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Inventing board games.
billwill
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So yeah. My hobby for the past few years has been inventing board games that I play with my friends.
I've gotten pretty serious about it in the past few months, after one of my last board games, Rule Da Block (a humorous take on gang warfare) took off outside of my circle of friends. I've sold twelve copies of the game at sixty dollars a pop (I'm not making a profit, it just costs that much for me to make each one personally). Anyway, I just finished my latest board game today, and I have to say that I'm very proud of it. I officially played it a few times with friends at a party and they loved it. I want to try and get this one actually published.
Here's the rub(s), though:
1) It's Harry Potter themed; apparently Mattel owns the rights to the board game (or at least they're the company that has made all the HP board games in the past).
2) How would I even go about pitching my board game? Obviously the Harry Potter one might be a shot in the dark what with potential licensing issues or whatever, but I'd like to get some of my past (and future) board games published as well. I literally have no idea as to how I should go about this. Should I try to self-publish and get someone's attention like that? Or go straight to a company?
Any advice would be great. Thanks!
I've gotten pretty serious about it in the past few months, after one of my last board games, Rule Da Block (a humorous take on gang warfare) took off outside of my circle of friends. I've sold twelve copies of the game at sixty dollars a pop (I'm not making a profit, it just costs that much for me to make each one personally). Anyway, I just finished my latest board game today, and I have to say that I'm very proud of it. I officially played it a few times with friends at a party and they loved it. I want to try and get this one actually published.
Here's the rub(s), though:
1) It's Harry Potter themed; apparently Mattel owns the rights to the board game (or at least they're the company that has made all the HP board games in the past).
2) How would I even go about pitching my board game? Obviously the Harry Potter one might be a shot in the dark what with potential licensing issues or whatever, but I'd like to get some of my past (and future) board games published as well. I literally have no idea as to how I should go about this. Should I try to self-publish and get someone's attention like that? Or go straight to a company?
Any advice would be great. Thanks!
I hate you and you hate me.
billwill on
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Otherwise, why not write places like Fantasy Flight Games and ask them how they handle submissions? Go to your local game store, write down a bunch of companies, and just start sending out emails to figure out how they deal with these sorts of things.
As for the Harry Potter, good luck on that. You'd be best of reconfiguring that game under a new IP.
Esh, thanks. I'll write them immediately. And yeah, I'm not hopefully for the Harry Potter thing. I mainly did it for my friends who are obsessed with the books/films.
Another thing is, my games aren't really American (even though I live in America), if that makes sense. They're not like the zero-sum games that are so popular here. I definitely follow the European mindset of board gaming, so I guess I should look up some European board game companies as well and write them.
Should I just email their general email address with my inquiry? Or try and find a person within the company that might be better suited to help?
Card and Board Game Guidelines
Fantasy Flight Games does not accept unsolicited game submissions.
So, that's right out. I feel like this is going to be the case with a lot of companies though. They're not going to want to fuss with an outsider. They'd rather create in-house and keep the money themselves.
I have a feeling that self-publishing is going to be your only real bet. I figured as well you were talking about European style games.
EDIT: Go here...
http://boardgamegeek.com/forums/region/1/boardgamegeek
There's a whole board game design sub-forum. That's basically the premier place for board game discussion on the internet.
but they're listening to every word I say
This is probably just my ignorance on the subject but I thought copyright was just something that automatically applies to any unique idea?
No, not at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
I'm not saying this in a sarcastic tone but am I still missing something? I read this:
"In all countries that are members of the Berne Convention, copyright is automatic and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder, or rightsholder, is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while registration isn't needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright."
Which seems to reinforce my original statement, right? Or is something still going over my head?
$60 is below what I generally expect to pay for a board game, so I don't really think that's a discouraging amount.
The base set for Twilight Imperium ran my group something like $90, if I remember right.
And when I hear Rule Da Block, I think Saints Row board game style. That sounds fucking sweet, to me.
If I understand it right, it basically means it's not entirely necessary for you to register a copyright, but having one would make it pretty well airtight.
Also, you need to patent.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4899582_patent-game-idea.html
Thanks! I haven't played Saints Row yet (though the third one looks great), but I do have a general idea as to what it's like. Rule Da Block is like the most politically incorrect thing I've ever made (which is saying a lot). There's a card, for example, that taints the cocaine supply of a rival gang and lowers their moral for two turns. It gets much worse than that but that should give you a general idea.
No, most board games (European and otherwise) are $50 to $60 retail. Poke around on Amazon. Some massive games run into that realm, but even then, I seriously doubt their cost to make is $60 even with taking economy of scale into account and I don't think the OP is putting together something like Twilight Imperium, Runewars, or Descent with all their intricate pieces.
Well I know about patenting and how I would need to go about doing that. It's just the copyright thing I wasn't clear on.
The $60 price isn't really a big deal. I'm hand-making each one of the games; there is no automation at any point. I'm sure if I had higher demand I could streamline the process and sell the game for considerably less by buying in bulk, etc.
It is to the people you're selling to. Unless you don't care about profit.
Go to the site I showed you. That's where you're going to find the information you need and discuss with other people who are doing the exact same thing you're attempting.
No, you don't understand. I'm saying it costs $60 because I'm not bothering to cut corners or streamline the process right now. I'm not saying "screw the consumer, blah blah blah." I'm just commenting that the price could easily go down.
edit: wikipedia claims you should put the copyright symbol on your things anyway even though it is automatic, to reduce peoples chances of claiming "I didn't know!"
but they're listening to every word I say
The most common reason for this is they don't want some random dude to send them his idea that just happens to match a game they're working on, publish that game, and then have the guy sue for stealing his idea.
edit: also, there are very few game mechanics that are unique enough to claim copyright.
You can't copyright the basic mechanics just like you can't copyright the rules of grammar. You can, however, own the rights to your specific and unique expression. For instance, you can't own the rights to using a board as a component in any game generally, but the design and art for your own specific game board which you created for Rule Da Block is all yours.
As far as your question goes about publishing past and future board games, I'd personally go with self-publishing if I could get my hands on the machinery necessary to scale the production of a game. Talk to a lawyer and an accountant about setting up an LLC. Build a brand locally by taking it around to every game store you can find in a 50 mile radius and pitch it directly to the store owner for retail space, augment it with a website where you'll also sell the product. Utilize social media sites like Facebook or Twitter so that existing customers can easily refer future customers to your products and so that you can keep in touch with your customers.
Once you build a brand both for your games and for yourself personally as a game designer, you'll be in a much better position to approach a company like Fantasy Flight to license and sell your product. Not only will you be more likely to get a meeting for a sales pitch, you can leverage the strength of your brand to ask for more money in exchange for a license. And a national company has a harder time ripping off an existing brand than it does ripping off a guy no one's ever heard of, so that brand also offers an additional sense of protection for your intellectual property.
If you're rich and famous in five years, I expect a free copy of Rule Da Block.
You mean kickstarter? That's an awesome place, and I've backed several things on there already.
As far as costs, yeah, handmaking is expensive. Once he gets them mass produced costs should go down a lot. However, from there costs go up a lot when middlemen (stores) become involved. That's one of the things Sirlin discovered when doing Yomi. And telling it like it is tends to piss people off.
As far as theme and licensing goes, that's not necessarily a biggie. Many games undergo theme changes when they get published. http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/16285/theme-changed-by-the-publisher
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
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Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
maybe what you could do is kickstarter some of your games that you own all the rights to, get a couple of them under your belt to legitimize you as a designer which would make it infinitely easier to get even a meeting with the content owner.
Man, kickstarter is like, the greatest thing to happen to the independent game designer. It really is a revolutionary delivery system for modern day board gaming.
These guys seemed to do it right, they don't appear to be immensely successful (in $$$$ terms) but they've got their game into shops and stuff. They seem quite approachable from their website, they might be able to give you some advice on getting started.
On the topic of the theme -- I mentioned earlier that you can't own the idea behind mechanics, but you can own a unique and individual expression. This is also true for fictional stories. J.K. Rowling owns the rights to Harry Potter, not to stories about young children attending boarding schools for wizards. Many other distinct stories about that specific theme have been done; Ursula K. Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea springs to mind.
If magic is an important component for your game, I suggest reading that book and others of the same milieu before taking a month to percolate on your own unique expression of the theme. If it's not important, ditch the magic entirely and just make it about a regular school. Or a unique school which focuses on something other than magic.
However, there are many game companies out there not named Fantasy Flight. I'm a wargamer and so not deeply plugged into the Eurogame market, but you could do a lot worse than going to a big game convention and introducing yourself to some of the game companies. A poster up top mentioned Boardgame Geek, which would be a good place to start.
They also do a lot of localization of Fantasy Flight stuff.
Basically what they tell you to do is make a pdf of how your game works in terms of mechanics with some pictures showing what the board might look like etc.
They are not interested in a theme or background as these might change.
Also it is important to point out how your game differs from other boardgames and what games it might be similar to and how it works better than those other games.