US-Based Game Production Still Not a Viable Option, Say Publishers

Its a rare day in the board game industry when a designer known for hits like Scythe and Wingspan gets emotional. Jamey Stegmaier got emotional this week. The problem? President Donald Trumps new import tariffs on Chinese-made goods heading to the U.S. market: 54 percent.

In a raw and personal blog post on Monday, Stegmaier explained why the news was crushing the hopes of board game designers, publishers, and fans: last night I tried to work on a new game Im brainstorming, but its tough to create something for the future when that future looks so grim, he wrote. I mostly just found myself staring blankly at the enormity of the newly announced 54 percent tariff.

Board game production is a global industry. There are factories in Germany, China, and other places around the world that produce modern tabletop games. Germany is the spiritual center of todays board game renaissance. But when game designers and publishers think of manufacturing a game, they mean moving an entire game from concept and design to factories that specialize in every part of production. The cards. The game box. The custom plastic miniatures. The wooden game tokens. The die-cut board. The funky dice. When an American publisher talks about sending a game to manufacturing, chances are they are referring to China.

In other words, it is possible to print all that stuff here in America. Its just cost-prohibitive. For years, Stegmaier recalled, American-based manufacturers have quoted him $10 for a standard empty game box. But that same $10 could mean the production and packaging of a full game in China.

Which is why this new tariff is a crisis of seismic proportions. The board game publishing industry, made up mostly of small to mid-sized publishers operating on small margins, has no time to absorb these new increases. Costs are going up in a big way, overnight, with no time for planning.

I will be perfectly honest with you. This is crushing to the US tabletop game industry, Stegmaier continued. This new tariff is nuts. Unimaginable. I honestly dont know how to continue, or how to make sense of this.

The co-founder of another board game studio, Steve Jackson Games, agreed. I cannot speak for everyone, said Meredith Placko in a post of her own. But this is about as close to an existential crisis for our industry as were likely to see.

Placko runs the Austin, Texas-based Steve Jackson Games, the 35-year-old publisher of the classic card game Munchkin and others. Jackson, too, makes her living making tabletop games the same way the vast majority of game publishers in the U.S. do: by designing games at home in the U.S. and having those games made in China.

Some people ask, Why not manufacture in the US? I wish we could, Placko wrote. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame productionspecialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components, etc., doesnt meaningfully exist here yet. Ive gotten quotes. Ive talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply arent.

This is not just a shift in logistical convenience, then. For Placko and the rest of the industry, it is far more existential. I have to share with you that this is not just a policy change, she added. This is a seismic shift in the US board game industry.

Steve Jackson Games isnt alone. Rob Daviau, a designer and co-founder of the board game studio Restoration Games, had been making similar comments on social media for months: Its like every single business meeting is now an existential crisis about our industry and our future, Daviau wrote in March. In April, he told the gaming news outlet BoardGameWire that this sort of tariff could bring about a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.

Gamers May Take a Hit, Too

All of that pain and struggle wont stop at publishers and designers. Gamers will take a hit, too, in the coming months and years. Prices for new games are going to go up. Some companies will look for ways to lower production costs to keep the sticker price on games from jumping (likely lowering the quality of those games), and some companies will simply choose to release fewer new games each year.

One of the most powerful groups in this discussion is also local game stores, already reeling from online competition. Gamers may decide to just play with the games already on their shelves. (Many tabletop gamers have unplayed games on their shelves, a situation the tabletop gaming community has taken to calling their shelves of shame.) Or they may start looking online for their games to get cheaper prices.

Within a few months, US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business, Stegmaier wrote. And US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.

An Option, But Not a Real One

Not all publishers will be hurt in the same way by the tariff. Some will try to ship their games to a non-U.S. distributorsay in Europe, which has been less affected by the tariffsand then from there to the U.S. Thats a workaround, but its not a solution for American publishers, as Stegmaier notes.

Europe accounts for about 35 percent of my companys sales, Stegmaier noted. 65 percent is domestic. A European distributor isnt going to solve that 65 percent.

Compounding the problem is the fact that this is happening so quickly. If a game is still in design or early production, there is still time to make changes to the budget. If a game is already produced and on its way from China, theres nothing the company can do about the tariff.

We got lucky last time and have all the copies in the factory right now, wrote Chris Solis, the founder and head of California-based Solis Game Studio. I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.

The Fight for the Future

There are organizations in the board game industry that represent the interests of publishers. One such organization, the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), has been lobbying against this sort of tariff since early this year.

So far, those efforts have fallen on mostly deaf ears. The future of a tabletop gaming market built on joy, wonder, and innovation just got far, far darker.