KD^3C^3 - 20250622 The bag is almost empty
James Earnest got the rights back to Cheapas Games. I’ve been a long time fan of the brand, as it's what literally allowed me to get into hobby board games, because they were, well, cheap. The idea was that many parts of board games were interchangeable, things like dice and figures and money could be salvaged from existing games, and then only the absolutely essential parts like boards and cards and rules could be printed for dirt cheap and sold for slightly less than dirt cheap, but still way less expensive than other games. I followed his stuff all through the 2000s and own plenty of the original white envelope games, called that because thy were sold in white 5x8 inch paper envelopes with the name of the game and art printed in black and white. Everything in the envelope was also in black and white on plain yardstick.
Eventually the board game market grew much larger and people had more discretionary income, so just being cheap wasn’t as much of a selling point as it might have been in the early 2000s (or if you were a teen with a part time job, like I was in the early 2000s). Cheapass Games pivoted to making (slightly) more expensive games. Games with full color art and all the components you need in the box. They were still pretty cheap, comparatively, costing on the low end of what a normal board game could cost. But this was also around the time that giant kickstarters for board games were happening; where bigger and bigger games with more and more stuff in them, were being made. Usually adding things through stretch goals so they could say there was more stuff rather than because it enhanced the games themselves. And in that market, paying $30 for a simple well designed board game was relatively cheap.
Back in 2019 there was a kickstarter for Cheapass Games in Black and White, This was a giant book, roughly 600 pages, and bigger than a traditional hardback, that contained all the rules for every game James Ernest designed as the head of Chiapas’s Games.
i was a lot of games! And along with each ruleset there was commentary from James Ernest about what the company was up to, and the design philosophy behind each one. He’s quite the prolific game designer.
After the successful kickstarter, another announcement was made. Cheapas’s Games, the brand an catalog had been sold to another company. The company, Greater Than Games, was going to take on responsibility for publishing the games and could theoretically re-publish anything from the back catalog if they wanted to.
James Ernest is a prolific game designer, however, and just because he had sold off his life’s work in the games publishing industry, he wasn’t going to stop designing games. So he opened up a new shop called Crab Fragment labs.Crab Fragment was a place for him to post about the new games he was designing. He made a few games here and there (actually more than 50 since 2019), and he posted most of them for free or dirt cheap or available throw low-cost print-on-demand providers, on the website. James hadn’t really changed in his ethos, he was still out there making games for cheapasses.
Crab Fragment labs hummed along for a while, as a relatively low key affair, and the Cheapass’s Games brand did… well.. nothing. After it was sold, Greater Than Games didn’t really do anything with the brand. They didn’t make new games, they kept the ones they had in print (or at least they didn’t sell well enough to go out of print) and that was pretty much it. It was pretty clear to me that they had bought an asset, not a company or an ethos they want dto keep making.
It seems like James Rest noticed this too. He even got permission from Greater Than to post some of the old games they weren’t using back on Crab Fragment Lab’s web site, in as section called the Game Reserve (pun very much in tended) where you could buy a PDF of the rules and all the printable components for, ya know, cheap.
So James Ernest was still making games, and a huge chunk of his old catalog was being sold by him again, but it really felt silly to me that it had to be done by licensing his own games back to himself from another company. I never go the sense that he regretted selling, and I hope he got paid well enough for it, but it always felt like a merchant move to me, rather than something that would expand the brand.
In early 2025, you may remember some news about the US Government putting massive tariffs on all imports, especially those from China. This was immediately devastating to the games publishing industry. Multiple companies announced that there was not a way for them to survive economically from this change. Almost every single board games is printed and manufactured in China and shipped out. I”m not here to discuss the god and bad of that particular supply line and distribution system, but a disruption like this on an already low-margin product usually made by people doing it for the passion more than the profit, was just insurmountable. One of those companies that was forced to shutter was Greater Than Games. Greater Than’s parent company shut down the entire publisher and laid off all the staff. They were just one of the many companies who had to face this situation, and it sucks for everyone in the board games industry.
But if you want to look for a silver lining, it’s that in the shuttering of Greater Than Games, James Ernest was able to re-acquire the entire catalog and brand. It’s his again. He hasn’t done much with it yet, because that takes time and effort, but he has announced that they’re going to make much of the catalogue available again for free, including rules and design updates.
So if you’re a cheap ass who likes games, there’s a place for you at cheapass.com.
One last note: A bunch of the physical games made by Greater Than Games when they owned the license are still available on their website for almost nothing. I already own most of these, but if you want high-quality games made available at probably less than cost you could do worse than check out the online store while supplies last. I'm pretty sure the logistics are still being handled by the parent company so you can order successfully, but caveat emptor. A couple personal recommendations: Button Men is a surprisingly deep 2 player strategy game with just a little bit of luck, Kill Doctor Lucky is like Clue in revers, where everyone is trying to be the one who murders the old man in the mansion, and Give Me the Brain is a light-hearted game about trying to wok in a fast food restaurant where every employee (including you) is a zombie.
Eventually the board game market grew much larger and people had more discretionary income, so just being cheap wasn’t as much of a selling point as it might have been in the early 2000s (or if you were a teen with a part time job, like I was in the early 2000s). Cheapass Games pivoted to making (slightly) more expensive games. Games with full color art and all the components you need in the box. They were still pretty cheap, comparatively, costing on the low end of what a normal board game could cost. But this was also around the time that giant kickstarters for board games were happening; where bigger and bigger games with more and more stuff in them, were being made. Usually adding things through stretch goals so they could say there was more stuff rather than because it enhanced the games themselves. And in that market, paying $30 for a simple well designed board game was relatively cheap.
Back in 2019 there was a kickstarter for Cheapass Games in Black and White, This was a giant book, roughly 600 pages, and bigger than a traditional hardback, that contained all the rules for every game James Ernest designed as the head of Chiapas’s Games.
i was a lot of games! And along with each ruleset there was commentary from James Ernest about what the company was up to, and the design philosophy behind each one. He’s quite the prolific game designer.
After the successful kickstarter, another announcement was made. Cheapas’s Games, the brand an catalog had been sold to another company. The company, Greater Than Games, was going to take on responsibility for publishing the games and could theoretically re-publish anything from the back catalog if they wanted to.
James Ernest is a prolific game designer, however, and just because he had sold off his life’s work in the games publishing industry, he wasn’t going to stop designing games. So he opened up a new shop called Crab Fragment labs.Crab Fragment was a place for him to post about the new games he was designing. He made a few games here and there (actually more than 50 since 2019), and he posted most of them for free or dirt cheap or available throw low-cost print-on-demand providers, on the website. James hadn’t really changed in his ethos, he was still out there making games for cheapasses.
Crab Fragment labs hummed along for a while, as a relatively low key affair, and the Cheapass’s Games brand did… well.. nothing. After it was sold, Greater Than Games didn’t really do anything with the brand. They didn’t make new games, they kept the ones they had in print (or at least they didn’t sell well enough to go out of print) and that was pretty much it. It was pretty clear to me that they had bought an asset, not a company or an ethos they want dto keep making.
It seems like James Rest noticed this too. He even got permission from Greater Than to post some of the old games they weren’t using back on Crab Fragment Lab’s web site, in as section called the Game Reserve (pun very much in tended) where you could buy a PDF of the rules and all the printable components for, ya know, cheap.
So James Ernest was still making games, and a huge chunk of his old catalog was being sold by him again, but it really felt silly to me that it had to be done by licensing his own games back to himself from another company. I never go the sense that he regretted selling, and I hope he got paid well enough for it, but it always felt like a merchant move to me, rather than something that would expand the brand.
In early 2025, you may remember some news about the US Government putting massive tariffs on all imports, especially those from China. This was immediately devastating to the games publishing industry. Multiple companies announced that there was not a way for them to survive economically from this change. Almost every single board games is printed and manufactured in China and shipped out. I”m not here to discuss the god and bad of that particular supply line and distribution system, but a disruption like this on an already low-margin product usually made by people doing it for the passion more than the profit, was just insurmountable. One of those companies that was forced to shutter was Greater Than Games. Greater Than’s parent company shut down the entire publisher and laid off all the staff. They were just one of the many companies who had to face this situation, and it sucks for everyone in the board games industry.
But if you want to look for a silver lining, it’s that in the shuttering of Greater Than Games, James Ernest was able to re-acquire the entire catalog and brand. It’s his again. He hasn’t done much with it yet, because that takes time and effort, but he has announced that they’re going to make much of the catalogue available again for free, including rules and design updates.
So if you’re a cheap ass who likes games, there’s a place for you at cheapass.com.
One last note: A bunch of the physical games made by Greater Than Games when they owned the license are still available on their website for almost nothing. I already own most of these, but if you want high-quality games made available at probably less than cost you could do worse than check out the online store while supplies last. I'm pretty sure the logistics are still being handled by the parent company so you can order successfully, but caveat emptor. A couple personal recommendations: Button Men is a surprisingly deep 2 player strategy game with just a little bit of luck, Kill Doctor Lucky is like Clue in revers, where everyone is trying to be the one who murders the old man in the mansion, and Give Me the Brain is a light-hearted game about trying to wok in a fast food restaurant where every employee (including you) is a zombie.