This is great news for those of us who prefer the typical game boxes, and it is a great indication that “The Little Game Company” is growing and will give them greater access to the mainstream gamers who have never tried any of the great games that VPG publishes, simply because they come in a bag rather than a box. Unfortunately I’m sure that it will also mean some price jumps to cover the cost. Most of us are used to paying those costs already with all the other games we buy, so I don’t see it as that big of a deal.
The VPG website says:
It is very humbling to have to eat your words, and as VPG’s Alan Emrich sat at the conference table recently and announced another sweeping change for The Little Game Company, he made it clear that times had changed, and that he must change with them. After long proclaiming that Victory Point Games was not interested in 
manufacturing boxed games, changing circumstances have greatly altered conditions for remaining a polybag packaging-only game company. What you need to know is that VPG is now exploring publishing its games in boxes.
Because The Little Game Company has expanded its production facilities, we need to more fully utilize all of this new manufacturing capacity that we’re paying for and, in turn, sell more games to cover those new expenses. This should surprise no one – that’s just business 101. So, VPG has started taking in work from other publishers; we’re now manufacturing components for them (see later in this article for the news about Ars Victory), which is great. However, we need to get more of our games “out there,” too. We’ve planned to do this by selling them (at last) through the traditional wholesale / retail distribution network and into game stores and e-tailer sites. However, as we approach that day, we are learning from these stores that they are really only interested in games in boxes and eschew those in polybags (for reasons of ease of display, customer desire, damaged copies, etc.). That’s a big reality check for us to face, and now we are unavoidably confronted with exploring this path – one that Alan has long hoped we would never come to, boxing our games.
You can read the rest of the article here
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2 Comments
This is all new / scary / exciting at the same time. We’re getting a lot of encouragement from stores to finally break down and box our games for them to sell… so it’s really time. The hardest part is to find an American solution to our needs, but it looks like we can still be “proudly manufactured in the USA.”
Thanks for your support everyone! We’re having a blast making games for you. 🙂
Alan Emrich
We’re all pulling for VPG Alan, and I’m looking forward to seeing this new chapter develop. Glad you are going to be able to get everything done here at home.