I have a new board game idea. does anyone know how, or who I can contact to get my game sold? Seriously Please

Question

I have a new board game idea. does anyone know how, or who I can contact to get my game sold? Seriously Please

Answer 1

FIRSTLY! You need to get a U.S. paton. If you do not get an approved paton someone can steal your idea. Nextly, after you get your patent send scimatics, pictures, drawings, and the ideas in official forms that are easy to understand to major board game companies. If they like the idea they may purchase it from you. It would not hurt to hire an attorney for this situation if you truly believe you need the extra legal help.

Answer 2

See the post above mine? It's the Top Answer. Skelebone knows his board games.

Answer 3

Take your game to the patent office. You must have a sample board and the entire game completed.  Then you must patent the game, but make sure no one else has the idea.  Once you have the patent, approach some of the gaming companies and see if they are interested in buying the game.  You are in a good market if the game is quality.  If it is addictive and people love it, it could make you a good bit of money in the end.  Don't let anyone in on your idea.  Make sure you get the patent first.  It's not expensive at all!  

However, you could go it alone, and build a website that only offers this game.  You could sell it on e-bay, and it might just be the end all be all money bomb.  You can always market the game yourself.  Most of all, the patent though.

Approach Parker Brothers.  If they think it will sell big, they will buy the rights to it.  :)

Answer 4

Contact Parker Brothers. They're the company that makes monopoly and many other gameboards. I don't really know how to contact them. i suggest you check inside the box of monopoly for the company's address and number.

Answer 5

Try this link http://www.inventhelp.com/

Good luck.

Answer 6

First, the whole bit about securing copyright or a patent is a bit off-base. You already hold copyright to everything that you produce -- that's why it is plagiarism if someone else takes your writings and publishes them as their own. Registration of your copyright is a time-consuming and expensive process, especially for something about which you are unsure of future profitability. The same goes for any notion of patenting your game -- more expensive and consuming than it is worth. More on why these steps are likely unnecessary in marketing your product later.

Now, on to your actual question about designing and marketing a game. First, there is a burgeoning web community for persons just like yourself who design games and seek to get them published. There is a wealth of material for you over at the Board Games Designer's Forum http://www.bgdf.com/. They can help you with information about how to go about marketing and publishing your game. This will be your biggest help about getting your game designed and marketed, even if that means self-publishing and personal marketing.

Before you head over there though, you may want to do some research about games like yours and whether there is a product on the market already that is remarkably similar to yours. It's tough to re-invent the wheel only to find that someone has already developed the automobile (<-- terrible metaphor). There is a great board game community with lots of information on games over at Board Game Geek.com http://www.boardgamegeek.com/.

In addition, I would recommend having a look at Brian Tinsman's The Game Inventor's Guidebook. It's a good resource for information about the game industry, profiles of prominent designers, and some industry contact information.

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Inventors-Gui...

Now, when it comes to big game producers like Hasbro, Mattel, Ravensburger, et al., most of these publishers will not take unsolicited submissions of games. This is a method for them to cover themselves in situations of being accused of "stealing" ideas (e.g. a designer makes a game based on a popular children's fad and sends the unsolicited submission off to a game publisher; a month later the game publisher releases a game based on the same fad (which they had been developing over the course of the previous year, and they never looked at the unsolicited submission), but to the designer it appears that the game publisher "stole" his idea for the game).  Also, large game publishers such as these have full-time staffs who design games for them, so unsolicited and untested external products aren't of much use them.  

It's worthwhile to note that while some people believe that a successful board game is a "million dollar idea," the truth is that there are very very few board game designers who make a living doing so, and generally they can only do so because they have spent years building up their published games.  A joke in the board game community is that all one needs to make a small fortune in the board game industry is to start out with a large fortune. Much like writers, one must publish and produce a lot of materials before enough residual money comes in to "go pro". Few of the designers who produce prolific games make a significant income at it, and the board game industry is one where sales of a few hundred copies is considered a "success", because that's the point where the game publisher can break even.  Circling back around to the top topic, in an industry where profit margins are thin, any extra and unnecessary money spent on securing copyrights and patents just a further hurdle to making a published game become profitable.