Sources? Or are you just making shit up as usual?

You are correct sir. But still...I keep remembering those little Car Wars plastic boxes with their cardboard counters selling for less than $10(in the very early 1980s) and wishing they had such options for all quality board games. OGRE is of course a different beast and even Car Wars now days comes in a much more expensive box.

OGRE had a pocket edition as well, in fact I'll be apparently getting one as a thank you bonus. But this edition is obviously intended to be much nicer. I wouldn't be shocked to see pocket editions again soon, though.

Power Grid by RGG, made in Germany:

http://bgg.cc/image/1268975/power-grid

Retails for $35.95

SPQR, made by GMT Games, made in China

http://bgg.cc/image/191471/spqr

Retails for $84.95

Wages for China, Germany:

http://bgg.cc/image/191471/spqr

So there.

I love this "source or it's not true" mentality the internet has polluted people with. I made an exception here to make an example out of you, but in an argument it's the dissenter who bears the burden of looking up the facts. *I* already did before I opened my proverbial mouth. It is not my job to educate you, thankfully.

As the sample above shows, games made in the US and Germany tend to cost less or the same as those made in China, yet the production costs to the publishers are significantly higher, and the components are almost always cheap cardboard, often in high gloss finishes to hide the low grade. When meeple are present, they are often substandard wood, or plastic. The aforementioned wood often contains mold.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/527004/mold-on-my-pieces

Z-Man, GMT, AEG, and many other predominantly produce in China. I suspect this is because the profit margin is significantly higher, as illustrated above. The wages are lower, the components cheaper, the MSRP higher or the same.

So next time you want to troll just for the sake of trolling, make sure your target doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

You really can't see the difference in scale between a mass market Eurogame that is sold pretty well everywhere compared to a board wargame? Seriously? GMT games is not rolling in cash. My FLGS has one of the largest collections of board wargames in North America and it costs them money to stock them just to pay for the shelf space. The owner keeps them because he's a wargamer and the store makes its money from MtG, Warhammer, and Eurogames but the owner said at one point he's lucky to sell 1 board wargame per month. GMT games prints their games in batch of 1000, mostly through pre-order.

I mean you went out of your way to pick one of the tiniest niche markets within gaming to use as an example. Of course it's going to cost more. I mean you could probably fit all the proper wargamers in a decent sized city into a single room.

*edit* This is what GMT games does to stay afloat. http://www.gmtgames.com/t-GMTP500Details.aspx In other words, if they can't be sure to sell at least 500 copies they won't print it. Now come back to me when you've taken a look at economies of scale.

It got polluted with "pics or it didn't happen" right after people got sick of made up shit.

1) I can see from the pictures that your example games actually have lower quality construction. That's not to say they're "bad", they're okay in fact, just that the OGRE box is made out of far superior materials (better dice, thicker card stock, injection molded plastic pieces, etc.).

2) You really need to figure out the difference in economies of scale when you're making a 10k to 20k print run with frequent reprints vs. a 500-3000 print run with probably no reprints ever. I know imperialus brought it up first, but he's making a very relevant point.

3) Finally, the wage thing. Of course Germany pays a higher living wage and has more worker protections. I'll be the first to admit I don't know what conditions are at this printer, but I do know the following: SJG has been using the same printer for a very long time and SJG really seems to treat his employees well (for example, they don't hire temps to staff events like PAX, SJG flies his actual employees out to take part, said employees are some of the most passionate people with which I've spoken, even at an event like PAX). I also know employees of SJG travel onsite to said printer at times. It would not surprise me to learn that SJG would not use a printer that was extraordinarily abusive towards its employees.

Uh...this is false. The bit about the dissenter bearing the burden of substantiating the 'asserter's' claims, I mean. When you make an asserting that 'X is true' and 'X' is not widely known to be true then you bear the burden of substantiating the assertion.

I used that game as an example. Almost any Zman Euro costs 10-20% more than a RGG one, with the former being almost exclusively Chinese made, and the latter almost exclusively German made. The economy of scale example doesn't fit here. Where are the extra savings for the massively undercosted Chinese labor going? Into the publishers pockets. These publishers are making a higher margin based on the shipping savings/>= MSRP paradigm alone. I could accept Chinese production if 90% of the labor savings were passed on to the customer, but lately the trend has been that the MSRP markup completely consumes the labor savings and then some.

Regarding SJG's, you can treat your Chinese printer as fine as you want, the owners of the Export Processing Zone factory will love it I am sure, but the slave labor workers won't notice anything different. Lie to yourself if it reduces your consumption guilt, just don't cry foul when someone slips you a dose of truth.

Also, giving that leech Steve Jackson more money to flood store shelves with Munchkin expansions is the LAST thing any self serving boardgamer should be doing. I love the idea of an OGRE release, but his pricing is completely out of whack. The KS supporters should be getting this at close to cost, which is the typical scheme, which guarentees an initial print run which can charge the $100+ tag at retail to make up the margin overall. What that idiot is doing is using KS as a preorder system, which is particularly vile and disgusting given how big a company SJG's is.

IIRC I first remembered hearing about the Ogre thing when Steve was planning on doing a tiny print run of 300 copies. He said that they'd actually be loosing money selling them at 100 dollars.

Besides Pocket Ogre is going to go back into print as well and it'll be selling for around 20 dollars.

Is there a reason that you think the marginal costs are the bulk of the cost, especially for small print runs? Because that's why we keep trying to explain why this game is more expensive compared to mass market games, the fixed costs are probably a big chunk of the total expenditures in such a case (I know retooling a factory to produce different tools or circuit boards can be very expensive).

The point of OGRE KS is to make OGRE self financing, before the KS the money was flowing the OTHER way (from Munchkin to OGRE). Munchkin already self finances, you're not allowing or denying more Munchkin production by not supporting the KS. However thanks to this KS Steve himself will be working on OGRE this year and Car Wars the next year, that probably does mean less Munchkin overall.

SJG has posted the name of his printer: http://grandprixintl.com/ If you truly believe they must have bad labor practices, by all means go ahead and show us. They very well may have, but you seem to have the issue with it. I don't have any. If he couldn't use US Printers, then he couldn't use them. I doubt it automatically means that it's because the US printers could beat the shit out of their employees, it could, but I'm disinclined to believe that as a first hypothesis. You can also read his statement about using them (for whatever information it provides) here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/ogre-designers-edition/posts?page=2 which includes a statement that Phil Reed flew to China to visit the factories. I suppose he could have stayed in the front rooms and ignored the screams of pain coming from behind the door, but, again, I'm disinclined to believe that as a first hypothesis.

I don't support outsourcing, partiularly if I am not getting the lions share of the labor savings passed on to me, and niether should you. A visit by a western IP holder doesn't change any of that, or make it less exploitive/irresponsible.

Last day (or maybe two) to fill out surveys for extra swag if you bid over your package amount (tshirts, shot glasses, etc.). I'm getting kind of excited!