For those of you who don’t follow the blog regularly, I kickstarted my first board game, Corporate America, way back in November of 2012. It’s now July 2013, and I just posted an update to my Kickstarter supporters announcing that the project is complete!

I chose to self publish Corporate America for a number of reasons. I want creative control, especially with a topic that might be too controversial for an established publisher with a reputation to maintain. Publishers can sometimes drag their feet in getting a game released, and I’m impatient. Finally, and most importantly, I want to learn. I want to understand how to make a game from start to finish, and I think the best way to learn is to just do it.

Today I’m going to share one aspect of my experience with you: how much the whole ordeal cost. I could not have made Corporate America without the generous articles other game designers and publishers have posted online. Especially useful for me were Byron Collins’ Game Design & Self-Publishing – A Resource for Game Designers and Brent Povis’ Game Design and Self-Publishing: A Primer for Self-Publishers, both on Board Game Geek, but there are countless useful articles out there. By sharing my experience, I hope to help other aspiring game designers achieve their dreams… or at least know what they’re getting themselves into.

Before today’s main event, I want to emphasize that my background is not in business. I come from a programming and game design background, and have picked up the little business savvy I have as I’ve gone along. I’m sure a lot of experienced publishers will question some of my numbers or laugh at some of my mistakes, but if you’re new to the industry, seeing some of the problems I encountered might help you avoid them yourself.

Kickstarter Funds

Let’s jump to the chase. How much money did it take to produce and distribute Corporate America, and how much was I able to raise on Kickstarter?

As you can see, I raised a staggering $20k (and even then, I just barely hit my goal), but still fell about $9.5k short of total costs. In a minute I’ll break down the costs so you can get a better idea of why making a game is that expensive, but first I’ll explain what I got for that $30k.

1630 copies of Corporate America were produced and made their way from Panda GM‘s China factory to Game Salute‘s New Hampshire warehouses. Of those games, about 275 went to Kickstarter supporters, leaving me with around 1350 to sell. The game retails for $40, but it is quite rare that I will keep all $40 for myself. When you buy from Game Salute, I get most of the money, but for every extra middleman between me and a customer, my slice of the pie diminishes. The game sells to brick and mortar shops for $20, halving the potential earnings. It’s too early to say, but I’d guess I’ll average around $12-15 per game sold.

If I sell all 1350 extra copies of the game, I will definitely make up the difference between the cost to produce the game and money raised on Kickstarter, and will even have made a profit. But selling 1350 copies of any game is very challenging (even one as awesome as Corporate America), so that’s a big if.

The moral of the story: do it for the love, not the money. I know some people have turned making board games into a thriving livelihood for themselves, but it’s not easy, even with the support of Kickstarter.

Breaking Down the Costs

Before going over the costs, I want to tell you what I did NOT include. I limited myself to Corporate America specific costs. Anything for Nothing Sacred Games generally was kept out of the equation.

That means I spent even more money while developing Corporate America. I registered the business. I bought domain names and hosted this website. I set up my home office. I purchased graphic design software. And of course I bought materials for building lots and lots of prototypes. But these are mostly one time costs, and if I self publish another game, they will already be covered (mostly).

Below is the cost breakdown. I’ll get into a bit more detail about the different categories afterwards.

Service Fees: Before I even got my $20732 from Kickstarter, Amazon and Kickstarter had already taken $1739.76 for themselves. You need to expect them to take about 10% of whatever money you raise.

Taxman: I timed my Kickstarter campaign to coincide with the presidential election in November, when I thought political interest would be at a peak. I didn’t really think much about how it would fit in with the tax cycle. Unfortunately, the tax cycle did not line up well. I wasn’t able to spend the money in the same year I raised it, so I had to pay taxes on it. The good news is I’ll almost certainly be way in the hole this year, so I probably will have to pay very little in the way of taxes, but last year I took a pretty big hit from Uncle Sam. Note that $3k is approximate.

Shipping: It turns out, moving physical objects is not cheap. This total includes both shipping from China to New Hampshire (about $1500, less than I expected because I was able to combine ship with a few other games), and shipping to backers (well over $4000, more than I expected because shipping costs went up between the time I calculated expected shipping costs and when the games actually shipped). This total also includes shipping other Kickstarter rewards, which was small compared to shipping the games but not insignificant.

Printing: Exactly what it sounds like: how much money I paid Panda GM for their top notch job on Corporate America. Also hidden in there is the $60 required to wire two payments to them.

Kickstarter: This includes money spent specifically on the Kickstarter (like props and software for the video) and the cost of Kickstarter extras (in the case of Corporate America, the presidential hats).

Publicity: You’ve got to spend money to make money. This includes advertising the Kickstarter campaign, submitting the game to and attending conferences and conventions, and having the game reviewed before the Kickstarter went live.

The biggest chunk of this comes from advertising on Board Game Geek (probably essential for the success of the Kickstarter), but making and shipping prototypes around the world was also costly. Once the game stabilized, I used The Game Crafter for professional looking prototypes. It is an excellent service, though fairly pricy (getting a copy of Corporate America produced by them is significantly more than the retail price of the final game).

Game: This is the money required to actually make the game. The majority of it went to artists, and I think I got a steal here. Two very talented artists, Chrissy Fellmeth and Karen Siebald, did an amazing job bringing the game to life and gave me bargain deals.

I took care of a lot of the art and graphic design myself, keeping costs down, but I had a couple of excellent mentors (including the famed Slim Mittens) giving me feedback and advice free of charge.

Other costs in the game category include buying a bar code, getting a test prototype from The Game Crafter, and finding Game Salute as a distributor.

So, that’s why Corporate America cost as much as it did. I honestly think I lucked out on how little it cost. I made some mistakes and wasted some money along the way, but I did a pretty good job of keeping costs down when I could and only spending when necessary.

That said, many friends put a lot of free time and labor into the project. The Kickstarter never would have succeeded without friends acting in the video, providing equipment and advice along the way, and helping to spread the word (not to mention their generous financial contributions to the campaign). Thanks guys–you’re awesome!

Betting on Success

Before concluding today, I want to answer one more question. How much of that $30k did I have to pay before the Kickstarter ended successfully? In other words, how much money was I betting that Corporate America would be made before I knew it actually would be?

As you can see, I put down about $2k on Corporate America, which would have been thrown away if the Kickstarter was unsuccessful. Compared to $28k, that might not seem like much, but that’s a lot of meals!

Most of this money was spent on art for the game, getting reviews of the game, getting the campaign set up (mostly the video), and advertising during the campaign.

That said, that number should actually probably be higher! I should have publicized the game more before the campaign started, especially going to more conventions. I also should have established Game Salute as a partner before the campaign was successful. That would have simplified my life a lot.

The Price of a Dream

And there you have it–the monetary cost of producing a board game, and how much Kickstarter can help out.

But it turns out, making a board game doesn’t just cost a lot of money. It takes a lot of time, too.

In my next post, I’ll discuss the timeline for Corporate America, mentioning the milestones the game hit between conception to the shrink-wrapped package-of-fun it has become.

Update: The next post is now up.