The Game Crafter- CafePress for Boardgames

http://www.thegamecrafter.com/home

by e1ven • 17 years ago

121 42 17 years ago

thegamecrafter.com

cesare4• 17 years ago

Pretty cool idea.

Even just to create a game for yourself for playing with friends.

The website is a bit limited, though.

The games pages should have at least a picture of the board and a description of the included parts.

scapegraced• 17 years ago

Well, it seems that it's only in beta, so hopefully we'll see more improvements later.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

Totally agree, when you are selling pre-manufactured products it is even more important than usual to nail down the aesthetics and provide clear product previews. Amazon can skate with small, not so great product images because people trust the brands, but with this kind of Mass Customization visualization is key.

limmeau• 17 years ago

I'd also love to see a comment section and/or links to boardgamegeek so that I can quickly get the opinion of people who have played it.

thorax• 17 years ago

Just reading the title of this post made me swoon a little bit. My friends and I make all sorts of games like this and this is exactly the sort of site I need to kill all my productivity.

Looks awesome, I'm going to look deeper now.

froo3• 17 years ago

Same, I've always wanted to make a dungeon crawler/adventure style game similar to the old Warhammer Quest (for personal use that is)

This might help push me closer to that goal, since my homemade cards don't have the polish as those printed on better quality stock.

robotron• 17 years ago

Game publishing on-demand. I like it. Music, books, what's next?

cesare4• 17 years ago

(cheaper) electronic circuits?

3D printed furniture and kitchenware?

preview• 17 years ago

Do FPGAs count as cheaper electronic circuits?

slmbrhrt• 17 years ago

This is a fantastic idea. I've got a few board games in the works, and this would be a great way to get some decent prototypes made up for cheap. No more sharpies and white hankies for me!

pchristensen• 17 years ago

Just a plug for people interested in game design, I have a shared blog about making games:

http://hackersandgamers.posterous.com/

Email me if you'd like to contribute.

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

Interesting stuff here (even for applying to PC games). Thanks!

GavinB2• 17 years ago

The game pieces are fairly generic, so it looks like the best games for this would be heavily card or board based. You can control the art there, so it wouldn't look generic.

The real key here is the ability to print custom card decks. Most of the rest of it could be replicated on your own without too much difficulty.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

Very true, though if they up the ability to customize the pieces using custom manufacturing tech that will give them a strong point of differentiation. It is a great product category to start with.

bprater• 17 years ago

Ambitious!

JoelSutherland• 17 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about their pricing:

The profit is split between you and The Game Crafter equally (50% each).

I would rather have this priced in to their production costs.

catone• 17 years ago

I was really excited when I saw this headline stream by on my HN RSS feed. That pricing gives me pause as well, but only slightly.

What really matters to me is how the licensing is handled. I.e., as long as I own full rights and can pull my game out of their system whenever I want (i.e., if I find that my game is popular enough that I think I can self publish or if I find an established company that wants to buy it), then I don't really mind that they take such a large %. It's still a cheap way to prototype and sell to real game players to get feedback. :)

Anyway, this sounds awesome, but now it means less sleep for the next couple of weeks while I pull all those random scraps of paper that make up my game ideas into something more formal. ;)

cdr• 17 years ago

Not hard to find: http://www.thegamecrafter.com/publish/rights

cesare4• 17 years ago

Agree.

Keeping the rights, having full control on publishing/unpublishing your stuff, and non-exclusivity are the three most important requirements when using these kind of services.

Any of these services (with the requirements stated above) is just another outlet - another opportunity to reach more people - and there's no reason not to join.

scscsc• 17 years ago

What if the profit is negative?

kd5bjo• 17 years ago

As this is a print-on-demand service, the storage costs are basically zero. Therefore, there shouldn't ever be a negative-profit game, as there will have been no stock.

ja27• 17 years ago

I'm trying to find something more meaningful to say than just "neat" or "awesome", which this is.

So what other niches could somebody do this in? Where else are there frustrated amateur designers that would love to see their creations professionally produced (and sold)?

We already have design-your-own shops for books, CDs, DVDs, tshirts, skateboard decks, Lego sets, circuit boards, bobbleheads, metal machining, ...

What's left? Textiles? Clothing? Food? Wallpaper?

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

There are actually companies doing customization in all the niches you mentioned:

1. Textiles: http://www.spoonflower.com

2. Clothing: http://www.spreadshirt.com

3. Food: http://www.mixmygranola.com

4. Wallpaper: http://www.nakedandangry.com (not true customization, more crowdsourced)

Still tons of room for innovation though.

alex_c• 17 years ago

Cars?

At least the body design, even if they're built on common platforms.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

Cars too, a start up called Local Motors (http://www.local-motors.com) is trying to do a custom/crowdsourced car company. I think it is more conceptual at this point though. The capital requirements are crazy and I think we'll see more innovation in this area from companies like Toyota.

vaksel• 17 years ago

pretty damn cool, all this guys need is a single home run, that would get talked about in the press and this thing will take off like a rocket ship.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

I agree, the whole "Web meets world" concept is simmering and ready to boil. There are a lot of technologies (Laser cutters, CNC mills, 3D Printers, and POD) when combined with cool, web based design tools will enable people to make objects as easily as blogs. Services like Shapeways and Ponoko are starting to do this, but I think it is going to be companies focused on specific product categories who drive it to the mainstream.

dave_au• 17 years ago

I just checked http://www.boardgamegeek.com to see if it was mentioned there. It was, and it was compared to http://www.superiorpod.com/ and http://www.guildofblades.com/, in case anyone was looking to compare alternatives.

Discussion was here http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/424272 and here http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/424309

Also, for those that don't know, boardgamegeek is an awesome resource for board game information.

froo3• 17 years ago

"Also, for those that don't know, boardgamegeek is an awesome resource for board game information."

Just wanted to highlight that for anyone who didn't see it.

BGG got me playing games like Descent (despite it's horrendous pricing when you factor in the price of all of the expansions... 4!) and Catan and I've never looked back, thoroughly enjoyed the social aspect of it.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

It is pretty neat. This is actually an area where 3D printing could be fairly useful. You could design custom or choose components or choose pre-designed ones from a catalog and have them printed in plastic or metal. They would still be fairly expensive, but if you are going for a family heirloom it might be worth the cost. You could also do quite a bit with higher end boards, laser cutting woods and plastics.

Zaak• 17 years ago

3D printed game bits was the first thing I thought of when I started looking at their site. I would love to see them offer that in the future.

replicatorblog7• 17 years ago

This post generated a lot of points pretty quickly. Is anyone interested in working on a startup in this area? If so, feel free to get in touch via the info on my profile. My blog: http://www.replicatorinc.com focuses on this kind of mass customization / personal fabrication. I also have a ton of ideas/prototypes for companies utilizing these technologies that I'd love to share.

Also from: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

27. Hardware/software hybrids. Most hackers find hardware projects alarming. You have to deal with messy, expensive physical stuff. But Meraki shows what you can do if you're willing to venture even a little way into hardware. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in hardware; you can often do dramatically new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff.

pg• 17 years ago

If you do decide to start a startup we'd be happy to hear from you (http://news.ycombinator.com/apply).

froo3• 17 years ago

"you can often do dramatically new things by making comparatively small tweaks to existing stuff."

Interesting now that you've mentioned that with respect to boardgames. That kind of thinking really worked for Fantasy Flight Games who took a simple gaming mechanic they developed for one game and replicated it for many subsequent products and all of these games are always entertaining.

They now do lots of licensing deals to make boardgames out of some very hot brands, some of which are quite entertaining.

GavinB2• 17 years ago

I think I'll make a board game version of twitter. You compete to get the most followers, to get replied to by major bloggers, to get retweeted, and mentioned in the news. The ultimate winner is the first to get a million followers.

Who's in?

vyrotek• 17 years ago

I think Ill make a similar game except the idea will be to create a bunch of fake accounts, get a lot of followers and spam marketing links everywhere.

jkincaid• 17 years ago

Just wrote about this on TC, I think it's a great idea. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/awesome-the-game-crafte...

To give credit where credit is due, I found it here. Would link to this thread but there's the whole HN secrecy thing (is that still enforced?). Feel free to bash TC below :)

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

One step closer to being able to produce my game, Settlers of Canton.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

This seems really great, however, the TINY resolution requirement for the box art makes me wonder how good the quality will be printed out.

The Game Crafter- CafePress for Boardgames

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