Hero Time Academy · Step 4 of 10
Board Game Costs
The board game cost is the price per copy to manufacture a game, and it is set by three things: how many copies you make, how well your parts fit the printing sheets, and what the parts are. Working out the budget is step 4 of the ten steps in how to make a board game. These guides give the real numbers, from the paper price per ton to the setup of each press, so a quote makes sense before it arrives.
What a Game Costs
A board game costs between about 4 and 35 USD per copy to make, and a card game between 0.50 and 7.50 USD. The spread comes from the parts, the finishes and above all the order size: the low end of each bracket is a run of 10,000 copies, the high end is the 1,000-copy minimum. Our guide to how much it costs to make a board game gives the brackets by game type and explains what a quote is made of: the base cost per sheet and process, the wastage, and the overhead of running a factory. The cost of a card game has its own guide, because a deck lives and dies by how many cards fit on a printing sheet. Board game manufacturing costs and board game production costs mean the same thing: the factory price per copy. The full cost of making a board game adds the art, the prototype and the freight, which their own categories cover.
Two rules sit under every number. Quantity: a print run starts with about 300 sheets of make-ready waste, so 500 sets cost almost what 1,000 do, and around 2,000 sets the per-copy cost drops into the 20 percent of retail price a publisher needs. Sheet fit: printing, cutting, gluing and coating are priced per sheet, so a part that fills its sheet costs less than one that wastes a strip.
The Printed Parts
Most of a game is paper and cardboard, and each printed part has its own cost logic. Board game printing cost is a setup per press plus a small price per sheet, with the six standard sheet sizes that every part should fit. Board game cardboard covers the greyboard under a box and the high-density board under boards and tokens, with the gluing and the die cutting that turn a sheet into a part, and token sheet cost shows how the sheet layout, not the shape of the tokens, sets the price of a punchboard.
Design Choices That Cut Cost
The cheapest saving is the part you never make. Component efficiency is the design habit of doing more with fewer pieces: one deck that does two jobs, tokens that fill a sheet, a board that fits the box. The same article covers board game weight, because freight is priced by the kilogram, so a lighter, smaller game ships for less without losing anything on the table.
The Quote Request
A quote is only as good as the list it is built from. Our guide to the manufacturing quote request shows what to send, in the quote's own format, so the first quote is the real one and comes back within two days. The freight that comes after the factory has its own guide, board game shipping cost, in the Shipping category.
Next Step: Board Game and Card Game Art
With the budget set, the next step is the artwork: files that print right first time save setup hours and waste. Continue with board game art, step 5 of the ten.