Jamey Stegmaier Sounds Alarm Over Grim Future for Board Games

Board gaming is an industry of tinkerers and small profits, creativity, and close community. This week, however, saw board game makers and publishers reeling in shock from a collective blow to their industry: the recently announced 54 percent import tax on products made in China for the United States market.

Designer Jamey Stegmaier, whose titles such as Scythe and Wingspan have become award-winning hits, was one of many to sound the alarm. In a post published to his blog on Friday, Stegmaier said: “Last night I tried to work on a new game I’m brainstorming, but it’s tough to create something for the future when that future looks so grim. I mostly just found myself staring blankly at the enormity of the newly announced 54 percent tariff.”

A statement both unusually personal for a designer of Stegmaier’s international profile and, more importantly, one that has struck deep chords across the industry. From both established and smaller creators, those who have never expected to make a fortune from board games are raising concerns about their ability to stay in business with the newly imposed tariffs.

Made in China

America’s board game publishers do not typically design their games to be made in America. There are, of course, manufacturing facilities in Germany (board games are often considered spiritually Germanic) and other countries. But despite a few exceptions, the majority of American board games are made in China.

The “Made in China” label is not reserved for cheap plastic toys or knockoffs: it also covers games produced by individual craftsmen for worldwide shipping. Printed cards? Chinese factories will do that. Custom plastic miniatures? Wooden tokens? Die-cut boards? Specialty dice? It’s all on offer.

In theory, the individual components of a board game can be produced domestically in the United States. But as Stegmaier notes in his post, in practice, the cost of such domestic production makes American manufacturing unrealistic. “I remember being quoted $10 by one domestic manufacturer,” Stegmaier writes. “Just for an empty game box.”

Compare that with the same $10, which in China “can cover the labor and material to print and package an entire game.”

Expecting to be hit by an industry-wide tax increase with no warning and no time for adjustment is a bitter pill to swallow for publishers who, already working on slimmer margins than many other companies, are used to cutting costs where possible. But many small and mid-sized publishers work on such thin margins that this immediate, massive hit to their books was simply not feasible.

Industry Voices

Comments from the CEOs of Steve Jackson Games, one of America’s largest board game publishers, further amplify Stegmaier’s account. Meredith Placko’s company publishes big hits like Munchkin in addition to smaller fan-favorites, and like most board game companies in the U.S., manufactures its games overseas.

Placko explained in her own Friday post that while her team and many others would love to be able to work with domestic manufacturers, the reality is that for the majority of components for the complex board games of today’s market, it’s cheaper to have them produced in China than to do so in the United States.

“If you talk to most American board game manufacturers, we all have similar stories: ‘I wish we could. We have manufacturers in X, Y, and Z that would love to do it,” she wrote. “We even have some that are already in the country that want to branch out and do it. But even they just don’t have the capacity and can’t get their feet on the ground quickly enough.”

The issue is not merely that production is moving abroad; it’s that the existing infrastructure and market are oriented around overseas suppliers. “I don’t just mean print,” Placko writes. “I mean the specialty die-making, the die-cutting, the specialty plastic and wood pieces. These are all offshored to China. It’s not like we have them sitting here, ready to go at a competitive price.”

In an interview with The Guardian, Placko said: “It’s a huge problem for everyone in the business. I think you’re going to see the small publishers suffer first, and if it’s not stopped, there’s going to be a great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US.”

This isn’t only a logistical headache for designers, but a sudden, industry-wide development that could affect all aspects of the business. “To be clear,” Placko wrote. “This is not just a policy change. This is a seismic shift in the world of board games in the US.”

For Rob Daviau, co-founder of Restoration Games and designer of the popular Pandemic Legacy, the situation has for months been a near-constant presence in his social media activity, even before the tax increase was finalized. For the last few months, Daviau told BoardGameWire, “almost every meeting we’re having is an existential crisis about our industry.”

Gamers Pay the Price

One easy prediction: tabletop gamers will see some of the brunt of the tax increase first-hand, even as the publishers they support scramble to adjust. The retail prices of new games will go up. Games that don’t have an increased sticker price will likely suffer a corresponding decrease in quality as companies slash costs to maintain parity. Some games might not see new releases at all.

The shift in where people buy games could also have negative consequences for brick-and-mortar shops, which have already been feeling increased pressure from online retailers. If the situation causes people to either play from games already on their shelves—many of which are unplayed games that those who buy a lot of new games describe as their “shelves of shame”—or to shop online for deals on used games, it could deal another blow to local retailers.

“In a few months ,US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business,” Stegmaier wrote in a follow-up tweet. “And US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.”

A Workaround? For Who?

For some companies, especially those shipping directly to customers from Asia, there is a small workaround: rerouting shipments through non-U.S. distributors. Board game sales are not as dramatically impacted in the European market, and some publishers are already considering doing this in order to avoid the tariff.

As Stegmaier points out in his post, however, it’s a non-option for domestic sales: “Yes, we could try shipping our games from Europe to the US instead, but 65 percent of our sales are in the US. Our company would still take a big hit.”

The other significant problem with this workaround is that it only really benefits companies with a pre-existing international sales network. Smaller companies producing their first few titles will feel the consequences of the tax change shortly; those that already committed product to factories for shipment from China, there’s not much they can do now. “8,000 games are leaving a factory in China this week,” said Chris Solis, founder of California-based Solis Game Studio. “I’m now trying to figure out how to cover the import bill.”

Industry Reaction

The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) is the board game publishing trade group that has been at the center of the board game industry’s resistance to the tariff change. For months, its member companies have been lobbying against the tariffs. As of Monday, that hasn’t changed much of anything.

This is one of the largest and most sudden disruptions to the tabletop games industry in the modern era. At a time when the medium was just beginning to cement its place in the American cultural mainstream, it suddenly appears to be at a significant crossroads.