Now this is a great idea. The Game Crafter is a new company that lets you build your own, fully customized, table-top games. Board games, card games — you name it, there’s a good chance these guys can put it together for you, with fully customized art assets and text.
Building a game is fairly straightforward — you upload the art assets you’d like to have printed on your game board and cards, pick out which accessories should be included in the box (dice, pawns, etc.) and write out the game’s documentation laying down the rules. Of course, that’s all a bit easier said than done if you don’t have a bunch of art assets sitting around. Still, once you have your images and text in hand, actually putting the game together is painless. Unsurprisingly there are still some limitations (you can’t currently design custom pawns), but the company is planning to add more customization options shortly.
As you put your game together, the site will give you an idea of how much it will cost to build based on how many cards, pieces, and boards it requires. From there, you can either order it at cost for yourself or set a sale price and sell it on the site’s integrated store. The store is pretty empty at this point with only a handful of games available, but it’s a start.
The best part of this for novice game builders is that there’s no up-front cost to get started — the site handles all distribution and printing costs, taking a 50% cut of the profits from each sale. A 50% cut sounds like a lot, but the company defends the price-point by explaining out how much you’d get if you managed to get your game in stores — according to the site, you’d typically have to give the game’s distributor 30% of the the proceeds, with the retailer taking another 40%, leaving you with only 30% of the sale price. You also retain all rights to the game, so you’re free to take it off and sell it elsewhere should a better opportunity come along.
It sounds great, but there are still a few caveats. The site’s production page notes that while cards are full color and printed on hefty card stock, they’re printed with wax instead of ink, which is less exact. Likewise, card printing isn’t exactly perfect, and there’s a chance some parts of the card’s far edges will be cut off. Still, it sounds easy to compensate for these issues, and the technology is only going to get better.
We think this is such a cool idea that we’ve currently got an intern hard at work at creating a TechCrunch board game. It’s still early in the planning stages (feel free to leave ideas in the comments), and we’ll let you know once it’s ready.
Really interesting – I love when web technology integrates with offline tech to make something tangible. I saw they also have a web store as well. It’s neat, but I can’t see this expanding too much, but then again, I think I’m outside the target market. Will be interesting to see though what some people pump out.
I can see some people really using this. The homemade game market is niche, but very possibly big enough to support a business like this.
Could the next Carcassonne be homebrewed and sold through Game Crafter?
Really Cool.
This reminds me of other mass-customization ideas like custom postage stamps at http://photo.stamps.com or like custom-mixed cereal online at MojaMix at http://mojamix.com
It’s a great concept and a decent start. It has a lot of potential to grow in features for game builders.
Some of the more “professional” board games I’ve seen out there are pretty sub-par in execution. The thing is, Stellar gameplay doesn’t need to be the slickest visual experience (playing cards, wii, the boringly designed Trivial Pursuit, etc.) If it’s fun, most people don’t care how it looks!
This coming from a designer who’s not a gamer. Ha! But I see potential in this with a better web store in the future and perhaps other product distribution models.
Idea for TechCrunch The Game:
Every round of play, one player is “The Arrington” (who has a game power I’ll explain below) and the other players are un-named bloggers. The game cards are a deck of numbered cards with stuff (companies/products/people) on them from tech, ranked with numbers. (5 sets of 1-20 and 5 Wild “Big Scoop” Cards which win the round automatically.) There are 105 cards total.
Each player starts with a hand of 10. They can see all the cards in their hand and choose one to play. The goal is to have the highest card each round. If duplicate numbered cards come up, people can steal the round by smacking on the pile of four cards first (similar to egyptian rat screw). The winner of the round gets the four cards played and becomes Arrington for the next round. The losers draw one card from the deck. The game ends when one player has all the cards.
[NOW here comes the fun part for "The Arrington"]
Essentially the gameplay takes from Egyptian Rat Screw/War/Uno, BUT the Arrington has a power each turn to use a card from the top of the deck and use that as his flip card for the round instead of depleting his share. BUT even he doesn’t know what it is until the flip, the Arrington basically takes a risk to try and gain an advantage. Each player flips one card from their hand per round (except for the Arrington if they choose to use the Arrington power). Again, the game ends when one person has all the cards. To shorten or lengthen play, groups can use more or less sets of cards. A two player game could be with 42 cards while a 5 player game uses all 105 cards.
I think this satirically reflects TechCrunch because it showcases tech and companies on cards as if they were “published articles”. The game is fast paced much like the tech blogospohere and it also coy-ly references Arrington and his power to scoop/be sneaky/take risks (no offense!). By taking a risk, the Arrington could “scoop” the other players “articles” with an unknown, but high ranked card (or the wild card which wins the round). However, the “article” Arrington plays could be a low ranked card, simulating an article which makes people think lower of Arrington (represented by him losing the hand).
I should note, this game uses Arrington’s likeness, or a parody of Arrington only as a term of endearment. There could be other bloggers/CEOs/etc. on the cards and they could be poked fun at depending on their ranking. [I would love to see Calacanis, Mossberg, Pogue, etc. on the blogger set.]
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Whaddya think TechCrunch? Sound like a fun game? If you have questions, email me or tweet me! You can use my idea and rules if you’d like as long as you send me a copy of the game when its done and a Crunchpad [That last part might be asking too much, I'll settle for just a copy of the game since the CrunchPad will no doubt sell out quick].
Yeah, The TechCrunch game’s gotta have a deadpool
You begin as a startup, and need to progress to the point of sale. Deadpools and poor choices lurk around every corner.
Sample card: “Your search engine has been surpassed by Bing! Go back 5 spaces.”
Brilliant! :D
So we’re making a fantasy game? ;)
After twitter I am always open and +eve to new stuff… You dont know what will work and when
Make sure the board game has instances of whistleblowering hackers giving you something they stole. J/K
how about a version of techcrunchopoly – simple to clone monopoly and you could facebook and google park place and boardwalk for this year, maybe put any of the crap companies in boardwalk (ideas? ;)..and instead of hotels and houses, it’s options blocks – and instead of jail, it’s “looking for funding” purgatory….and instead of railroads, you get to buy either sprint, verizon, tmobile or att…
sorry, meant “crap companies in baltic ave”
oh, and the chance cards could be deals and partnerships of some kind like, “congratulations! google wants to license your content for youtube, collect X” or “oh no, apple is locking your device out of itunes sync, put X in the pot” – you could just pull from your news/blog postings…
This sounds great, even with the caveats. The shop also looks interesting with a lot of new ideas for board games.
Just noticed, the shop has a lot of categories… but doesn’t really have a lot of games (with most categories having 0 or 1 game)
We just opened, give it some time. Our internal team has a couple people designing some games, but we were spending more time making sure the website was as ready as possible.
I personally had no idea this would take off so quickly. Chalk one up to the speed of the Internet. I thought I had a week or two to put the finishing touches on my game before anyone noticed ;)
I’ll start creating my own game now and share it to the world! Make money from it is also there.
Please no more variations on roll a dice and move somewhere or yet another Monopoly variant. Have a look at some of the quality modern boardgames on http://boardgamegeek.com and get some ideas for great games.
Just what I’ve been waiting for, a CafePress for board games. And to play test before production, there’s ZunTsu http://www.zuntzu.com/
The gameplay should include attempting to navigate a drunk Robert Scoble through silicon valley and a final demon at the end in the form of Steve Ballmer during a caniption fit over losing another engineer
Hi Techcrunch, have a look at blogstargame, a board game we produced last december in italy, it can easily be translated/localized in other languages/countries. The game can also be assembled DIY as we released with a CC license all the parts that can be downloaded from the website and then printed at home..
Now i can build my ultimate game… Jump to Conclusions!
Interesting idea. Most people who play board games or are “really” into it are probably also at least a bit geeky (and I mean that without any negative tone), so using the web to design your own game makes sense.
Good luck to them.
Lots of my best friends and loved ones are geeks and gamers…I think this is a great concept.
That looks very lucrative
This is cool – I want a company-themed board game!
“Intern! Make me a … boardgame”