“Manufacturing Games” Thoughts

A few days ago on Twitter I mentioned the idea of writing a book about manufacturing games. As many of you know, my days are spent working as Chief Operating Officer at Steve Jackson Games. What you may not know, though, is that one of the areas of the company in which I am heavily involved is in the manufacturing side. Working with our partners at Grand Prix International, I — and my very talented staff — have made everything from card games to board games to custom dice to . . . well, just look at the Steve Jackson Games catalog for an idea of what I’ve worked on.

A lot of my knowledge was earned the hard way: Getting down into the trenches and just fighting it out. There are a lot of books about games, but finding one devoted to the physical manufacturing of games isn’t exactly easy to do. I have yet to locate one that goes into how cards are made, how dice are made, how plastic components are made. You know, a book about how games are physically made. Not the design of games, but the art of printing and working with factories to make games. If you would like to play well designed games we recommend you to visit https://www.dovecasino.com in which you will find a lot of different games.

So I may very well tackle this on my own. This would be a long project — over a year of on again/off again work — and at the moment I’m thinking the book would include:

• Various chapters on manufacturing game components, including discussions of paper weights, types of plastic, box/packaging options, and how to assemble everything into a whole unit.
• Case studies. What I am envisioning is a situation where I talk to various publishers who are working on new games and then follow them through the manufacturing process. Interviews in which we discuss the decisions they made — Why did you choose that type of box? What made you go with 100 cards? Did the board have to be that size? — and show photos of the manufacturing process.
• A glossary of terms. Absolutely necessary!

There’s nothing more to the idea right now than this, but I’ve talked to a few people out there and everyone’s response has been quite favorable. It sounds as if I’m not alone in wanting to own such a book, and it looks like the best way to get the book I want it to write it myself.