The Game Crafter Explained: How to Make Your Own Professional-Quality Card Game or Board Game
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- Опубликовано: 4 сен 2020
- Have you ever had an idea for a card game or board game but weren't sure how to make that dream a reality? Good news! There's an incredible new print-on-demand game creation service called The Game Crafter! I recently created my first official card game (Triumvirate) using The Game Crafter's website and I am thrilled with the results. The quality of everything from the web interface, the feel and print of the cards, to the packaging--it's all top-notch. In this video, I'm going to give you a quick overview of how The Game Crafter works so you can get started with making your own game right away. You can even make a card game or board game based on your self-published book to expand the reach of your story "franchise."
Later in the video, I'll share a little bit about how bleed works in print and the difference between art with bleed and art without bleed.
11:19 "Safe zone" or "Safety line" is the proper term for the blue-dashed line--sorry it was late afternoon and I couldn't recall it when recording! "Trim line" is the lighter red line, which is where the card will be cut/trimmed. The "bleed" is the darker red area that spills at the edges of the art.
I'll also share how much I make in royalties off each game sold!
NOTE: You will need some design skills and/or software to create all the files for your game, but they provide pretty much everything else.
Sign up for my EMAIL LIST to be the first to learn about my new game, my upcoming books, and other exciting news from Taylor Thomas Smythe!
eepurl.com/gd8o8L
Learn more about my ongoing Kingdom of Florida fantasy book series at:
www.kingdomofflorida.com/books
To order Triumvirate, the card game I mention in this video, click this link:
www.thegamecrafter.com/games/...
To check out other creative projects I'm working on, visit:
www.ttsmythe.com
Thanks for watching! 
Хобби
In case it was unclear, when you view "cut lines" on your proofs, those are JUST for the sake of showing you where it will cut. Those do NOT appear on the final artwork (unless you had those visible on the files you uploaded initially--which you do not want to do.).
I'm currently using the game crafter for my TCG and what I can say from experience is their selection of items and quality are incredible!!!
Truly! I was blown away by how wide the selection is and how easy and helpful their website is. Good luck and happy gaming!
11:19 "Safe zone" or "Safety line" is the proper term for the blue-dashed line--sorry it was late afternoon and I couldn't recall it when recording! "Trim line" is the lighter red line, which is where the card will be cut/trimmed. The "bleed" is the darker red area that spills at the edges of the art.
Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you.Thank you very much
You’re welcome.You’re welcome.You’re welcome.You are very welcome!
Thanks for the video, it was very helpful!
You are so welcome. I'm glad it was helpful to you! Good luck with any of your own game-making :)
Great stuff, congratulations!
Thanks so much! I appreciate you checking it out :) Hope it helped inspire some creativity.
All the best,
Taylor
Yes! Thank you so much! I've been having trouble on the game crafter and now I can finally start to make my TCG!
You are so welcome! So glad you found this helpful! Good luck on your game!
Great video! Thanks for sharing. Intrigued to see all the shapes available on TGC, a square deck of KOMBIO might be in the future!
Nice! Glad you enjoyed! Yes there are so many options available - even beyond cards and into the board game realm. Truly limitless possibilities. Gets my creativity going. Good luck on your game making!
Just saw this. Thanks for making such a great video!
You are very welcome! I had a great experience with The Game Crafter and had to share!
Hey there! Just sharing that I started a new series where I'm re-creating a card game I made when I was a kid. I'll be going in-depth with more of a "how-to" style of designing cards and using The Game Crafter in future episodes, but wanted to share the intro: ruclips.net/video/HHr1d15biZA/видео.html
@@ttsmythe Hi Taylor, Thanks for letting us know about your new video series. The first video was very interesting and we love the composition. We'll be happy to feature this (and the rest of the videos) on our news blog and social media channels. We think our community will enjoy these. Keep up the good work!
@@TheGameCrafter Thanks so much! I really appreciate that, and love how easy you guys make it to create custom games. This was something I could only dream of 20 years ago :)
awesome video, thanks for the info
Thank you so much for watching! I’m glad you found it helpful.
I have been looking at this site for some time. I am definitely going to make this happen. I was thinking I needed to create vector images. I really want to try this.❤❤❤❤❤
Give it a try! Best of luck to you.
Thank you sir. It help me a lot. I already have a prototype of my card game. Only a piece of paper (lol) still I will start this website (game crafter). Hope will help me. Make my own card game. Soon board game... Thanks a bunch sir.
That's great! And I actually created my first game with pieces of paper, too, just to figure it out. Definitely helps make it easier to translate to the more professional version on TGC when you're ready. Good luck with your making!
@@ttsmythe i did my design on my phone app comica. It look little neat lol but still thank for the advice sir. Need to gear up my prototype. Thanks!
This is an explicit ad for The Game Crafter and an implicit ad for Cheddar flavored Goldfish Crackers (top left of screen)
Thank you for noticing that very intentional product placement. 🙏
I have almost finished a card game. It has been developed to raise money for 4 aminal charities. I happy to give the game free to animal charities outside of north cyprus. However, i want to protect it from anyone copying it and selling it for profit. Any advied would be grestly appreciated.
Oh cool! And interesting. Unfortunately I don’t know much about copyright laws surrounding games. Maybe Google around? Best of luck!
"Have you ever wanted to create your own game"?
Yes.
"Well there is a way for you to do that."
Yes?
"Here is a website for it".
YES!
"It refuses to print copyrighted material".
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I started searching for resource about making my own boardgame online yesterday, and suddenly I get this in my recommendations. It's a great video, and the service seems awesome, it's a shame they feel obligated to refuse copyrighted material instead of just saying "we are not responsible if you infringe the law."
Well too bad for them, that's one customer they won't have.
Thanks for following along/watching! Sorry you’re running into a roadblock :/ Copyright stuff can be tricky.
@@ttsmythe Yeah, that happens, lol. Oh well, I just found an alternative (MakePlayingCards).
Hello ! Great video !
But I have a question (sorry if you told that, I'm French and I don't understand everything) :
Does the creator have to spend money to get the game online or for each impression? Or is it totally free for him (so me)?
Hello, WarLynx. Great question! The only time you pay anything is if you want to purchase the game yourself (or to purchase a proof copy of the game). Otherwise, it is completely free to have your game for sale on The Game Crafters' web shop. Hope that helps!
@@ttsmythe It's awesome ! Thank you !
Hello bro, thank for your video.., I wanted to ask you because I have also have my ideas to build my own custom card and I would like it to protect my own ideas and creations is there any advise you can give about the copyright issue if I publish my card.. thanks again
Hi Happy, good question! I am not really an expert in copyright or legal issues, so you may want to get more official help for that. Good luck on your game creation!
-Taylor
Is there any site like this for europe? Because the shipping to europe is quiet expensive I think..
Oh, good question. I am not sure about that but feel free to share if you find out!
-Taylor
Hey Taylor,
Great video.
I created an account with The Game Crafter about 2 years ago. I tried making a card game but gave up because I was so frustrated with the graphics design program. Seems like they all use layers. The layer concept and mechanic drives me insane.
Can you give any advice as to how to make the formatting process more simple.
I'm very experienced with PowerPoint and I was hoping that designing a card image was as easy as designing a slide on PowerPoint.
I was so wrong.
Again, if you can give me any advice it would be much appreciated.
Hey Samuel,
Great to hear that you are trying your hand at making a card game! I would say that the design aspect requires some prior knowledge of design software, so I would suggest either: 1. Spend some extensive time brushing up on how to use a program like Photoshop or InDesign; or 2. Consider hiring a designer to create the card artwork for you.
As a designer, the "layers" are vital, especially in a card game where you tend to have many overlapping elements and where layout elements are consistent from card to card. Sorry it drives you crazy, but I think learning more about how to use them well could help :)
I suppose you could use PowerPoint--you'd just want to make sure and set your slide dimensions to the FULL size of a single card WITH bleed included (so download an image template from The Game Crafter and match the exact pixel dimensions of the card's template).
Hope some of this was helpful in some way! Kind of hard to summarize years of graphic design training in a single comment (lol) but you should also check out The Game Crafter's own channel for tutorials.
Best to you!
-Taylor
Thank you for the advise.
I have some great concepts. But I am currently time broke. Full-time job + wife and kids. But I love gaming. And I was looking for a simple solution.
Hi, Samuel. I just added another video that goes into a little more detail about layers, using InDesign. Just in case it's helpful to you at all: ruclips.net/video/bJEHKtdKGJs/видео.html
@@ttsmythe Thank you!!! Great video!!!
Hi
Can you sell your games in different websites or just using their official website as a marketplace?
Hello! I think their site is the only place the games are sold, but they may have some sort of way to distribute that I’m not aware of.
A price calculator? I’m trying to design a deck based on my Numerology for Fitness book at The Game Crafter and I can’t figure it out…. ‘Simple’ you say ? Straight forward? Oí I’m guessing that info is ony available AFTER you create an account.
It looks like you can create a quote on their site as a guest! You will add the different components that you want and it will give you a total. Google: “the game crafter price calculator” and a little step by step instruction should be a top result.
Wow cool!
Thank you!
Do they have a landing page you can use to sell your game and link to from ads?
Good question. Each game has a "product page" on their site (if you make it visible) where people can learn more or purchase the game. I personally created my own webpage (on my own site) that could serve as a landing page. I would then have a button on my website that goes directly to the product page so they can purchase it. There may be more integrations that allow you to sync things better, but that's how I've done it :) Hope that helps!
-Taylor
@@ttsmythe Helps a lot actually. So I'm guessing that method works well enough. I always thought we had to integrate everything to a page to prevent people from going to other websites. But I may have jumped too deep into the world of SEO rules than what is actually practical.
@@HalkerVeil You could search more about "drop shipping" through them or some other integration, but I'm just not sure how extensively they're equipped for that :) I get what you're saying and obviously that would be more ideal to cut down the amount of pages/clicks someone has to travel through before they purchase your game.
Nice vid. Just subscribed. What software did you use to design your artwork?
Thanks so much! I used a combination of Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. I used Illustrator to create the individual character and icon graphics, then used InDesign for the layouts and text of each card. It’s really easy to export from InDesign in a variety of formats, including the formats used by The Game Crafter.
Hope that’s helpful!
I see you also created the game of Goldfish. Cheddar edition?
😂 My favorite haha!
Can you custom design card backs and fronts?
Yes! You can either give multiple cards the same back or individually customize each card with its own unique designs, both front and back.
I created an original card game. Is it worth having a patent done on it? I am hoping to find a co-investor and then sell it on amazon
Congratulations on creating a card game! I am unfortunately not an expert in patenting and don't know much about that, but I'm sure that's an option you can pursue if you'd like. All the best!
How did you protect You're idea?
Hi Theresa! I presume you're talking about patenting or copyright, perhaps? I haven't done either of those things, but many creative works have some level of automatic copyright when they are created. Other than that, I'm not really too concerned with someone stealing my idea as it's based very directly off of my own book series. However, I am not really an expert in this area. Sorry I can't help more!
❤
Thanks for watching, Dee!
Hi Taylor! What designer software did you use to create your cards? Was it component studio?
Hello She! I created my card designs using a combination of Adobe Illustrator (to illustrate the different elements/characters) and Adobe InDesign (to actually lay out each card). In my job, I prepare files for print a lot, so I find that InDesign makes things super helpful and efficient for making multiple variations of a similar card type. Hopefully I can make another video showing more of that soon!
@@ttsmythe Thanks for responding. I'm still trying to figure out how to upload and create on Game Crafter. Your video is the very reason why I choose their services so thank you for the recommendation. Also, it would be great if you could upload a video showing more of your design technique using your chosen software. Thanks again for the great content. God bless!
@@jakgirltube You are so welcome. Glad to hear that! I plan to do more videos soon! :)
How do you put together the strategy and rules of the trading card games. I am trying to prepare 1 for my book.
Great question, Melissa! For my card game Triumvirate, I started with figuring out what the objective was--in this case, the goal came straight from my book series (Kingdom of Florida), which was the goal to discover and reunite three lost royals. Then I brainstormed and came up with a list of interesting characters, magical objects, and other moments from my story that I thought would make good game elements. For each, I thought about how I could take the essence of the book idea and translate it into an interesting and meaningful game mechanic. That's the basic idea of how I went about it, but maybe I'll get around to making a video that goes more in-depth someday. :)
All the best on your book and game!
-Taylor
@@ttsmythe Thank you so much. I will greatly support you by buying your book and maybe you can help me with some ideas when I get started. You have been great.
@@melissawarrior5415 You are so welcome :) I am trying to plan out some future videos this very evening, so hopefully I'll have some rolling out soon to help you along the way. You can find all of the Kingdom of Florida book series at www.kingdomofflorida.com/books
Happy reading :)
-Taylor
@@ttsmythe I just purchased your 1st book, "The Golden Alligator" I'm excited to read it 1st & then I'll give it to my grandson. I also supported your book on Twitter. Thank you for helping me and I am looking forward to the videos. My book is going through editing now and I am so ready to publish.
Hi again Melissa! You're in luck. I just finished uploading the first part in a new series where I talk about how I came up with the story and brainstorm ideas for my game. I'll try to touch more on strategy and rules in a future part, but sharing just in case it's helpful: ruclips.net/video/HHr1d15biZA/видео.html
Whats going on Taylor...Im actually in the process of making my first card game with Game Crafters. Im still kind of lost but maybe you can help me. First thing I want to know is, what was the turn around time it took you to actually receive your cards once you had everything uploaded?
Hey there, Tarel! Sorry for the late reply to your question. I don't know if my experience was totally "normal" since I actually ordered my cards RIGHT when everything shut down for COVID, so the Game Crafter headquarters was TOTALLY closed for several weeks. But the cool thing is that you can see what "number" your project is in the queue. Once my game actually went into production, though, I'm pretty sure it only took a week or two before I got the set in the mail. Hope that helps! Best of luck on your game creation. If you're still trying to figure things out, I recommend trying to work out the rules/gameplay by mapping out your cards on just regular paper so you can kind of get a picture of your full deck and everything. I did that and just did quick pencil sketches for each card. This helped me take the abstract idea into tangible form so I knew what changes I needed to make before I actually made the final print-ready artwork. Blessings!
You’re on a computer…. Can any of this be done on an ipad?
Good question! I suppose you can probably build your graphics on an iPad in ProCreate or some other graphics app. I have not tried that yet but good luck.
I'm ready to buy my own game. But I was not paid yet. So need to wait.
Patience :) I know the feeling.
What does the packaging look like when a person receives the deck?
Hi there! When I ordered my cards inside a tuck box, it came wrapped in plastic. It was delivered inside a compact cardboard box, to the best of my recollection. Looked very professional!
have you found any cheaper sites? 16$ for 1 rouge deckbox isn't a good deal but I could be wrong
Hi! I haven’t seen many other sites that can do custom card decks like The Game Crafter. Their prices also include all of the costs of them hosting and selling your games, and taking care of all of the handling and shipping when someone orders, so in my mind the price is actually not bad, especially for custom items that are being printed one at a time (i.e. not in bulk). Feel free to share here, though, if you find other sites that offer custom decks! I’m sure other viewers would find it helpful!
All the best,
Taylor
@@ttsmythe I was told by another dev going through the trouble of talking to a distributor and making your own site would be better because crafter “is only for demo copies” is that something they changed ? Maybe they were wrong or it was a metaphor for saying crafter’s shop is a scam ?
@@Brodysseus113 I think it depends on what your goals are. I don't know how difficult it is to find a distributor or where to begin (I assume it's like finding a writing agent and shopping around a manuscript to different publishers). I assume it takes a lot of time, energy, finding the right company, alignment with the market, etc. as you have to pitch your game, convince someone it is marketable, and to take a chance on it. If you can get through all of that, that route might allow you to take a greater amount of royalties after you sold enough to cover the initial costs and mass-production of the game, but you'd still be splitting royalities with a distributor. I didn't really have the time or energy to do that, which is why I found The Game Crafter to be a really good option. It is print-on-demand, which is by nature almost always a more expensive option per unit than something that can be made in bulk, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as a "scam." I think there are ways to be smart about what items you include in your game that can keep it from getting too expensive (and there are also elements you can add that will make it VERY expensive). Hope that helps? And best of luck on whatever game project(s) you are dreaming up!
-Taylor
Have you ever created your own game? Or had an idea for one? Let us know your experience or ideas below!
yo Could yo hand over some of those Cheddar Goldfish you got up there?
😂 Glad you noticed :) If I could, I would share!
Is the game Crafter free like you dont have to pay to get your cards?
Great question! You do have to pay for whatever materials you order for your game. The good news is that you don't have to pay to have your game hosted (i.e. available for others to buy from the online store), and you don't have to order bulk and keep inventory since TGC will print the game on-demand when someone orders. Here's a link to their pricing page, which breaks down all of the different game elements you can add to your game: www.thegamecrafter.com/make/pricing (I promise they aren't sponsoring me lol I just really enjoy using their services)
All the best,
Taylor
@@ttsmythe okay thanks