Date: 6th February 2014
I talked briefly to Andrew by email about how they managed to design, manufacture and sell their own game…
The questions cover the following subjects:
PES: I believe you remained in control of the whole thing as you set up TerrorBull Games (your own publishing house). So am I right to think that you designed it in house and arranged the printing yourselves? What I’m getting at is, it wasn’t managed by people who were already experienced in the games/publishing business?
AS: That’s right, we self published the whole thing. Not only did we have no experience of games and publishing, but we had no experience of manufacture, shipping, retail, distribution, PR, marketing… It was a steep learning curve! The main reason we decided to self-publish was because no one else would touch the game with a barge pole. Back in 2006 terrorism was quite a taboo subject.
PES: So the first step was designing it….can you estimate roughly how long it took?. I’m mainly trying to gauge the hands-on work time needed so that people will have an idea how much it’s likely to cost in designer time.
AS: That’s almost impossible to say. But it’s helpful to break it down to two design projects. There’s game design and then there’s material design (look/feel/graphics/product design). The game design took 3 years, two of which were pretty steady. A lot of testing went on to get the game right, at least one entire evening, once a week. However, this isn’t a great guide for game design because a) War on Terror isn’t your average game – it’s very open and loose; other games are probably easier to test and refine & b) we didn’t know what we were doing
Once the game design was pretty much nailed, we set about the design of cards, board, box, product, website … this all took about 8 months from start to finish. It was a lot of work and that’s having the illustrator as a very good friend who could work with us flexibly. By the way, Andy Tompkins (the co-designer) and I were both website designers and we had experience of print work, so this is the only part of the project that we felt vaguely comfortable in.
PES: Were you able to buy some of the component parts as ready-made items? Or were they all custom-made? Can you give rough costs?
AS: Everything was custom made for War on Terror, including the infamous balaclava. There are many common moulds for plastic components and pieces that we were unaware of. Stupidly, we designed very generic-looking plastic pieces and had these made bespoke by the manufacturers. That’s just lack of experience costing us money. There are many other small details, like how many cards you can optimally fit to a print sheet to bring card printing costs down; getting a common background across all cards, things like that. We had the game made in China and there they simply make what you tell them to. These days, we tend to have games made closer to home where the printers or whoever can give us feedback on design decisions.
PES: I read in the FAQs that you were aiming to make about 5000….(?). Can you provide a very rough overall cost? (if that’s ok to ask.). My clients are interested in the cost to set up and cost per item
AS: Again, because it was made in China, the minimum run they’ll do really is 5000, so we had to commit to a lot of stock each time we printed and reprinted. 5000 games cost in the region of £30-35k depending on exchange rates and shipping charges. Getting various moulds and plates made initially was about £2000 on top of that.
PES: What would you say was the main thing that got people to see this and buy it?
AS: We were handed a gift with the subject matter. Just the name of the game, “War on Terror, the boardgame” told a story – since boardgames are usually reserved for wholesome family pursuits, just hearing the name told you it was a satirical, darkly humorous game, based on the War on Terror – and probably very cynical about it too. So a combination of the right time, being lucky with an idea that lots of people were waiting for and the right name got us a colossal amount of press. At the same time, all these factors *prevented* people from buying it too – the people who “matter” as well, like buyers for chain stores, distributors etc.
Knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t rely on subject matter or name to sell a game. Games tend to spread and be talked about if they’re good games, it’s as simple as that, because games are naturally viral – you need other people to play with. So a well-designed game will quite quickly pick up a fan base.
AS: That’s an interesting question. It depends what you call breaking even – when did we turnover £35k to cover our initial investment? Probably within two months of (pre)launching the game. When did we clear in profit terms something equivalent to all the man hours that had been put in in the three years leading up to launch (and that were continued to be put in)? I don’t think we ever did. But that’s not the important point. This game was definitely a labour of love and we had no intention to even publish at all for the first two years of design and development. I think this question might be more about “When can an amateur self-publishing board game inventor expect to recoup costs?” and I just can’t answer that question. I suspect it happens very rarely, sadly. We had such an enormous advantage and even with that massive head-start, we were basically subsisting – what we sold covered a very modest salary for 2 people so that we could sell and make the next run of 5000. That continued for about 4 years (which is a good innings off two products) and then we moved TerrorBull Games back into part-time/ hobby mode. Pretty much all profit goes back into the company now to help us produce more, smaller-scale games that don’t need to labour with the pressure of turning a massive profit.
(Many thanks to Andrew Sheerin and his colleagues!)