“Existential crisis”: The tariff scythe takes a swing at board games

Mental Gear Reduction said:

Boardgames are optional, food is not.

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Courtesy of Canada:
trying to get a clue into Americans.

I guess we need one "Tariffs are a tax on your board games"
"and your house"
"and your _____" and repeat endlessly.

Aurich said:

Again it's all about scale.

I do things like this, make products with my 3D printers and laser cutter. It's time intensive. The things I sell are not cheap, because I value my time. It's very much a high margin, low volume sort of thing.

And it's not just "it would take a few hours to make", it's also that you cannot make a bunch at once. Maybe some of it is batch-able, but still, it's limited.

I'm not trying to say it's not an interesting thought, just in time manufacturing at a local scale is a cool idea. We should be thinking creatively like that. But it's hard to do it at a scale that makes sense, or makes money.

It's not like people are getting rich making board games. But they need to be able to make a living if they're going to spend all their time designing and making them. So there's some number of copies that need to be made and shipped to make that work.

Edit: I should also note that tariffs will make buying all the equipment to do that more expensive too, that stuff tends to not be made in the US.

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@Aurich THanks for this: I'm running into a similar thing: I have a hobby business that until recently I had a dependency on a US retailer. Some items I could not source in Canada, I needed to get from the US retailer. Because of the tariff hits, a box of items that used to be a $5.00/unit on my porch, post shipping costs/duties, etc. Is now a $21.00 item. So: could I make the same thing somehow myself? Tried to do so: consumer 'CNC' systems for woodworking are glacially slow compared to a proper factory unit. But, now thanks to yet more tariff hits: even if I would order from that US retailer: its now a $34/item on my porch. For something that people typically would be unwilling to pay more than $19.95 for...

SO: I can't make it with a 'consumer' CNC and 'make money'
I can't source it without losing money.

Aurich said:

Funny enough my CNC is from Canada!

https://www.onefinitycnc.com/

I'll be honest, I don't use it much because it's kind of a pain to operate. It will do things my laser doesn't, but it's sort of a tool of last resort as cool as it is because the barrier to use it just higher. I was excited to buy it during a period of time when I was investing in my shop, but I think I probably didn't need it.

Plus, my (pre tariff!) cost on it was close to $3,000 all told, which means to get your $5 part out of it in value you'd need to make 600 of them, and that's not factoring in the material, the bits you break, not to mention your time.

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The bits you break... OMG, yes, the bits that you break... Especially when the Onefinity has this insane bug in which it suddenly loses its Z reference, and leaves the bit down when it does a repositioning, promptly tearing itself (at speed) across the project, inevitably ruining it, and usually leaving shards of carbide in various annoying spots

So yeah, the $5.00 part... plus the time on the CNC, plus "I can't leave the CNC alone in case it does something stupid yet again", plus the "great it ruined yet more material", plus "oh look, more expensive cutters snapped", plus "oh look, it burned out yet another small router motor"


(for folks wondering how this particular conversation connects to 'game pieces' Imagine, a non engineer, non CAD comprehending person, trying to figure out how to create 'game pieces' on their own, so they can attempt to sell their board games, when they used to be able to depend on a factory elsewhere in the world that knows exactly how to do this sort of thing in volume) (I'm an engineer, I comprehend CAD (well) , and I can't get an 'affordable' CNC to work consistently, reliably, and safely. So folks realistically expect small game makers to be able to suddenly take on creating their components themselves?)