Step 3: Profit?

[slipjig3]

I need y'all's opinion on a possible money-making project.

Background: As many of you know, I recently created a card game for shadesong (cleverly titled "Shadesong: The Card Game"). I was very pleased with how it turned out, and I had been batting around the possibility of converting it to a more general-interest theme and shopping it around to game publishers like Steve Jackson and/or Looney Labs. zarhooie, however, had a suggestion that I'm finding somewhat intriguing, and I wanted to find out if there'd be any interest.

The idea: Offer the game for sale, cheap, as a downloadable PDF, which the buyer could then print out on card stock and cut out (which is pretty much what I did to produces Shadesong's game). Here's the fun part: buyers can also get a subscription, also cheap, to a year's worth of expansion sets, each containing anywhere from 12 to 20-ish cards, issued bimonthly (also in PDF format).

Pros: Zero initial startup cost. Prices low enough (say, $5 for the initial set, $5 for six expansions) that they won't chase away potential buyers/subscribers. Ongoing continued interest for the designer. Built-in customer loyalty, assuming this works. Potential for future farming-out to actual publishers, with a demonstrable market attached.

Cons: Buyer has to print and cut out the things him/herself, which is likely to be seen as a royal pain in the ass.

I already have a general idea worked out. It's going to be called "Everything and a G'moink" (yes, there's a reason, don't ask), and it's specifically designed to allow for damned near anything to turn up on a card: "Kazoo," "Lock of Hair from the Archduke Ferdinand," "Alien Blob from Rigel 6," "Lint," etc. Theoretically, it could be expanded forever—assuming, of course, that people wanted it to.

So, what say you?

[Poll #930646]

Any and all comments are welcome.

Comments

[jenphalian.livejournal.com]

Great idea - I thought the game was hella fun to play (yeah, I just said hella; what're you gonna do?!). I think that, in addition to your standard geek/gamer crowd, you can really pull in meth addicts with the tweaker-project setup! :)

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how it'll do, but I have in fact designed and printed games on card stock before.

My biggest obstacle was that the printing smudged quickly as the cards were handled (and shuffled, etc.). I eventually solved this by spraying all of the cards with fixative before cutting them out. (Actually, I punched them out, having printed them on perforated business card paper.) That is way too much of a pain to ask people to do for themselves. I expect that there exist high-end inks that would eliminate smudging problems (laser printer toner was even worse), but the end users can't be expected to buy those, either.

What about this: You offer the PDF as is, but also offer, for an additional shipping, labor and materials charge, to do the printing and cutting yourself, for guaranteed quality. (After all, who even wants to be bothered to pick up card stock, let alone fixative?) Anyone who buys the former can upgrade to the latter for just the difference in price.

That last option could be the best part of the market, as people realize that they can't be bothered with everything it takes to get it printed really well. They don't have to feel like they've wasted their five dollars, or that later they're paying through the nose for the upgrade (because they've already paid much of the cost). They could come out of it quite satisfied.

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

A few thoughts:

1) Make them printable on one of the pre-perforated stocks (Avery or whatever). Way less of a bitch than scissors/finding a papercutter -- and also makes the cards more anonymous.

2) Talk to the good people at your neighborhood copy shop, or Kinkos, or whatever, and figure out how they can get optionally integrated into the process. If someone's going to play this seriously, being able to get these printed in a way that would last is going to matter. If you can give simple directions to get these cards printed at about business-card style and quality, that would help.

3) Your cost may not in fact be zero, when you look into promoting it. Don't overlook the importance of marketing: minimally you should have a website and some way of bookkeeping for how you'll know when people are in and out of subscription.

[rubian77.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, yeah -- with #1, if it fits on name badge or business card stock, that makes it super easy.

[icarusfallen8.livejournal.com]

Intriguing idea.

I like the basic idea, but I really like the expansion idea.
That said, it does seem to have some potential problems.

One of problems with the idea would be similar to what blimix said. I personally don't have experience printing on card stock, and don't know how easy it would be to do. Is this something that you would have to bring to a Kinko's (or other such printer), or can it be done on a home printer (the paper in my printer does a 180' turn between the feeder tray and the end result, which I don't think a card stock could handle). If so, how much would/did it cost to print?
Blimix mentions that the printer ink can smear over time. Not too much of a problem as the owner of the pdf can simply reprint it. But this does add aggravation and cost to the process.

Another potential problem with it is in getting the potential buyers to know about the game in the first place. Would this be simply word of mouth (or of e-mail/blog etc.), or would you try marketing which would cost money?

Cheap ass games sells basic games for about $5 each (some more, some less). They are available at games stores and in many online stores (Warehouse 23, Amazon ...). They don't have the printing hassle, and are in the same price range. It might be a good idea to check that way.


I don't see any problems at all with the subscription idea. It unfortunately doesn't mesh well with any non PDF method.

[jesshartley.livejournal.com]

I didn't play the Shadesong game, unfortunately, but I'd definitely buy in to a game you made.

However, I fear I would be a minority. Have you done any research into how small game companies market, etc? (like Zygote Games out of Amherst, or the like? I know there is a board game publisher who is fairly local as well, but the name is escaping me. They have a pirate game, a rome game and a food fight game.)

Random Thoughts

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

I second the Cheapass games route.

Rio Grande games did a print-your-own expansion like this -- I did it on card stock and it looks good. I found it works either printing them on card stock directly, or on full-sheet labels and attaching them to cardstock (for thicker cards, although it makes shuffling more problematic).

Steve Jackson games has their e23 site, and they publish card games there. You may want to check out with their marketing people there. I don't know if the subscription route would work with their business model, though (look, I said "business model" -- I sound professional).

How would you do back-issues? Say you put out 12 issues on 2007, and someone subscribes in 2008 -- could they get 2007 issues? I would probably sell each expansion individually, and include the subscription as an alternate method. ($2 per expansion already created, or $5 for a year).