$1 Million Board Game Budget

I was reading an old article and one of the comments about mass market games made me think of something.

So, if some eccentric millionaire approved a million dollar budget to create a good, mass market board game, what would the money be spent on to accomplish the goal? I'm talking a good game with market penetration, maybe not as famous as Monopoly, but on the same page as it. So if you mentioned it to someone outside of the hobby, they'd stand a good chance of being familiar with it. And good is subjective, I know, but I mean something a hobby gamer might want to play.

Would a million dollars even be enough? I'm guessing a huge percentage would have to go just towards advertising--I don't know what a game with million dollar production values would even look like. Then some spent on paying a top notch designer or group of designers, and then maybe excellent art...

If the goal wasn't to achieve mass market success (so you didn't have to worry so much about advertising), how would you spend the million dollars to make the game as good as possible? Could you come up with ways to spend all of the money in the furtherance of designing a better game?

I don't have a clear picture of how the current industry works, of how much, say, Descent cost FFG from initial idea to marketplace shelves, but I would be curious to know. My understanding is that most of the Kickstarters for board games are basically just trying to cover the printing costs and pay for some art, and their goals are in the low 5 figures, unless they have crazy miniatures or something.

So, a couple of different thought experiments off of the question:

What would a million dollar board game look like?

By eccentric millionaire do you mean Hasbro? Cause when you're printing up a million copies of Disney Princess Dress Adventure, I'm guessing you're hitting the million dollar budget pretty easily.

MattLoter wrote: By eccentric millionaire do you mean Hasbro? Cause when you're printing up a million copies of Disney Princess Dress Adventure, I'm guessing you're hitting the million dollar budget pretty easily.

Disney Princess Dress Adventure--sounds like an adventure game I haven't played yet! I wonder if Frank has it...

So I guess the main cost is just in actually printing the game itself, not in any of the design or art so much. That seems like the opposite of video games, where the actual cost of a disc and pressing it is dirt cheap compared to paying peoples' salaries to actually program and create the graphics.

In my mind, if you had a million dollars, you could buy a cool license, hire a really good designer or group of designers, get superb art, and make a good size print run with tons of cash to spare, but maybe I just don't understand the economics of it. And I guess it's not really lack of money that's preventing great games from coming out, since we live in a time when a ton of great stuff is coming out constantly.

Are there any good articles about the economics of board game design/publishing, either here on the Fort or elsewhere?

The business rule of thumb here is the longer the print run, the incremental printing cost of each game is reduced. So it is more than just having a million dollars. It is how the money is used.

Also, the price of petrol affects the costs as well--twofold, because petrol is used to make plastics in the game and it also affects overseas INCO shipping terms.

I was told by someone in the know, $800K is a feasible start for funding a boardgame company. Kickstarter may have lowered the entry point. Even so, cash flow has to be sustained before any meaningful revenue can be brought in on accounts receivable.

Success has been known to put some companies out of business.

a strange aeon wrote: Are there any good articles about the economics of board game design/publishing, either here on the Fort or elsewhere?

I would love to see more stuff on this, because I don't really know much about it. Any guest contributors out there?