Raph’s Website » The Game Crafter: Cafepress for board games!

The Game Crafter: Cafepress for board games!

July 16th, 2009 (Visited 6843 times) Tags: board games, game design

This is awesome, and I will be signing up tonight and probably throwing one of my board game designs up there to try it out. The short form: CafePress for board game designers.

Their brief FAQ covers the basics.

At TGC, you can start selling your game with only the push of a button. There are no up-front fees, no contractural obligations, no distributors, and you don’t need a big publisher to decide your game will sell 10,000 units in the first year.

TGC is your dream made simple!

Why TGC? We’ve been in the game design/manufacturing industry for over 10 years and published many of our own titles. We’ve always specialized in small run games, but we did it only for ourselves. Over the years we’ve gotten hundreds of requests from other indie designers asking if we’d publish their games, and finally we realized that our process could be applied to games other than our own as well.

– The Game Crafter – Your game REALIZED – Home.

Looks like they handle not just boards and cards, but also sell a nice assortment of parts that can go into the game. Not as wide an array as I have in my prototype kit, but decent nonetheless.

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Matt Forbeck said on July 16th, 2009 at 10:45 am:

Thanks for the tip, Raph! I’ve not seen this before, but it looks great for prototyping and short runs.

PlayNoEvil said on July 16th, 2009 at 12:23 pm:

Wonderful to see such a service. Every game designers dream. The only real downside is the box… which is nice enough (but is also one of the real cost drivers if you’ve ever priced out building a game).

Thanks for the find, Raph!

Adam MacDonald said on July 16th, 2009 at 12:57 pm:

Awesome! A great idea well overdue. Signing up now… At least two projects I can use them for. Many thx Raph. Will start crossposting.

cube said on July 16th, 2009 at 5:29 pm:

nice…
may pop out a game and give them a try as well.

Yukon Sam said on July 17th, 2009 at 6:35 am:

Hook these guys up with that company that’s doing the 3D printing work in metal. Voila, custom tokens.

It would also be cool if they could handle a small-run CCG. I know that’s a tall order, but it might be a lucrative market segment.

epredator said on July 18th, 2009 at 12:44 am:

Yukon Sam beat me to it, having the ability to print with 3d like shapeways etc for more complicated constructs would be great too. Remake mousetrap etc, plus being able to prototype in multiuser virtual worlds.
When I was a kid, before the 8 bit machines arrived I went mad building board games. I still have the designs somewhere. Never had the polish of a pro build. I am now really tempted to get them made up

cube said on July 19th, 2009 at 4:12 pm:

the costs for 3d printing are still prohibative for any quantity/consumer sales.. etc…
the lead- metal folks who have made “limited” runs for games for a decade plus are probably the best bet.///that or resin casters….