But…how labor-intensive are these? I’d think that the printing would be pretty heavily automated. I don’t know whether molded plastic needs a lot of processing (snipping seams or something?) or whether machines can bring a molded piece to a final state without human intervention.
kagis for an injection-molding plastic cost breakdown
Maybe for simple games, but for things that have a crates worth of stuff crammed into them like Gloomhaven, it seems like a bit more.
On the other side, there was a company that used cheap cardboard for everything and didn’t even include dice called Cheapass Games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheapass_Games They could probably manage.
That kind of surprises me.
When I think about board games, I think of:
Printed boards.
Printed cards.
Molded plastic pieces.
Maybe cut wood pieces.
Maybe glass counters.
Maybe plastic dice.
And all of these have to be put in a box.
But…how labor-intensive are these? I’d think that the printing would be pretty heavily automated. I don’t know whether molded plastic needs a lot of processing (snipping seams or something?) or whether machines can bring a molded piece to a final state without human intervention.
kagis for an injection-molding plastic cost breakdown
https://www.omrajtech.com/composites-blog/cost-model-for-pricing-plastic-injection-molded-parts
That doesn’t sound like there’s finishing costs involved.
Glass counters are machine-made.
I’m sure that cut wood pieces are done by a machine, or they’d cost a lot more and you’d rarely see them in budget sets.
Dice are done by a machine.
I guess that maybe a human could put N items of each into a box. That doesn’t seem like a lot of labor.
Maybe for simple games, but for things that have a crates worth of stuff crammed into them like Gloomhaven, it seems like a bit more.
On the other side, there was a company that used cheap cardboard for everything and didn’t even include dice called Cheapass Games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheapass_Games They could probably manage.