Don’t Bother Trying to Bring a Board Game to Market Unless…
…you’re prepared to work out who will buy it, why they will want it, and how you are going to reach them.
There is a point in almost every board game development project when the creator starts to believe they might be onto something. The mechanics are working, the artwork is coming together, and playtesters are asking for another game. After all those evenings spent rewriting rules and cutting out cards, the prospect of seeing a finished box on a shop shelf suddenly feels quite realistic. Surely, if the game is good enough, there will be people willing to buy it?
There may well be. The difficulty is finding enough of those people, persuading them to spend their money, and doing so at a cost that leaves you with a viable business. That is a rather different challenge from designing a good game, and it deserves just as much attention. You can spend two years developing something genuinely enjoyable and still find yourself surrounded by unsold stock because you never properly worked out how you were going to sell it.
That doesn’t mean you should abandon your idea unless you happen to be a marketing expert. It does mean that somebody involved needs to take responsibility for the commercial side. You can learn those skills, bring in a partner, pay for specialist help, or pursue a licensing agreement with an established publisher. What you cannot sensibly do is assume that commercial success will take care of itself once the product is finished.
A good game gives you something worth selling. It doesn’t automatically give you customers.
Know Who Will Buy Your Game—and Why
Before you commit serious money, you need a reasonably clear picture of the person who is going to buy your game and the situation in which they will play it. “People who like board games” is a starting point, but it is nowhere near specific enough to guide product development or marketing. Someone looking for a quick family game to take on holiday is making a different buying decision from a hobby gamer seeking a demanding strategy game for their regular group. They have different expectations about complexity, playing time, price, presentation and even the size of the box.
The person buying the game may also be different from the person you imagine playing it. A parent choosing a birthday present needs to feel confident that the recipient will enjoy it. A games enthusiast buying for their group may need to know whether it works well with three players and whether they can teach it without spending half the evening explaining exceptions. Understanding these practical concerns helps you describe the game in terms that matter to the buyer, rather than simply listing the features you are most proud of.
Give People a Clear Reason to Choose Your Game
This is where plenty of creators get stuck. They can explain every mechanism in extraordinary detail, but struggle to explain why somebody should choose their game over all the other ways they could spend their money. “It’s fun, strategic and easy to learn” doesn’t tell a prospective buyer very much. Those are claims almost anybody could make. A more useful explanation gives people a picture of the experience: perhaps it is a quick game of bluffing that gets a quiet group arguing and laughing, or a cooperative adventure that children and adults can genuinely enjoy together.
You don’t need to invent an entirely new category or pretend your game has no competitors. Familiarity can help people understand what you are offering. But you do need a clear reason for someone to take a closer look. If people only appreciate what makes the game appealing after a twenty-minute explanation, you have a selling problem to solve. Your packaging, photographs, demonstration and product description should all make that explanation easier.
Don’t Confuse Compliments With Demand
You also need to be careful about what you accept as evidence of demand. Friends being encouraging is lovely, but they have a personal reason to want you to succeed. Playtesters enjoying themselves is useful evidence that the game works, but they may enjoy playing it without wanting to own it. Even somebody saying “I’d definitely buy that” has not yet made the decision they will face when there is a price, a delivery charge and a request for payment in front of them.
Try to create opportunities for a more realistic response before making a large commitment. Show the game to people outside your immediate circle, explain the intended price and watch what happens. Do they ask where they can buy it? Will they join a mailing list to hear about its release? Where appropriate, will they place a properly explained preorder? These are different levels of commitment, and none guarantees a successful launch, but they tell you more than a collection of compliments. Listen particularly closely to objections. If interested players repeatedly hesitate over the same issue, you have something concrete to investigate.
Build an Audience That Might Actually Buy
Building an audience is part of this process, although “build an audience” can sound suspiciously easy when written in a business article. In practice, it involves finding places where suitable customers already spend time and giving them a worthwhile reason to pay attention. That might mean demonstrating at events, contributing to relevant communities, working with suitable reviewers, developing relationships with shops, or producing content that shows the game being played. You don’t have to be everywhere, and trying to maintain six social channels while developing your first game may simply leave you doing seven things badly.
The quality of that audience matters much more than its headline size. A modest mailing list of people who have played your game and asked to hear when it becomes available can be more useful than a much larger following built around unrelated content. Likewise, attracting other designers is not necessarily the same as attracting buyers. Other creators can provide excellent support and advice, but you still need to establish whether you are reaching people who want the particular experience your game offers.
Give those people something more interesting than a repeated announcement that your game exists. Show the awkward decision a player has to make, the moment a carefully prepared plan falls apart, or the interaction that gets everyone around the table involved. Development stories can help, especially when they reveal something entertaining or distinctive, but your prospective customers don’t owe you their attention because you have worked hard. They need to see something that connects with their own interests.
Crowdfunding Needs Preparation—and Profitable Maths
If crowdfunding is your intended route, this work needs to begin before the campaign goes live. A crowdfunding platform can help people discover a project, but relying on that discovery to provide your entire audience is a considerable gamble. You want some evidence that people are interested before you launch, along with a credible explanation of what they will receive, what it will cost and how you intend to deliver it. Attractive artwork may earn a click; backing an unfinished product requires a greater level of confidence.
There is also a danger of confusing an impressive funding total with a healthy business. The money raised has jobs to do: manufacturing, freight, fulfilment, platform and payment charges, tax obligations, replacement copies and whatever else you have promised. Extra components and elaborate stretch goals can make the offer more appealing while making delivery more expensive and complicated. A campaign needs to make financial sense at the level of the individual order, as well as look exciting on the screen.
Advertising Can Get Expensive When You’re Still Guessing
Paid advertising needs the same discipline. Buying traffic is relatively straightforward; buying traffic that turns into profitable customers is much harder. Before spending heavily, you need to understand whether your message attracts the right people, whether the page answers their questions, and how much you can afford to spend to secure a sale. If people arrive and leave without buying, increasing the advertising budget may simply increase the cost of discovering that something is wrong. Start with manageable tests and use the results to improve the offer.
Getting Into Shops Is Only the Beginning
Retail brings another set of considerations. A retailer is committing money and shelf space to your product, so your enthusiasm needs to be supported by a workable proposition. Does the game suit their customers? Is the packaging clear? Is there sufficient margin? Can they get reliable supply, and will the product earn its place on the shelf? Specialist retailers can be excellent at recommending and demonstrating games, so it is unfair to suggest they will only stock something that sells entirely by itself. Nevertheless, you make their decision easier when you can show genuine customer interest and provide materials that help them sell it.
Getting an initial order is only part of the job. What matters next is whether customers buy those copies and the retailer wants more. A game sitting untouched in a shop has technically achieved distribution, but it hasn’t achieved much commercially. Think about how you will support the product after it arrives: a clear demonstration video, accessible rules, helpful customer service and continued promotion can all contribute. The relationship should involve more than asking the shop to take stock and then disappearing.
Price for the Business You Intend to Build
All of this depends on pricing the game properly in the first place. Creators sometimes look at the manufacturing cost, compare it with the intended retail price and assume the difference represents a comfortable profit. Unfortunately, several other businesses and expenses may need to be paid from that difference. The calculation changes depending on whether you sell directly, through retailers or through distributors, so work through each intended route separately. A price that works on your own website may leave very little room for selling through the trade.
Be equally cautious about ordering more stock simply to secure a lower unit cost. The saving is only useful if you sell the additional copies within a sensible period. Otherwise, you have exchanged available cash for boxes that need somewhere to live. Your first production run should reflect credible demand, your ability to finance it and the consequences if sales are slower than expected. Optimism is helpful when developing a business, but it is a poor substitute for a cashflow forecast.
Have a Plan for What Happens After Launch
Then there is the ongoing workload. Once the excitement of launch has passed, somebody still needs to answer questions, follow up with buyers, organise demonstrations, resolve problems and give new customers reasons to discover the game. This doesn’t require endless daily posting or turning yourself into an internet personality. It does require a sustainable way of bringing in business. A couple of activities that reliably produce worthwhile enquiries or sales are more valuable than a frantic marketing schedule that exhausts you without achieving much.
You Don’t Have to Become a Publisher
If reading all of this makes you realise that you love designing games and have very little interest in running a publishing business, that is useful information. Licensing your game to an established publisher may be a better fit. You will still need to research suitable publishers, prepare a convincing pitch and show that the game works, but you would be pursuing a different role. Finding a commercially capable partner is another possibility, provided the responsibilities and financial arrangements are clear. There is no particular virtue in personally taking on every job.
So, don’t bother trying to bring a board game to market unless you are prepared to take selling it seriously. That doesn’t mean creativity comes second, or that marketing can rescue a disappointing product indefinitely. It means the commercial work belongs alongside the design work from an early stage. Before committing to production, you should be able to explain who is likely to buy, what evidence supports that belief, how you will reach those people and whether the resulting sales can cover your costs. You won’t have perfect answers, but working towards credible ones gives your game a far better chance of reaching the tables it was designed for.
