Why quality matters
A board game is a strange product. It is bought once and then used for maybe twenty years. It does not wear out, it does not get updated, and there is no monthly fee. It sits on a shelf and waits.
That is exactly why quality decides things differently here than in most other products. A bad game breaks nothing. It just stays on the shelf.
Quality is three different things
When we talk about quality, we really mean three separate levels, and all of them have to be right.
Physical quality. The thickness of the cardboard, the finish on the board, how cleanly the tokens punch out, the fit of the box lid, the print. These are measurable things, and they are what you pay the factory for.
Design quality. Are the rules clear? Is the iconography readable? Do the components fit back in the box after a game? None of this costs anything in production, but it takes work and attention.
Experience quality. Is the game fun? Do you want to open it again? This is the most important one, and no amount of money can buy it.
The industry talks most about the first, because it is the easiest to measure. In reality the third is what decides.
Why we don't cut corners on components
It would be entirely possible for us to order our games with thinner cardboard and cheaper dice. That would bring the manufacturing cost down by perhaps 15-20 percent. We don't do it, and the reason is not pride but arithmetic.
The manufacturing cost of a board game is a small share of its retail price. Cut production costs by a fifth and the price the customer pays barely moves, because the saving disappears into the rest of the chain. But the downgrade reaches the customer immediately, every time they roll the dice.
So the trade is a bad one: you save a little and lose a lot. In the other direction it is a good one. Adding a few tens of cents to component quality is small as a percentage, but it is the first thing the customer notices when they open the box.
The first three minutes
Board games have a moment the industry often calls the unboxing experience. It is the three minutes when the box is opened for the first time.
That is when the customer decides, without quite thinking about it, whether the purchase was a good one. Before a single minute of play. And more importantly: that is when they decide whether the game is worth showing to other people.
Anything that feels cheap in that moment sticks: a loose lid, a thin board that won't lie flat, cardboard that smells of solvent. And the board game business runs on recommendations. A game nobody shows to a friend does not sell a second print run.
Quality is cheaper than the lack of it
One thing that does not get said often enough: mistakes cost more than preventing them.
If a printing error is caught in the sample copy, it is fixed in the file and costs a few hours of work. If the same error is caught only once the whole print run is sitting in a warehouse in Finland, the options are: reprint the affected parts and post them to customers, or live with the error for years.
That is why we spend what feels like an unreasonable amount of time checking the sample copy. It is the cheapest stage of the process, and the last one where things can still change.
The same goes for the rules. An unclear rule does not look like a defect, but it produces emails, misunderstandings and reviews that say "good game, but the rules are confusing". Having the rules read by an outsider costs a few evenings. Skipping it costs the game's reputation.
What we promise
We do not promise that our games are the cheapest. We can't be, if the components are made properly.
We promise three things:
First, that every game has been tested enough times with enough people, including people we do not know. Second, that the rules have been written clearly and read through by people who do not already know the game. Third, that if something goes wrong, whether it is a missing part, a printing error or a faulty batch, we deal with it without the customer having to fight for it.
The last one is perhaps the most important. Mistakes happen in all manufacturing. The difference between a good producer and a bad one is not how many mistakes they make, but what happens after one.
Found a missing part or another fault in one of our games? Get in touch and we'll put it right.