Thoughts on Product Size

We have been working on 3 separate games lately.

• Siege of Tyler City (a 15-minute wild west war game for two)
• Birthday Fairy Wish Race (a game our son is giving out as gifts to his birthday party guests)
• A rules-lite roleplaying game.

While working on these, the idea of box size came up. What size box should we put these things in? And if we made a decision, what larger implications does that have?

Well, there are plenty of options out there. I mean, just go look at the box options at TheGameCrafter.com for a list of possibilities. Plus, there is always a "no box" option, and a Print'n'Play option. When we really started thinking about it, though, a spark hit. What if all our games were in one sized box? What if we made that a "signature" of what we do? What if we had a table at a convention and the entire table have all these game boxes and they were all the same size?
Kind of exciting thoughts, quite honestly. In fact, so exciting, that it made for more thoughts.

• What price would everything be at? Could you have 1 box and 1 price?
• What would you have to do to game rules and components to make it all fit?
• What kinds of games does that mean you'll be focusing on?
• What efficiencies could you find from focusing on one shelf footprint?

Thoughts
All of these and more are still floating in our head. But here's some general thoughts about shoving everything in one box size.

• We can be a small-box publisher. That means all of our games have a small footprint and are easy to carry.
• It does not mean that all of our games are small... just the size. Try to pack as much in as possible.
• If possible, have only 2 price points for our boxed games: $15 and $25.
• Retrofit all existing games into this one box size.
• Live with and embrace the constraints that the box size and retail price cap gives us.

Progress So Far
So far... it has been great. We've redesigned Siege of Tyler City to fit in the box. We've had the chance to expand some of the components in Birthday Fairy Wish Race to move closer to the price cap. We've even done a streamlined version of our RPG that fits onto cards (that's been incredibly fun). There are even notebooks of possible ways to fit other, previously released games into this new box-size and price point. We'll see if it "fits", but right now, a single line-wide product size is fun to design around and in. Here's hoping it looks as cool on a table as we envision.