Heard a crazy number about board game production at a con panel

I was at a small con in Portland last month, and a designer from a mid-sized company dropped a fact that blew my mind. He said for their last big box game, they printed 25,000 copies for the first run. The kicker? They had to pay for the whole print run up front, before a single pre-order came in. That's a huge financial risk for a game that might not even sell. It really made me see why some cool looking games never get a second printing. How do these smaller companies even stay in business with numbers like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_taylor641mo ago

And that's just for the print run. You also have to factor in shipping from the factory, which is a whole other huge cost. Then storage in a warehouse, because you can't fit 25,000 big boxes in a garage. If the game doesn't sell fast, you're paying monthly fees just to keep it somewhere. It explains why some companies do Kickstarter, to pass that risk to the fans. They use the pre-order money to actually make the thing.

maryadams1mo ago

Printing 25,000 units up front is a massive gamble. I know a guy who took out a second mortgage on his house to cover a print run half that size. The real killer is the storage cost after the game lands. You're paying for warehouse space every single month that box sits there. That's why so many companies just vanish after one game, they bet everything and lost. How do you even sleep at night with that kind of debt hanging over you?