10 ms·

Making a Physical Product

317 points by j0ncc 14y ago

jeffandersen 14y ago
In case you miss it in the middle of the article, these are the instructions for the game: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.pdf http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.p...
- EStudley 14y ago
  All that work and there's still a typo on the first sentence, second page.
  - FigBug 14y ago
    Even with you pointing it out, I had to read the sentence twice to find it.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    And the directions are still pretty confusing. For example, I had no idea the debris' orientation mattered until I saw the examples. And what happens if there's a dispute about whether the debris is aiming at a planet or not? And also, can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it? I assume not, but it's not explicitly clear. And what's the difference between orange and yellow space debris? Also, the How to Play section indicates I should only keep planets and black holes, but don't I also keep stars so that my planets stay habitable?
    - toki5 14y ago
      The answers are there, but I agree that it could be quite a bit clearer. > Can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it? No - suns make planets habitable (see the Sun section); you can only keep habitable planets and black holes. >What's the difference between orange and yellow space debris? There is no difference between red and orange space debris (there are no yellow -- the colors in the instructions are slightly off from what the dice actually show). There's also no difference between yellow and green planets/suns -- take a look at the image in the article that shows all the dice laid out. I think it'll clear that question up. >but don't I also keep stars so that my planets stay habitable? That makes logical sense, but since the instructions specifically state to keep only planets and black holes, no, suns go back in the tube. I think the logic behind this is two-fold: One, since planets and black holes are the only metric for score, any planet that you keep has a star in its imaginary galaxy, so a planet that is by a player actually represents not just a planet but also "at least one star." Two, a green/orange die going back into the tube helps keep the game points flowing.
- peterevans 14y ago
  I did miss it, thanks. It would be nice if the instructions were linked on the site itself, of course, but I didn't see them there.
adaml_623 14y ago
$69 for 1 yr of a .com domain? You need to shop around more. But pretty inspiring! Good looking game!
- brackin 14y ago
  Maybe he bought it from someone else or paid for multiple years.
  - adaml_623 14y ago
    It was only registered for 1 year so I was pretty sure it wasn't the latter. And far too cheap to be bought from someone else. But since it was an expiring domain I guess it was money well spent.
- bentoner 14y ago
  $69 is the standard cost to backorder an expiring domain at namejet etc.
  - j0ncc 14y ago
    This is what happened. Luckily the domain happened to be dropping a few days after I decided I wanted it.
clarle 14y ago
As a huge board-gamer, I always love seeing the "making-of" of different games, and this one is no exception. I especially thought the prototype was pretty hilarious, but it definitely makes sense to have one when working with a physical product. I'm not too surprised at how much the costs ended up turning out to be, but I am curious as to how long it took to assemble everything together, from prototype to finish? I guess the main difference for a physical product is really the time it takes to get from prototype to sellable product, rather than just hacking something out in a weekend and getting it out there immediately.
FigBug 14y ago
I liked this article and would like to see more like it. With the maker movement, Kickstarter, 3D printing, etc there now seems to be a lot more interest in making physical products. But the isn't a lot of public information about the costs and processes involved, compared to say the number of tutorials on how to build web app or a mobile app. I noticed that the actual cost of the 'product' is less than 40% of the total project costs. And labour isn't even factored in. I was just involved in making a small injection molded part. I was surprised how easy and inexpensive it was. For all the hype 3D printing is getting, I think there could be lots more businesses in making injection molding more accessible.
- learc83 14y ago
  Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
  - willtheperson 14y ago
    My dad runs a small plastic injection molding company. He's got a single bread and butter product they make, but he's always looking for new ideas. Is there a way for people to easily connect with manufacturers in the USA? My dads shop is really small and hungry vs some shop you could find in a google search with lots of machines (and expensive)
    - retroafroman 14y ago
      Getting listed at Thomasnet.com[1] would be a good start. [1] http://www.thomasnet.com/products/injection-molding-custom-96014733-1.html http://www.thomasnet.com/products/injection-molding-custom-9...
    - soggypenny 14y ago
      A solution to this problem is EXACTLY what my co-founder and I are working on right now. We're working to be Match.com for custom-made parts, and highly specialized shops like your dad's are the ideal use case for our product. Would you be willing to talk directly or put me in touch with your dad? We'd love to help out any way we can.
famousactress 14y ago
Awesome! (purchased) I've been reading about game design and playing with ideas myself. The prototyping was _this_ past Christmas? So you went from concept to sales in three months!? That seems fabulous. Congrats.
- jakeburtn 14y ago
  You mention that you've been reading about game design, any recommendations?
  - famousactress 14y ago
    Only sporadically, much of it online.. I have found this book highly recommended and plan on kindle-ing it soon: http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/ http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp...
marban 14y ago
Did anyone come across some good articles on dealing with suppliers on alibaba (test-runs, QA, IP, shipping, customs, etc.)?
- dobbsbob 14y ago
  Use a throwaway account when dealing on Alibaba your email is either sold or leaked and you will receive a thousand scam offers per second after sending an inquiry to a vendor. I did manage to do a test run of 100 custom cellphones there though and it worked out fine. I had a friend who speaks Mandarin actually call the place directly though and didn't deal through Alibaba
- curt 14y ago
  don't deal with alibaba, contact the manufacturer directly. Most have reps in either Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taiwan that you can talk with, just need to find them.
DividesByZero 14y ago
"I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up. " Why did the author write a rails app to run statistical experiments on what are easy to calculate probabilities? It seems that if you want to make a probability based game you ought to have at least a working knowledge of the basics.
- tantalor 14y ago
  Maybe the rules are too complex to work out the probabilities directly. For example, landing on each property in Monopoly. The real question is why write a rails app? How does a web application framework help you roll dice?
  - p0ckets 14y ago
    Actually, it's pretty simple to use Markov chains to calculate the expected time spent as each property in Monopoly.
  - DividesByZero 14y ago
    I can forgive that - I often accidentally say 'rails' when I mean ruby as well.
    - sim0n 14y ago
      Except this is a Rails app, not just Ruby.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    > How does a web application framework help you roll dice? Many games also include an online component. This can easily just be the start of a new product...
  - Torrents 14y ago
    Maybe because that makes it easier to put it online and link to it from a blog post, and raise awareness of the game. Blog posts can be both useful for other entrepreneurs as well as great marketing.
joshrotenberg 14y ago
Really cool. Just purchased!
- joshrotenberg 14y ago
  Wow, my Space Dice just arrived. That was fast! I guess being one town away had something to do with it. I'll play it later with my kids and see what they think (my opinion rarely counts these days).
tjic 14y ago
Coincidentally, I made a plastic d6 in my home workshop yesterday using silicone molds. This is just a prototype for more molding work in the future. http://365bowls.com/?p=175 http://365bowls.com/?p=175
munificent 14y ago
"In space, noone can hear you roll! The fate of the galaxy is in your hands, as you race your friends to create (or destroy) planets. Who will be the first to 10? Only the dice know." Ouch, two errors: "noone" -> "no one" "hands, as" -> "hands as"
- j0ncc 14y ago
  Fixed this. Thank you!
  - BadCookie 14y ago
    There are also two icons labeled "supernova" at the bottom of the page, which seems like a mistake. Good luck!
    - unwind 14y ago
      ... and "blackhole" is not a word, it's two.
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    In your instructions PDF (linked from the article), at the top of page 2 (under "How To Play"), it reads: "The first to player is whoever..." I think that should say "first to play".
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- adam-a 14y ago
  Harsh to call them errors. Noone is a legitimate spelling, if uncommon[1], and comma usage is basically a subjective artform, although I agree it doesn't read very well in the quoted sentence. [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noone http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noone
gcheong 14y ago
Why make an iPhone app to keep track of planets owned when you could just make a simple paper based scorecard? Or am I missing something about the complexity of the game? An app might be useful but you want the game to be playable by the largest number of peopl possible and there could be some opportunity for recurring revenue from selling the scorecards.
- MrThousand 14y ago
  I think the idea of an iOS app sounds great. Why waste paper when you can simply click "new game" on your phone?
  - pseut 14y ago
    Why waste plastic on dice when you can click, "new roll" on your phone? Some people might like games like this because they're not digital.
    - thezoid 14y ago
      This is precisely it. Also if the author wanted he could simply add in some cheap d10s that each player could use to keep track of their current planet values.
    - MrThousand 14y ago
      Because it's not as fun as physically rolling the dice. There's not much additional gain to writing down the score on a piece of paper versus keeping score on an app tailored towards the game.
      - pseut 14y ago
        Yeah, it's also possible that I considered that and disagree with you. I'm not saying that everyone will prefer keeping score on paper, but some people really do and some other people will appreciate not having an iPhone on the table when they play a dice game.
  - 14y ago
tantalor 14y ago
Every game I've ever played has a suggested age range, e.g., 5+ years old. Is this good for kids?
tocomment 14y ago
How did you find the company to make the packaging?
tocomment 14y ago
Have you considered selling these in Target or Walmart, or perhaps specialty stores?
- patio11 14y ago
  Hobbyist stores will probably require keystoning: if the retail price is $20 then the maximum wholesale price they can pay is $10. Note the margins on the product, now wince. Also, arranging distribution with them is very problematic. (Source: I had delusions of running one, once.)
- tocomment 14y ago
  Why did I get downvoted? It seems like a legimate question about the process?
- DanBC 14y ago
  I didn't downvote you. You mention Walmart. The OP has an initial run of 5,000 units. He doesn't have nearly enough to get taken up by Walmart and they'll stiff him on profits. Toys and games are a vicious market. Getting into Walmart is a mixed blessing. Speciality shops is a good idea though.
dcalacci 14y ago
It's eye-opening to see a breakdown of the process behind conceiving, designing, and manufacturing a product. I think that for many, this process is hidden behind smoke and mirrors, but Jon made it appear doable and worthwhile. It's also empowering to know that he did this with ~$5000 USD. I have no doubt that small-scale production like this would have been prohibitively difficult (read: annoying/costly) even five years ago.
tunesmith 14y ago
Would love to see a follow-up on what you actually try to do in terms of marketing and distribution - as I'm finishing up my first 7-song album, I'm painfully aware that even after all the songwriting, recording, mixing, mastering, and product design, "release day" means that you are still only half done.
SimianLogic2 14y ago
Good article. I've been working on a board game prototype on and off for a couple of years and have decks of cards with things taped on them that look very similar to your dice. My plan was to perfect the mechanics and then just make an iPad app, but I think this demonstrates a boutique print run is not that unfeasible.
muratmutlu 14y ago
Loved this post, great that he wrote a rails app and nice to get the costs at the end too. I tried to make a wi-fi kettle with a wifi module in that had a API, the prototype alone was a huge expense (£25k+) and to get it into production was around £200k (CE certified etc). In the end I just wrote up the blog post (here http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-project-the-kettle-that-tweets/ http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-p...) Props to anyone who makes something physical, it's dedication, passion and investment
- Torrents 14y ago
  So did you make it onto kickstarter? You just spent the £25k out of pocket for the prototype?
  - muratmutlu 14y ago
    No we didn't make it as at the time they wouldn't let UK residents apply to Kickstarter. We didn't spend money on the prototype in the end, we just couldn't get the backing, it would probably be a lot easier these days tho (it was 3/4 years ago)
- Colliwinks 14y ago
  Did it implement RFC 2324?
willtheperson 14y ago
Purchased. I love hearing stories from people who just got up off the couch and did something. Congratulations! Can't wait to play!
jonknee 14y ago
For your next run you should shop around for a different tube supplier, it's a huge portion of your unit cost (24%) and I bet you can drop its price by at least half.
- caixa 14y ago
  Check out yazoomills.com. They make amazing tubes, and have fantastic customer service. I'm guessing you can get your tube price down to $0.40/tube or less with an order of 2,000 or so tubes.
- famousactress 14y ago
  Or consider not using a tube! The bottoms fall out if you shake them to shuffle which has caused at least one case of Zombie Dice ending up in all corners of a small bar to my knowledge :| I'd consider a bag.
yajoe 14y ago
Really cool to see the numbers and congrats on making the product! One nit to emphasize the value in basic accounting knowledge for others when going down the manufacturing route: it's $11.37 _gross_ margin (aka gross profit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin ), not _net_ profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin ). While this may sound silly and academic, net confers a sense of finality -- it includes all costs, marketing, discounts to sell remnant inventory, depreciations... everything. Learning this distinction will also introduce you to inventory management, promotion cycles, and all sorts of other crazy business skills to help you get to the next level in building a game business. There are hundreds of years of wisdom built up about manufacturing that all has to funnel through.... accounting... For example, having >50% net profit is fantastic for manufacturing! Having >50% gross profit is on par for low-scale, specialty products. Jon's 11.37 is a gross profit and on par. Knowing nothing about this specific market, the standard advice in this case is to focus on growing the market rather than reducing costs at this point. (This is a business-model version of the 'don't scale prematurely' mantra you hear in tech considering his price of $20/game doesn't seem insane). Back-of-the-envelope calculations show the gross revenue for all 333 sets is $6,660. Assuming he's included all costs, this means: Revenue: $6,660 Costs: $4,660 ================== Net Profit: $2,000 Which means a net profit of $6/set, a little more than 25% of the sale. Depending on how aggressively he wants the market, he should offer discounts to influential or trend-setting groups of people in the 25% range. Another way to look at this business is he would get a return of $2,000 for $4,660 in capital (since he has 1 production run), or 50% ROI... also not too shabby (if sold at retail price). And yet another way to look at this is manufacturing the product over 8 hours yields $2000, or $250/hour... better than most. It's unclear how much time he spent on the admin and design tasks, but since this is a labor of love... let's assume it was leisure time and free :) It also means a second production run may get him an economy scale from re-using the design and website assets for even more $$$/hour. All-in-all, this looks great across the board, and I wish the Jon the best of luck in bringing Space Dice to the world!
- bigiain 14y ago
  Good analysis. One comment though - if the intention is to get the game onto the shelf in retail stores, there's not enough margin in it at the current cost/pricing. A store is going to require most (or all) of that margin - in most "dice game" type stores, if you want to put a product on the shelf at $20, you're going to need to sell it to the store for somewhere around $14 or they're not going to be interested. Seems to me that at least an investigation into whether getting a run of 3,000 or 30,000 sets made up (and outsourcing the 80 or 800hrs of packaging work) would be a worthwhile exercise rather than being premature optimisation.
orangethirty 14y ago
The landing page is missing an important piece. The explanation of how the game works in text. Its beautiful, well structured, but missing that key part. I was ready to give it a try, but I did not want to see the video. You have to include an explanation in text. Or even an image of how it works. You are losing sales to this. Fix it.
devgutt 14y ago
Very cool, but I missed a board when I saw the video of the game. Still seems to be very interesting.
rianelli 14y ago
Curious why you chose to spend $2.06 on the tubing stateside? That's a lot of money for packaging, and then to have to assemble the kits together. I'd try and get as much done in China as possible, especially the tubing, which would run you far less and you would be shipping a finished product and minimizing costs a ton. Happy to help anyone who needs guidance on sourcing and manufacturing in China. I've become pretty savvy over the years.
- Torrents 14y ago
  Hi rianelli, if you don't mind I'd love to take you up on your offer and bounce some questions off of you. I can be contacted at hn.torvid at recursor.net Thanks!
nnq 14y ago
> I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up. Can't people do the math anymore, they have to simulate everything?! And they have to do it with a mtf web framework?! A spreadsheet and some pen and paper to figure out the formulas would've sufficed...
- roel_v 14y ago
  And yet here he is, selling an actual product to actual customers, and you're sitting at your desk with your presumed 'advanced math knowledge' bitching about others not knowing how to do math...
fragsworth 14y ago
The costs breakdown neglects his own time put into the project. To get the real total cost (which must be estimated), we should know how many hours he spent on it, and what his expected hourly rate might be if he were an independent contractor. You can't really decide whether or not the endeavor was a net gain unless you also take your own time into account.
- jere 14y ago
  Did you ever consider maybe some endeavors in life are pursued for reasons other than profit?
  - fragsworth 14y ago
    Well, it is possible to simultaneously enjoy your work and also put a monetary value on your time. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. And besides, if profits are not a motive, why analyze them to begin with?
tummybug 14y ago
Not sure if you are aware (or its designed that way) but on your website you have two different dice both labeled 'supernova'.
alttab 14y ago
Article read like an episode of Shark Tank. These sorts of real constraints is good information to mix into not-always-related-to-business technical discussions.
RobotCaleb 14y ago
This sounds really cool. Congrats on shipping it! I'd love to check it out, but I don't think I'd enjoy it very much due to my being color blind. Have you given any thought to designing the images to not be dependent on color?
SCAQTony 14y ago
Very well done and finally. WoW! God does plays dice!
amit_m 14y ago
Interesting post. The author could save another 0.83$ per package by skipping the included instruction manual. I think it's safe to assume that very close to 100% of users will have an internet connection available when playing this game, unless they're on a vacation abroad. I would opt for: 1. Full manual + videos on spacedice.com, aimed for use before the first time one plays the game. 2. Abridged version of manual printed on the tube, mainly meant for recalling some specifics of the game.
- atlbeer 14y ago
  It's hard to gesticulate wildly and throw digital instructions at your opponent while disagreeing on the rules.
curt 14y ago
Got a couple emails asking me questions, this is the company I always used in the US for prototyping. They are a little expensive but fast. They also have great resources that will answer all your questions: http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx
chrischen 14y ago
I watched the video on the site and still didn't really get how the game worked. I couldn't find any written instructions on the site.
- jorde 14y ago
  Neither did I but the video was so cute that I bought a pack (actually three with friends to lower the shipping per pack)
aik 14y ago
This looks great. I have no experience with selling physical products and so not sure what it takes, but I would think selling these on various specialty websites and specialty stores could work great. Thinkgeek.com is one that comes to mind.
joemaller1 14y ago
This was front page all day, I'm surprised he has any left to sell.
dplusavidg 14y ago
This really resonates with me. I am currently working on a physical product of my own. In a world where digital goods are the norm, I'm thinking of publishing a bi-weekly magazine. I'm still really in the planning stages, as I haven't got any experience on this front at all. But I do have some of the digital backbone in place already. And I have my ideas stirring in a pot now. All that's needed is for me to start cooking. Anyway, I would just like to say that I am inspired by what I'm seeing here. I'll work as hard as I possibly can. Wish me luck!
mprinz 14y ago
I'm impressed by how fast you decided to go into production. How many playtests did you do? I know a bunch of people who failed with a game that wasn't sufficiently tested. I experienced that the main faults in game design are testing with the same group over and over again, and relying to much on calculations rather than getting real life feedback. But hey, it looks awesome. Great Design. If you come over to the largest game fair in Essen (Germany) this year, I may grab one ;)

317 points by j0ncc 14y ago

In case you miss it in the middle of the article, these are the instructions for the game: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.pdf http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0218/2060/files/spacedice.p...

EStudley 14y ago
All that work and there's still a typo on the first sentence, second page.
- FigBug 14y ago
  Even with you pointing it out, I had to read the sentence twice to find it.
- nollidge 14y ago
  And the directions are still pretty confusing. For example, I had no idea the debris' orientation mattered until I saw the examples. And what happens if there's a dispute about whether the debris is aiming at a planet or not? And also, can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it? I assume not, but it's not explicitly clear. And what's the difference between orange and yellow space debris? Also, the How to Play section indicates I should only keep planets and black holes, but don't I also keep stars so that my planets stay habitable?
  - toki5 14y ago
    The answers are there, but I agree that it could be quite a bit clearer. > Can I keep a planet if I didn't roll a sun with it? No - suns make planets habitable (see the Sun section); you can only keep habitable planets and black holes. >What's the difference between orange and yellow space debris? There is no difference between red and orange space debris (there are no yellow -- the colors in the instructions are slightly off from what the dice actually show). There's also no difference between yellow and green planets/suns -- take a look at the image in the article that shows all the dice laid out. I think it'll clear that question up. >but don't I also keep stars so that my planets stay habitable? That makes logical sense, but since the instructions specifically state to keep only planets and black holes, no, suns go back in the tube. I think the logic behind this is two-fold: One, since planets and black holes are the only metric for score, any planet that you keep has a star in its imaginary galaxy, so a planet that is by a player actually represents not just a planet but also "at least one star." Two, a green/orange die going back into the tube helps keep the game points flowing.
peterevans 14y ago
I did miss it, thanks. It would be nice if the instructions were linked on the site itself, of course, but I didn't see them there.

adaml_623 14y ago

$69 for 1 yr of a .com domain? You need to shop around more. But pretty inspiring! Good looking game!

brackin 14y ago
Maybe he bought it from someone else or paid for multiple years.
- adaml_623 14y ago
  It was only registered for 1 year so I was pretty sure it wasn't the latter. And far too cheap to be bought from someone else. But since it was an expiring domain I guess it was money well spent.
bentoner 14y ago
$69 is the standard cost to backorder an expiring domain at namejet etc.
- j0ncc 14y ago
  This is what happened. Luckily the domain happened to be dropping a few days after I decided I wanted it.

clarle 14y ago

As a huge board-gamer, I always love seeing the "making-of" of different games, and this one is no exception. I especially thought the prototype was pretty hilarious, but it definitely makes sense to have one when working with a physical product. I'm not too surprised at how much the costs ended up turning out to be, but I am curious as to how long it took to assemble everything together, from prototype to finish? I guess the main difference for a physical product is really the time it takes to get from prototype to sellable product, rather than just hacking something out in a weekend and getting it out there immediately.

FigBug 14y ago

I liked this article and would like to see more like it. With the maker movement, Kickstarter, 3D printing, etc there now seems to be a lot more interest in making physical products. But the isn't a lot of public information about the costs and processes involved, compared to say the number of tutorials on how to build web app or a mobile app. I noticed that the actual cost of the 'product' is less than 40% of the total project costs. And labour isn't even factored in. I was just involved in making a small injection molded part. I was surprised how easy and inexpensive it was. For all the hype 3D printing is getting, I think there could be lots more businesses in making injection molding more accessible.

learc83 14y ago
Do you mind if I ask what was the quantity for your injection molded part, and what company you ended up going with. Last time I tried to price injection molding it was way too much.
- willtheperson 14y ago
  My dad runs a small plastic injection molding company. He's got a single bread and butter product they make, but he's always looking for new ideas. Is there a way for people to easily connect with manufacturers in the USA? My dads shop is really small and hungry vs some shop you could find in a google search with lots of machines (and expensive)
  - retroafroman 14y ago
    Getting listed at Thomasnet.com[1] would be a good start. [1] http://www.thomasnet.com/products/injection-molding-custom-96014733-1.html http://www.thomasnet.com/products/injection-molding-custom-9...
  - soggypenny 14y ago
    A solution to this problem is EXACTLY what my co-founder and I are working on right now. We're working to be Match.com for custom-made parts, and highly specialized shops like your dad's are the ideal use case for our product. Would you be willing to talk directly or put me in touch with your dad? We'd love to help out any way we can.

famousactress 14y ago

Awesome! (purchased) I've been reading about game design and playing with ideas myself. The prototyping was _this_ past Christmas? So you went from concept to sales in three months!? That seems fabulous. Congrats.

jakeburtn 14y ago
You mention that you've been reading about game design, any recommendations?
- famousactress 14y ago
  Only sporadically, much of it online.. I have found this book highly recommended and plan on kindle-ing it soon: http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/ http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp...

marban 14y ago

Did anyone come across some good articles on dealing with suppliers on alibaba (test-runs, QA, IP, shipping, customs, etc.)?

dobbsbob 14y ago
Use a throwaway account when dealing on Alibaba your email is either sold or leaked and you will receive a thousand scam offers per second after sending an inquiry to a vendor. I did manage to do a test run of 100 custom cellphones there though and it worked out fine. I had a friend who speaks Mandarin actually call the place directly though and didn't deal through Alibaba
curt 14y ago
don't deal with alibaba, contact the manufacturer directly. Most have reps in either Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taiwan that you can talk with, just need to find them.

DividesByZero 14y ago

"I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up. " Why did the author write a rails app to run statistical experiments on what are easy to calculate probabilities? It seems that if you want to make a probability based game you ought to have at least a working knowledge of the basics.

tantalor 14y ago
Maybe the rules are too complex to work out the probabilities directly. For example, landing on each property in Monopoly. The real question is why write a rails app? How does a web application framework help you roll dice?
- p0ckets 14y ago
  Actually, it's pretty simple to use Markov chains to calculate the expected time spent as each property in Monopoly.
- DividesByZero 14y ago
  I can forgive that - I often accidentally say 'rails' when I mean ruby as well.
  - sim0n 14y ago
    Except this is a Rails app, not just Ruby.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  > How does a web application framework help you roll dice? Many games also include an online component. This can easily just be the start of a new product...
- Torrents 14y ago
  Maybe because that makes it easier to put it online and link to it from a blog post, and raise awareness of the game. Blog posts can be both useful for other entrepreneurs as well as great marketing.

joshrotenberg 14y ago

Really cool. Just purchased!

joshrotenberg 14y ago
Wow, my Space Dice just arrived. That was fast! I guess being one town away had something to do with it. I'll play it later with my kids and see what they think (my opinion rarely counts these days).

tjic 14y ago

Coincidentally, I made a plastic d6 in my home workshop yesterday using silicone molds. This is just a prototype for more molding work in the future. http://365bowls.com/?p=175 http://365bowls.com/?p=175

munificent 14y ago

"In space, noone can hear you roll! The fate of the galaxy is in your hands, as you race your friends to create (or destroy) planets. Who will be the first to 10? Only the dice know." Ouch, two errors: "noone" -> "no one" "hands, as" -> "hands as"

j0ncc 14y ago
Fixed this. Thank you!
- BadCookie 14y ago
  There are also two icons labeled "supernova" at the bottom of the page, which seems like a mistake. Good luck!
  - unwind 14y ago
    ... and "blackhole" is not a word, it's two.
- BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
  In your instructions PDF (linked from the article), at the top of page 2 (under "How To Play"), it reads: "The first to player is whoever..." I think that should say "first to play".
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
adam-a 14y ago
Harsh to call them errors. Noone is a legitimate spelling, if uncommon[1], and comma usage is basically a subjective artform, although I agree it doesn't read very well in the quoted sentence. [1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noone http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noone

gcheong 14y ago

Why make an iPhone app to keep track of planets owned when you could just make a simple paper based scorecard? Or am I missing something about the complexity of the game? An app might be useful but you want the game to be playable by the largest number of peopl possible and there could be some opportunity for recurring revenue from selling the scorecards.

MrThousand 14y ago
I think the idea of an iOS app sounds great. Why waste paper when you can simply click "new game" on your phone?
- pseut 14y ago
  Why waste plastic on dice when you can click, "new roll" on your phone? Some people might like games like this because they're not digital.
  - thezoid 14y ago
    This is precisely it. Also if the author wanted he could simply add in some cheap d10s that each player could use to keep track of their current planet values.
  - MrThousand 14y ago
    Because it's not as fun as physically rolling the dice. There's not much additional gain to writing down the score on a piece of paper versus keeping score on an app tailored towards the game.
    - pseut 14y ago
      Yeah, it's also possible that I considered that and disagree with you. I'm not saying that everyone will prefer keeping score on paper, but some people really do and some other people will appreciate not having an iPhone on the table when they play a dice game.
- 14y ago

tantalor 14y ago

Every game I've ever played has a suggested age range, e.g., 5+ years old. Is this good for kids?

tocomment 14y ago

How did you find the company to make the packaging?

tocomment 14y ago

Have you considered selling these in Target or Walmart, or perhaps specialty stores?

patio11 14y ago
Hobbyist stores will probably require keystoning: if the retail price is $20 then the maximum wholesale price they can pay is $10. Note the margins on the product, now wince. Also, arranging distribution with them is very problematic. (Source: I had delusions of running one, once.)
tocomment 14y ago
Why did I get downvoted? It seems like a legimate question about the process?
DanBC 14y ago
I didn't downvote you. You mention Walmart. The OP has an initial run of 5,000 units. He doesn't have nearly enough to get taken up by Walmart and they'll stiff him on profits. Toys and games are a vicious market. Getting into Walmart is a mixed blessing. Speciality shops is a good idea though.

dcalacci 14y ago

It's eye-opening to see a breakdown of the process behind conceiving, designing, and manufacturing a product. I think that for many, this process is hidden behind smoke and mirrors, but Jon made it appear doable and worthwhile. It's also empowering to know that he did this with ~$5000 USD. I have no doubt that small-scale production like this would have been prohibitively difficult (read: annoying/costly) even five years ago.

tunesmith 14y ago

Would love to see a follow-up on what you actually try to do in terms of marketing and distribution - as I'm finishing up my first 7-song album, I'm painfully aware that even after all the songwriting, recording, mixing, mastering, and product design, "release day" means that you are still only half done.

SimianLogic2 14y ago

Good article. I've been working on a board game prototype on and off for a couple of years and have decks of cards with things taped on them that look very similar to your dice. My plan was to perfect the mechanics and then just make an iPad app, but I think this demonstrates a boutique print run is not that unfeasible.

muratmutlu 14y ago

Loved this post, great that he wrote a rails app and nice to get the costs at the end too. I tried to make a wi-fi kettle with a wifi module in that had a API, the prototype alone was a huge expense (£25k+) and to get it into production was around £200k (CE certified etc). In the end I just wrote up the blog post (here http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-project-the-kettle-that-tweets/ http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/introducing-the-twettle-p...) Props to anyone who makes something physical, it's dedication, passion and investment

Torrents 14y ago
So did you make it onto kickstarter? You just spent the £25k out of pocket for the prototype?
- muratmutlu 14y ago
  No we didn't make it as at the time they wouldn't let UK residents apply to Kickstarter. We didn't spend money on the prototype in the end, we just couldn't get the backing, it would probably be a lot easier these days tho (it was 3/4 years ago)
Colliwinks 14y ago
Did it implement RFC 2324?

willtheperson 14y ago

Purchased. I love hearing stories from people who just got up off the couch and did something. Congratulations! Can't wait to play!

jonknee 14y ago

For your next run you should shop around for a different tube supplier, it's a huge portion of your unit cost (24%) and I bet you can drop its price by at least half.

caixa 14y ago
Check out yazoomills.com. They make amazing tubes, and have fantastic customer service. I'm guessing you can get your tube price down to $0.40/tube or less with an order of 2,000 or so tubes.
famousactress 14y ago
Or consider not using a tube! The bottoms fall out if you shake them to shuffle which has caused at least one case of Zombie Dice ending up in all corners of a small bar to my knowledge :| I'd consider a bag.

yajoe 14y ago

Really cool to see the numbers and congrats on making the product! One nit to emphasize the value in basic accounting knowledge for others when going down the manufacturing route: it's $11.37 _gross_ margin (aka gross profit, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin ), not _net_ profit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_Margin ). While this may sound silly and academic, net confers a sense of finality -- it includes all costs, marketing, discounts to sell remnant inventory, depreciations... everything. Learning this distinction will also introduce you to inventory management, promotion cycles, and all sorts of other crazy business skills to help you get to the next level in building a game business. There are hundreds of years of wisdom built up about manufacturing that all has to funnel through.... accounting... For example, having >50% net profit is fantastic for manufacturing! Having >50% gross profit is on par for low-scale, specialty products. Jon's 11.37 is a gross profit and on par. Knowing nothing about this specific market, the standard advice in this case is to focus on growing the market rather than reducing costs at this point. (This is a business-model version of the 'don't scale prematurely' mantra you hear in tech considering his price of $20/game doesn't seem insane). Back-of-the-envelope calculations show the gross revenue for all 333 sets is $6,660. Assuming he's included all costs, this means: Revenue: $6,660 Costs: $4,660 ================== Net Profit: $2,000 Which means a net profit of $6/set, a little more than 25% of the sale. Depending on how aggressively he wants the market, he should offer discounts to influential or trend-setting groups of people in the 25% range. Another way to look at this business is he would get a return of $2,000 for $4,660 in capital (since he has 1 production run), or 50% ROI... also not too shabby (if sold at retail price). And yet another way to look at this is manufacturing the product over 8 hours yields $2000, or $250/hour... better than most. It's unclear how much time he spent on the admin and design tasks, but since this is a labor of love... let's assume it was leisure time and free :) It also means a second production run may get him an economy scale from re-using the design and website assets for even more $$$/hour. All-in-all, this looks great across the board, and I wish the Jon the best of luck in bringing Space Dice to the world!

bigiain 14y ago
Good analysis. One comment though - if the intention is to get the game onto the shelf in retail stores, there's not enough margin in it at the current cost/pricing. A store is going to require most (or all) of that margin - in most "dice game" type stores, if you want to put a product on the shelf at $20, you're going to need to sell it to the store for somewhere around $14 or they're not going to be interested. Seems to me that at least an investigation into whether getting a run of 3,000 or 30,000 sets made up (and outsourcing the 80 or 800hrs of packaging work) would be a worthwhile exercise rather than being premature optimisation.

orangethirty 14y ago

The landing page is missing an important piece. The explanation of how the game works in text. Its beautiful, well structured, but missing that key part. I was ready to give it a try, but I did not want to see the video. You have to include an explanation in text. Or even an image of how it works. You are losing sales to this. Fix it.

devgutt 14y ago

Very cool, but I missed a board when I saw the video of the game. Still seems to be very interesting.

rianelli 14y ago

Curious why you chose to spend $2.06 on the tubing stateside? That's a lot of money for packaging, and then to have to assemble the kits together. I'd try and get as much done in China as possible, especially the tubing, which would run you far less and you would be shipping a finished product and minimizing costs a ton. Happy to help anyone who needs guidance on sourcing and manufacturing in China. I've become pretty savvy over the years.

Torrents 14y ago
Hi rianelli, if you don't mind I'd love to take you up on your offer and bounce some questions off of you. I can be contacted at hn.torvid at recursor.net Thanks!

nnq 14y ago

> I spent a few hours hacking together a little rails app which would play out 100,000 rolls in a few seconds and tell me the chances of everything coming up. Can't people do the math anymore, they have to simulate everything?! And they have to do it with a mtf web framework?! A spreadsheet and some pen and paper to figure out the formulas would've sufficed...

roel_v 14y ago
And yet here he is, selling an actual product to actual customers, and you're sitting at your desk with your presumed 'advanced math knowledge' bitching about others not knowing how to do math...

fragsworth 14y ago

The costs breakdown neglects his own time put into the project. To get the real total cost (which must be estimated), we should know how many hours he spent on it, and what his expected hourly rate might be if he were an independent contractor. You can't really decide whether or not the endeavor was a net gain unless you also take your own time into account.

jere 14y ago
Did you ever consider maybe some endeavors in life are pursued for reasons other than profit?
- fragsworth 14y ago
  Well, it is possible to simultaneously enjoy your work and also put a monetary value on your time. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. And besides, if profits are not a motive, why analyze them to begin with?

tummybug 14y ago

Not sure if you are aware (or its designed that way) but on your website you have two different dice both labeled 'supernova'.

alttab 14y ago

Article read like an episode of Shark Tank. These sorts of real constraints is good information to mix into not-always-related-to-business technical discussions.

RobotCaleb 14y ago

This sounds really cool. Congrats on shipping it! I'd love to check it out, but I don't think I'd enjoy it very much due to my being color blind. Have you given any thought to designing the images to not be dependent on color?

SCAQTony 14y ago

Very well done and finally. WoW! God does plays dice!

amit_m 14y ago

Interesting post. The author could save another 0.83$ per package by skipping the included instruction manual. I think it's safe to assume that very close to 100% of users will have an internet connection available when playing this game, unless they're on a vacation abroad. I would opt for: 1. Full manual + videos on spacedice.com, aimed for use before the first time one plays the game. 2. Abridged version of manual printed on the tube, mainly meant for recalling some specifics of the game.

atlbeer 14y ago
It's hard to gesticulate wildly and throw digital instructions at your opponent while disagreeing on the rules.

curt 14y ago

Got a couple emails asking me questions, this is the company I always used in the US for prototyping. They are a little expensive but fast. They also have great resources that will answer all your questions: http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx

chrischen 14y ago

I watched the video on the site and still didn't really get how the game worked. I couldn't find any written instructions on the site.

jorde 14y ago
Neither did I but the video was so cute that I bought a pack (actually three with friends to lower the shipping per pack)

aik 14y ago

This looks great. I have no experience with selling physical products and so not sure what it takes, but I would think selling these on various specialty websites and specialty stores could work great. Thinkgeek.com is one that comes to mind.

joemaller1 14y ago

This was front page all day, I'm surprised he has any left to sell.

dplusavidg 14y ago

This really resonates with me. I am currently working on a physical product of my own. In a world where digital goods are the norm, I'm thinking of publishing a bi-weekly magazine. I'm still really in the planning stages, as I haven't got any experience on this front at all. But I do have some of the digital backbone in place already. And I have my ideas stirring in a pot now. All that's needed is for me to start cooking. Anyway, I would just like to say that I am inspired by what I'm seeing here. I'll work as hard as I possibly can. Wish me luck!

mprinz 14y ago

I'm impressed by how fast you decided to go into production. How many playtests did you do? I know a bunch of people who failed with a game that wasn't sufficiently tested. I experienced that the main faults in game design are testing with the same group over and over again, and relying to much on calculations rather than getting real life feedback. But hey, it looks awesome. Great Design. If you come over to the largest game fair in Essen (Germany) this year, I may grab one ;)