I have discussed one method of marketing your game design in my previous post. This is probably not the most efficient way especially during the onset of the coronavirus whereby many conventions are cancelled or pushed back indefinitely.
Let me introduce you to another, more efficient, method in marketing your game design.
Let me use real estates as examples to better illustrate my point. What happens when you decide to sell your property?
Typically, you will engage the local real estate broker and have a discussion on specific topics such as sale price, etc, before the broker list your property on the market on your behalf. In addition to listening and catering to your needs, they can and will provide professional advice on topics such as the staging of the house and how to accentuate the strengths of the estate to fetch a higher price amongst many other relevant topics.
This concept can, similarly, be applied to the board game industry.
Board game licensing agencies are able to provide the same kind of service to board game designers that real estate brokers are providing to the people who wants to sell their properties.
I know there is a hint of self-promotion here but I believe that licensing agencies can add a significant value to board game designers when it comes to marketing and selling their game designs. Having to deal with the business aspects of a game design might not be up your alley and, frankly, isn’t what you dream of doing when you sign up to be a board game designer. Building up connections and reviewing contracts takes the attention away from the core of designing board games. If you are constantly drafting emails and preparing sell sheets, you are going to have less time for your game designs.
Like I have mentioned earlier, if you are already an accomplished designer and have a following of your own, it will be so much easier to find a publisher willing to publish your game design. However, everybody has to start somewhere and build that following from scratch.
There are very few board game licensing agencies and the concept of engaging one is not, at all, prevalent in our designer community.
Why is this so?
Many designers either do not know of our existence or they have a misconception that our services may be expensive.
Firstly, we do exist and we operate worldwide. In fact, we are just an email away. If you have a game design and do not know what to do with it, shoot us an email and we will be at your service within hours.
Next, let’s talk about what matters most. The M-O-O-L-A-H. First and foremost, let me set the record straight. We do not charge anything upfront. There is NO charges for reviewing your game design. We utilize a profit sharing model whereby we retain a certain percentage of the royalty of the game design as commission. Therefore, we do not get paid if your game design is not signed by a publisher.
Yes, we do have an appetite for risk. And yes, our selective process is pretty stringent to mitigate some of that risk.
Is our service expensive?
If you compare the travel expenses that you have to pay to participate in conventions around the world, the fees are going to add up to a significant amount. A trip to a large-scale convention, such as GenCon or Spiel, is going to roughly cost upwards of a thousand dollars including all transportation, accommodation, food and convention cost. That is if you can even reserve a slot to pitch to publishers in the first place. With all these paid up front versus having to pay nothing out of your own pocket, I think our service is going to be more appealing to most designers.
Send us your game design to unlock the door to becoming a published game designer!
Share this blog entry with that aspiring game designer friend of yours if you find the information useful!
Link to the “So you think you can be a board game designer” Series -> Compilation
