GameKnight Products is happy to announce our latest Kickstarter project. If you are a hardcore gamer, please take a few minutes to checkout this great new accessory for gaming. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1417272643/keeping-score-victory-chips-for-games
Kickstarter Spotlight: Hydra Dice
Another Kickstarter project to create game accessories. This one is to create some amazing-looking dice. Check it out here
51 hours to go!
Big thanks to all of my backers. 51 hours left and we are way above the initial $7,500 goal. The 12K and 20K stretch goals were easily beat! Here’s a peek at the designs for the the life\health chip. Backers will have the choice to pick one or both designs as part of their chip set.
The cost of ceramic chips
Having spent a month or so fielding questions from backers and potential backers, I now realize that I should have done a better job explaining the costs around creating a set of poker chips. A number of folks looked at the price of the sets and exclaimed, “Wow, those are some expensive chips!” The first things to discuss is that there are a variety of different types of chips on the market. The cost of a set of chips is mostly dependent on what type of material the chips are made from. The folks over at pokerchiplounge.com put together a nice summary page that compares the various types of chips including advantages and disadvantages. One big question that a bunch of folks have asked after looking at the GameChips Kickstarter Project is how does the pricing compare to other custom ceramic chips on the market. Here is a quick example of the cost of creating your own custom set versus the ones on Kickstarter. Let’s use the 300 chip set as an example: Here’s the rates used by brpropoker.com which are fairly typical from quality custom chip providers. Using these rates, your cost to manufacturer the chips is $246. You will also need to provide your artwork to the manufacturer. Unless you are a graphic artist, you will need to hire a graphic designer. The cost to hire a designer would likely be between $100-$300 as a guideline. For the purposes of this example, $150 for a simple design. So
Sneak peek at the 20K
Here’s a quick look at the ‘death & damage’ side of the latest chip for the Kickstarter project. Here’s the link to the update. These chips will be used as health and damage tokens in games.
Kickstarter: a blessing or a curse?
Full disclosure: I’m currently running a Kickstarter campaign to create a board game related accessory (hopefully that’s not news). Almost every blog and podcast now features a discussion about Kickstarter and its potential impact on the board gaming hobby. Why should this blog be different? Here are a few of the themes that almost always surface: 1. The quality of the games that will be created by first-time creators will lower quality compared to those from established publishers. 2. Eventually, the creditability of of Kickstarter-funded game development will be harmed by a project that either fails to deliver what was described, or delivers nothing at all. 3. The Kickstarter ‘craze’ will begin to wane as a result of the above two themes. So, are these 3 theories accurate? In 5 years, what impact will Kickstarter have had on the hobby? No one knows the real answer, but here is my opinion. I’ve been in the board gaming hobby for at least 10 years, and in that time, the number of games being brought to market each year continues to rise. This growth trend was in motion before the Kickstarter mania. Now with Kickstarter, even more games are created and marketed each year. Another equally gamer-friendly trend is the rise of IOS gaming, which logically should have taken market share away from the board gaming hobby as consumers could simply pay the small fee for the IOS version and not need to invest in the physical copy of the game.
GameChips: Poker Chips for Board Gamers
UPDATE: Although you may have missed the Kickstarter project, GameKnight will be offering these chips for sale in the near future (May\June 2012). If you want to be alerted to availability, just send an email to alerts@gameknight.com and put GameChips in the subject line. GameKnight has just launched it’s first kickstarter project. Follow the link to find out all about this great new accessory for board gamers. My project is to create GameChips, a customized set of poker chips to meet the needs of board gamers. Many board games use some form of game currency. The problem is that currency components included with games range from ok to terrible with some rare exceptions. Here’s some of the in-box components: Cardboard tokens: Usually you need to punch these out yourself. They get worn out pretty fast, and sometimes they get torn when you are trying to punch them. Paper money: This is probably the worst type of game currency. It rips, tears, and creases. Try taking a game to the beach and watch it fly around. Plastic chips: A little better than paper or cardboard, but these are often very thin and difficult to stack or pick up. Metal coins: Usually these don’t work that well because they are too small to stack. Most don’t have a denomination printed on them. Poker players and casinos found the right solution. They realized that the best replacement for currency is the poker chip. Not only are poker chips fun to handle, but they
