Dwayne's pretty much gotten one of his board games past the play-testing stage and it's pretty ready to market, so now I should probably jump in and get it the copyright stuff done for him and look into places that actually print the stuff up. I know he's already looked into established game publishers, but at the moment most of their game design is done in-house and they aren't looking to buy from independents. Time to tweak some of my game-designer friends for info on production and marketing. Sadly, only a few on LJ, most of the others reside on Twitter, which is okay in small doses, but I really don't want to rely on. So, designers, pipe on up -- we're looking specifically for a company that can create quality tile games, similar to Infinite City, but if you know of other resources (card games and the like) please feel free to list them too. These are what I've looked at thus far on my own:
So far I've looked at SLP Packaging's website, which has been less than illuminating -- serving more as a point-of-presence rather than an informational outlet. I've dropped them a request for more information, but I assume that will take a few days at the very least.
Paragon Packaging, whose web site was a lot more helpful and inspiring (just started the quote form on there). For the most part it looked good, except their little disclaimer about Order Tolerance. While I do believe it is an industry-wide standard, and hopefully they err on the plus side more than the minus, if I, like their example, order 5000 games, I damn well better get 5000, not 4500. They claim to help start-ups so they should know a 500 unit loss is a huge blow to a little company. Other than that little bit though, I'm fairly impressed with them so far.
Lastly, I visited MJS Creations, which, merely looking at the first page of their site, gave me the shivers. I'm not sure I want to proceed any further. If you've had experience with them, I would be very interested to hear what it was like. [Zim & Dwayne, I think I know where they got that truckers game published *yeesh* *shudder*]
Ok, bit the bullet and looked a little deeper into the site, not a whole lot, but enough to glean this: 1) wow, they do a lot of religious games 2) they do have an area where you can click to see a larger graphic of the game, but they don't include really good detailed pictures of the separate components. Some of the game listings include a short list of contents in the box, but it is not detailed, nor is it present on every listing. Not real impressed.
Edited to add:
Okay, wasn't ready to go to bed yet. Now I've looked at The Game Crafter, and I'm pretty impressed by what I see there. Well, okay, they don't do tiles, yet, so there is a big drawback to our current project; but for a card game, it very well could be the way to go for a first run. It has its limits as it is more of a one-size-fits-all type deal, but it could possibly be made to work.
That's all I've managed for the nonce, feedback, suggestions, experiences and opinions of the above or any other entity you may know of are very, very welcome.
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