 wheat per unit now the publisher wants to take their cut so they sell the game to a distributor at the cost of 20 wheat per unit the distributor takes their cut and sells the games to retail stores at a cost of 30 wheat per unit the retail store has huge overheads to pay to keep their store afloat so they

13:39 sell at the recommended retail price of 60 wheat and the chain is complete aha but what about the inventor the person without whom none of this would have been possible well they're paid by the publisher usually by way of royalties for each copy sold so a typical deal might be five percent of the wholesale cost by which i mean the inventor receives five percent of the wheat paid to the publisher by the distributor in our hypothetical example that means for a game costing 60 wheat the inventor will receive one wheat or thereabouts so if we imagine a successful big box strategy game with a retail cost of 60 or 60 british pounds a good first print run might be 10 000 copies maybe the game takes a couple of years to sell out and then the game is never reprinted the inventor receives around ten thousand dollars or ten thousand pounds spread over those two years they may well never see another penny thereafter of course these are massive ballpark figures and the finances of each game and the agreements between the different parties is going to vary massively but if we look at a small box game something scaled down with a retail cost of around 12 or 12 pounds well the inventor's income is much lower perhaps the game sells in slightly higher quantities although that's by no means certain but it wouldn't be at all unusual for an inventor to walk away with only a few hundred dollars in royalties or just pushing up into the

15:10 thousands of course there's more money to be made if you self-publish through crowdfunding sites but then you need to remember that you won't just be the inventor you'll be taking on the role of publisher dealing with manufacturers artists various different creative types distributors retailers and taking all of the risk on yourself whether that's appealing to you is going to be a really personal decision for me thus far i've always preferred the protection of licensing to publishers the reality is that most board game inventors work freelance in their spare time alongside another more stable career i'm a dentist but increasingly i'm seeing peers of mine managing to achieve a sustainable income from game design and making it their full-time occupation usually these designers have at least one evergreen title under their belt a really popular game which just keeps on selling or maybe a range of games with new titles released in the same series on a regular basis ensuring a steady income if you'd like to find out more about pitching to publishers check out the video on the topic by clicking on the link above and you can find many other videos about game design in the industry on my channel so please subscribe and hit the bell to make sure you're notified of upcoming videos in another video that's posted today i'm taking a look at the effect of covid 19 on the board game industry so make sure you take a look at that video too and i'll see you next time all the best