boardgame shopping in Japan

I visited Kyushu, Japan on a family holiday. Needless to say, being a gamer, I looked up boardgame stores to visit well before the trip, and also took the opportunity to look for games at bookstores, 100 yen shops and such when I was there. I found some games at Don Quijote. Don Quijote is a discount store which sells lots and lots of different stuff. Most of the games I found seemed to be heavily language dependent. So I didn't buy anything. 

The Google Translate app on my phone has been tremendously helpful. I point my camera at the box, and Google Translate does the translation from Japanese to English for me. The translation is decent. I can get a rough idea of the games. This particular game above seems to be popular. It has grown into a series. 

Back of the box

This one has sold 300,000 copies! 

Something to do with marriage proposals

50,000 copies sold! Not as impressive as 300K, but still very impressive.

A game about nasty LINE messages maybe?

This is not a boardgame. This is a map showing merchant ship routes approaching the port of Nagasaki. This is displayed at a museum. When I saw this I immediately wondered whether this could be turned into a boardgame. 

I visited Sunny Bird boardgame cafe and shop in Nagasaki. It was a 4-minute walk from where I stayed in Nagasaki. I did not sit down to play, but I did take a look at the cafe section. They have a huge library. One title that caught my eye was the early edition of Power Grid, when it was still called only Funkenschlag. This was the 2001 edition. The play area is cosy, not big. The cafe is in the city area, so I imagine rent must be expensive. Space is a premium. It's nice to have a boardgame cafe and shop so conveniently located. 

The shop section was not very big, but there was plenty for me to browse. I think there were more Japanese designed titles than foreign designed titles. That was perfect for me. I mainly wanted to look for Japanese designed games. I can find international titles easily in Malaysia. The shopkeeper was friendly and helpful. He recommended me several titles. It took me a while to browse, since I needed the assistance of Google Translate. 

I found a copy of the latest Japanese edition of Ra. I already own one, but Benz had asked me to find a copy for him. Mission accomplished. This edition comes in a pretty small box. It is compact and the price point is low. JPY 2200 is about MYR 55 or USD 13.50. 

These were the games I bought at Sunny Bird. Loop is by a designer from Nagasaki itself, so this is a meaningful souvenir. I bought it not only because of that. The gameplay did intrigue me. Let's see how it plays. I have not played it yet. The third game here is not by a Japanese designer, but the gameplay description is interesting enough that I decided to buy it. 

At one of the malls I visited, I saw this shop selling lots of TCG (trading card game) cards. There were tables for gamers to play. 

The cards were arranged in shelves like this. This might be the norm everywhere around the world, just that I am not a TCG player so I'm not familiar with this sight. 

At a bookstore I visited, I did not find boardgames or card games, but I saw many tarot card sets. I think people use these for fortune-telling or self-help. 

There were sample copies provided to allow shoppers to browse the content. 

Tarot cards is a whole new world I know very little about. 

One Piece version of UNO. I saw UNO with many other IP's attached. 

I saw a shop in Canal City Mall, Fukuoka selling a Gundam TCG

These are starter sets. JPY 1650 (around MYR 42 / USD 10) for one pack. That's quite cheap. I'm assuming one set is sufficient for one player to play. 

These starter sets come with three figurines. 

Player mat for the Gundam TCG

There were people playing another TCG. I wanted to take photos, but I didn't want to interrupt them or make things awkward. I took these quick shots while walking past. That's why the photos are poorly framed. Many players brought their own playmats. The play tables had player guides printed on them. 

We visited several cities in northern Kyushu, and our last stop was Fukuoka. I was pretty happy with the few games I bought in Nagasaki. Although I knew there was a Jelly Jelly Games cafe and a Yellow Submarine shop in Fukuoka, I listed them as optional destinations. If I had time I would go. By the last day, I almost decided not to go. I only changed my mind the evening before we flew back to Malaysia. It was late afternoon. We didn't have plans for the evening. The next morning we would be heading to the airport at 5:30am. Although I was tired, I decided to visit Yellow Submarine. They were still open. 

They are on the third floor of a commercial building. If you don't know about them, you would not discover them by chance. They are a destination store, not a shop you will chance to walk past at a shopping mall. More than half the shop is dedicated to TCG's. They have play tables. However they have a boardgame section too, and for me there is a lot to browse. They too have many Japanese designs, not just foreign designs. 

This is a weird one. It is a game about investigating the colour and pattern of a lady's underwear. I guess this is humour in Japan, slightly risque. In many other countries and cultures this would be inappropriate. 

Love Letter is one of my favourite games. It has a legacy version! Unfortunately this seems to be pretty language heavy. I did not buy this. I wonder whether there will be an English version. 

Back of the box

Trendy is an older game from Reiner Knizia. I have played it many years ago. I absolutely love the cover of the Japanese edition. It looks like a fashion magazine cover. I'm already starting to regret not buying this. I remember the game was just okay. That was why I didn't buy the game. Now that I think about it, this would have been a nice souvenir or memento, even if I don't buy it for the gameplay. 

Back of the box

This is another game I almost bought but didn't. I like the art direction. I looked up reviews on BGG, and most people think it is just so so. 

I find that many games come with English rules. 

I ended up buying 7 games from Yellow Submarine, more than I expected. I didn't go to Jelly Jelly Games after that, because it was getting late, and I was already feeling a little guilty for having gone on a splurge. Ukiyo-e is a design by Michael Schacht. I like his games. This game is originally called Crazy Chicken, later published as Drive. Ukiyo-e is the Japanese edition, and it has a very Japanese theme - Japanese art. This is definitely a good souvenir for gamers visiting Japan. 

There is a game called New Old in the photo above. It looks like two boxes, one new and one old, but this is actually one game. The cover design is done this way intentionally to make this look like two games placed side by side, a worn out copy next to a new copy. 

Later I discovered that Cat Poker is actually Panda Panda. I already own Panda Panda. I didn't know Cat Poker is the original Japanese version. Rikka (六華) - the black box - is by Hashimoto Atsushi, who designed Tiger & Dragon. That was what made me buy it. I really admire Tiger & Dragon. 

By looking at the box cover and the box back of Ult: Coldburning, it seems this is mostly played with numbered cards in different suits. There are some cards with some text, probably scenario cards or something along those lines. I thought this should not be too much work so I decided to buy a copy. 

After opening the game, I realised how wrong I was. This game is fully packed with cards. It has two huge stacks. And guess what, almost half the cards are text cards! See that stack below on the right. I'm going to spend a lot of time translating all those cards. 

If I sleeve these cards there is no way they can still fit in the box. 

Sai Beppu is a superstar in the Japanese boardgame industry. So many games are illustrated by her, and she has such a wide range of styles. I also notice how prolific Kaya Miyano is. He is best known for Trio / Nana.  

I bought three decks of poker cards from various 100 yen stores. I bought one deck because during the trip I had an idea for a game design, and I wanted to playtest my idea with my family. I bought the second and third decks because they looked nice and they were cheap. 100 yen is MYR 2.50 or USD 0.60. The Sanrio deck is cute, and the fruit one too. 

A chat with Eric Lang

 

31 Jan 2026. Eric Lang (Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh, Chaos in the Old World) was in town. He has been staying in Malaysia on and off for many years, and is now planning to spend more time living in Kuala Lumpur. He wants to get to know the local designer community and the local boardgame community. Aaron arranged two meet-up sessions for game designers and other industry players to get to know Eric. I almost couldn't make it due to prior appointments, but luckily one of them was rescheduled and I made it to the session at BGC Space. 

This was an inspiring and insightful session. Eric shared some of his experiences being in the industry for so many years, and also his perspectives on the boardgame scene in Malaysia, Singapore and Asia. He had decided he wanted to become a game designer from very early on, and had been highly committed to make this work. Here are some of my takeaways from the session: 

1. Be clear about what you want to be. What kind of role do you want to play in the boardgame industry? Do you want to be doing this as your life career? Choose one clear role you want to be good at. What kind of games do you want to make? How does a day in your life look like in 5 years? Envision what you want to be in 5 years, and don't let limiting thoughts stop you from moving towards it. 
2. If you want to pitch to a publisher, look at the games they have been publishing for the past 3 years and pitch the right games to them. Know their standards and meet them before you pitch. 
3. Always hold yourself to high standards and to international standards. Surround yourself with people with that level of standard. 
4. Game designers who are gamers often overestimate the appetite of the general public for complexity in games. Machi Koro is too complex. 
5. If you want to make a mass market game, the back of the box should have 3 bullet points that describe and sell the game, but not teach the game. 
6. Monopoly Deal is a great gateway game to convert non-gamers, more so than Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. 
7. If you run a boardgame cafe or boardgame store targeting non-gamers, make sure you have chess, Scrabble and Monopoly in your shop window. 
8. For an industry to grow, say the Malaysian boardgame market, you need multiple people who are good at different specific things. E.g. game designers, game retailers, game distributors, game reviewers, event organisers, marketeers, content creators. These people need to be very good at what they do. Don't try to do everything, because you will likely burn out. What Eric has observed in Malaysia is we local publishers are generalists who do the whole spectrum of stuff, which might not be healthy. 

One thing we discussed was bringing people into the hobby. This is something Malaysia needs to do. Boardgames is still too niche a hobby, and the market is tiny. But that also means the potential for growth is big. 

Eric is enthusiastic and energetic, and keen to help the Malaysian boardgame scene. It is great to be able to learn from him. I look forward to more opportunities to meet and learn from him when he settles down in KL. 

interview: Hong Kong and Boardgames - Charles Yan

I made a short trip to Hong Kong in November 2025.  I looked up my records. The last time I was in Hong Kong was 13 years ago, in 2012. That time I brought my in-laws and also my daughters, who were 6 and 7 then. This time it was just the two of us, my wife Michelle and I. The main reason we planned this trip was that Michelle had promised to visit her old friend. I also took the opportunity to visit my old friend. Before the trip, I contacted Charles Yan of Hong Kong game publisher Time2Play and asked whether I could do an interview with him. He follows my blog, and we are connected on Facebook. However we have not been interacting much. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to get to know him and the boardgame industry in Hong Kong. 

We met at Maritime Square (青衣城) in Tsing Yi 

The best known game from Time2Play is 9Upper, a party game of obscure topics and terms in which you have to pretend to know what they mean and convince the judge so. By now they have sold about 40,000 copies in Hong Kong. Time2Play has published about 10 local-designed games. They do localisation of international titles too. Charles is also the founder of Boardgame Academy. This is a different Board Game Academy from that in Thailand. Boardgame Academy (HK) is a social enterprise which sets out to support and improve the education system using boardgames. It aims to make learning more fun, and to help students learn better and enjoy learning. 

Hong Kong and Boardgames

Before I arrived in Hong Kong, I searched Google Maps for boardgame stores. I noticed that many boardgame cafes and clubs seem to be concentrated in Kwun Tong (观塘). After chatting with Charles and another boardgamer friend Jetta, I realised that in Hong Kong there is this phenomenon called private rooms. For serious boardgamers who regularly go out to play, the money they spend on boardgame cafes is quite a sum. So some of them group together to rent a small place to be their private gaming room. They can use it to store their game collections too. This ends up to be cheaper, and they can have their own place which they can use any time. Some of these private rooms are converted to boardgame clubs or boardgame cafes, allowing other boardgamers to use them for a fee. The owners of these clubs don't run these as full time businesses. They have other full time jobs. These clubs are just side businesses which help offset their hobby expenses. So these club owners do not aggressively grow and develop their businesses. 

When I was in Hong Kong, I visited a bookstore on Nathan Road, and found their boardgame section. The first thing I noticed was most of the titles were under Broadway Games. Many were international titles localised. I took the opportunity to ask Charles about Broadway Games. Their parent company is a toy manufacturer with factories in China. This parent company is a huge manufacturer, among the top ten in the world. It has been the manufacturing partner for international boardgame publishers for some time. One of their clients is Amigo. Broadway Games was established mainly to localise international games. Many of their titles are being manufactured by their parent company in the first place, so doing localisation into Chinese is a natural next step. By now Broadway has published close to 600 game titles, releasing about 40 games every year. They now publish original titles too. Another major player in Hong Kong is Capstone. They are the distributor for Asmodee and Swan Panasia of Taiwan. They have a large boardgame store in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong island. I almost wanted to pay a visit, but timing was bad and I couldn't make time for it. 

There are three major bookstore chains in Hong Kong, and they collaborate in backend operations. They handle large volumes, and because of that, they prefer to deal with only large vendors. It will be very difficult for indie game publishers like those in Malaysia to break in to chain stores like these. Our number of products and how much we can sell is too low for these big players. So this is similar to the situation in Malaysia. 

In shopping malls in Hong Kong, cash registers are typically directly managed by the mall as opposed to being managed by the shops. Shops can request for cash registers, but these cash registers are centrally controlled by the malls. The business model at shopping malls is shops pay a basic rent to mall, and they also pay a commission based on sales. That is why the malls need to have control of the cash registers. The malls want to attract more shoppers, because the more the shoppers spend at the shops, the more commission the malls will earn. Having centralised control of cash registers means the malls have the data to help them decide how to charge rent, and also whether to renew the rental agreements with the shops. 

Now some of the shops apply a similar business model renting shelves in their shops to product suppliers. You can rent a shelf to place your products. You have to pay basic rental, and then depending on your sales every month, you also pay a commission. Charles has rented such a shelf before at a large bookstore. It wasn't cheap, but it was a viable business arrangement. He made enough sales for such an arrangement to be profitable. He calculated and found that the basic shelf rental charged by the shop was enough to cover the shop rental which the shop needs to pay to the mall. This means even if the product supplier sells nothing for the whole month, the shop has nothing to lose. Any sales is a net profit to the shop. 

Boardgame Design and Publishing

Charles takes custom game design jobs. Sometimes corporates and NGO's approach him to create boardgames based on specific topics or objectives. These boardgames may not be sold to the public. Some are merchandise for a company. Some are gifts. He has designed games for anti-drug campaigns, anti-gambling campaigns, water preservation awareness and disability awareness. Little Fighter is a 25-year-old computer game which is re-releasing on Steam. In conjunction with the re-release, the makers are publishing a novel. The deluxe edition of this novel comes with a card game, and this card game is designed by Charles. 

Charles does localisation of international games too, and he says this is challenging to do. In Hong Kong, gamers are generally fine with English versions of boardgames. If there is a hot new game released internationally and they are interested, the game being in English is not a hindrance. If the Chinese version of a hot game is released later than the English version, by the time it is released, many of the Hong Kong gamers will have already bought the English version. Hong Kong uses Traditional Chinese, like Taiwan. China, Malaysia and Singapore use Simplified Chinese. If the Traditional Chinese version of a boardgame is not printed at the same time as the English international version, the volume would be small, and that drives up the cost. The volume for Traditional Chinese is not that big anyhow, so unit cost is always a challenge. Since Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese too, publishing collaborations between Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers make perfect sense. Charles knows many people from the Taiwan boardgame industry and he does collaborate with them. In Taiwan and China there is a bigger need for Chinese versions of boardgames, because compared to Hong Kong, the English proficiency is not as high. Malaysia and Hong Kong have the same challenge. We were both English colonies. With high English proficiency, there is little need for localisation. 

I asked Charles his thoughts about targeting the China market. He said that indeed China is a huge market. His full time work is with an office furniture company, and he has worked in Guangzhou before. The many cities and regions in China are all very different. They are different markets. We cannot think of China as a single big market. It may be even more complex than targeting South East Asia, with multiple countries, different cultures and different languages. Charles' China strategy is to find a reliable local partner and let them develop it. 

Some Hong Kong game designers pitch their games to Taiwanese publishers. Taiwan is a bigger market than Hong Kong. 

Charles has been to the Asian Board Games Festival in Singapore. He has come to Malaysia too, for BoxCon. He went to Essen in 2019. He doesn't think it's the right time yet for him to be exhibiting at Essen. It is better to focus on Asia first. Perhaps this is something Malaysian designers and publishers should think about too. Several Malaysian designer friends and I have been planning to apply for a government grant to exhibit at Essen. We should think hard about what we want to achieve and what preparations we need to make to ensure the trip is fruitful. 

One funny story Charles shared with me was about the box for 9Upper. For one of the print runs, the box was manufactured by a factory which also made boxes for the iPhone. That time Charles would show his game to friends and proudly declare "This is iPhone standard!" Charles has conducted a 9Upper competition at a large public event. The people who signed up did not know that the competition would be a little different form the standard rules. The core idea was still the same. Every round one highly specialised term was announced, and most contestants had to pretend to know what it was and explain it as convincingly as possible. However in this competition the participants did not play on separate tables. They had to go on stage and try to convince the whole audience. The audience voted for who they believed by applauding them. The host used a sound meter to measure the applause, and whoever had the least support was disqualified. 

I asked how 9Upper became so successful. Charles said that 9Upper was marketed primarily through channels outside of boardgame circles. Youtubers and influencers needed content, and 9Upper was a tool which let them generate interesting content for their viewers. These influencers were able to reach out to people who do not usually play boardgames. Charles had a clear target audience for 9Upper. He chose the right methods to create exposure for the game to its intended audience. This is something I need to learn to do better. 

Another effective way to promote boardgames is to collaborate with IP's outside of the boardgame industry. He did one collaboration with a Hong Kong beer brand, creating a drinking game version of 9Upper. If we want to let more people know about boardgames, we should not be thinking only about the boardgamer circle. 

Boardgames and Education

Charles' work on Boardgame Academy is relatively recent. They became more actively only since 2024. There are several active NGO's in Hong Kong, and Boardgame Academy received a grant from one. Charles and his two partners in this venture are all parents, so they care about education. Their children are going through the education system now. They see the problems with the current system, and want to be able to do something to address these problems. In the current system, children often find learning uninteresting. Learning is a chore. It is hard to relate what they learn to real life. Learning should be real and it should be fun. Boardgames is something that can arouse curiosity. When there is curiosity, learning becomes fun and satisfying. Children will view learning differently. Learning becomes something they are keen about. Such a change in mindset can transform lives. 

Boardgame Academy is now actively working with the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE). That day, after my interview session with Charles, he had an appointment at the Shatin campus to do a seminar. The Shatin campus focuses on two areas, social services and IT. Boardgames can support both of these. Charles has designed several boardgames which convey messages related to social issues. In digital game development, boardgames are a good way for students to learn about game design. 

One interesting case is how a game about Poland is used to teach and discuss history. The game is Warsaw: City of Ruins. In the game, Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is destroyed several times due to war, including World War I and World War II. When students played the game, they raised this question - is there going to be a World War III? This was an opportunity for the teacher to discuss World War III, international geopolitics, and also the Ukrainian War. Boardgames can draw people in and trigger thoughtful discussion. There is an annual book fair in Hong Kong in July. During the week-long fair, exhibitors can request for seminar slots for their guest speakers. Which slot you get depends somewhat on your speaker. Saturday and Sunday slots are the most sought after slots, usually reserved for high calibre speakers. Because of Warsaw: City of Ruins, Charles got connected to the Polish embassy in Hong Kong, and managed to invite the Polish ambassador to be his speaker. At that fair he managed to get a valuable weekend slot. 

Charles has collaborated with Rachel Chen of Taiwan and Xeo Lye of Singapore. Xeo's publishing house Capital Gains Studio has released several finance and business related educational games and they are now being used in Hong Kong. Charles was the translator for Reiner Knizia when he was in Beijing for DICE CON. That would be like a dream come true for me, being able to work with Reiner Knizia. 

As a publisher in Time2Play, Charles publishes and sells games, but Boardgame Academy does not aim to sell games. It is not pitching its own games as educational tools with the ultimate goal of selling more games. Its main goal is to address educational challenges. Whose game is being used does not matter, as long as it is the right game which solves the learning problem. 

In Hong Kong, just like in Malaysia, many people view computer games negatively. They are perceived as something youngsters get addicted to and forget everything else. Children become glued to their devices and don't develop social skills. People who want to promote boardgames say that boardgames will help to reduce screen time. I must admit I myself do this. Screentime is a pain point that many parents have. In Hong Kong, some people perceive boardgames as just a lesser evil compared to computer games. For drug addicts, one method to wean them off drugs is to allow them to take weaker drugs. It's called substitution therapy or medication-assisted therapy. Boardgames are perceived as such a substitute. Well, among gamers I would joke that boardgames are the worst drug, but on a serious note, I'm a little shocked that boardgames are perceived as a compromise and a lesser evil. A light drug. I have never thought of boardgames that way. In Malaysia, most people think of boardgames as kids' toys. People should not think of digital games as evil. I play mobile games myself. Games are entertainment. In moderation they are perfectly fine, digital or analog. 

There is a global NGO called Junior Achievement. Their Hong Kong chapter runs an annual competition called the International Trade Challenge. Students work in pairs to develop a product to be marketed internationally. They are not restricted to specific product types. In the competition last year, out of the top three, two were boardgames. This year, many entries were boardgames. It's nice to see such enthusiasm and awareness of boardgames. 

Charles is preparing to run a boardgame design competition in 2026. There will be two divisions - secondary and tertiary. For the secondary school division, teams which are shortlisted will be assigned mentors to guide them and support them in further developing and completing their boardgames. The mentors are local game designers from Hong Kong. This will be like the reality TV show The Voice of China (中国好声音). This will be helpful to the secondary school students. It's great to see game designers work together to teach and guide others. 

Another major event Charles is planning is a boardgame fair which will be on 27 Jun 2026. The main organiser will be the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education Shatin campus, while Boardgame Academy will be the co-organiser. This will be the first time a boardgame-specific fair of this size is held in Hong Kong. 

It's always interesting for me to learn about the boardgame hobby and industry in different countries. It was a fruitful trip to Hong Kong, and it was inspiring to have a chat with Charles. 

Dancing Queen royalty

Photo from Matagot

The Matagot international edition of Dancing Queen was released in June 2025. I signed the game with them mid 2023. At the time the rough plan was to release the game by end 2024. I received my designer's advance shortly after signing the game. That was nice. Not all publishers do that for their designers. I am lucky. 

I get half yearly royalty reports from Matagot, to let me know how many copies have been sold, and how much royalty they will pay me. From the release date in June till the end of September, 1700+ copies have been sold. That's certainly much much much better than what I can achieve by myself as a tiny indie publisher. They have sold more in 3 months than I have sold in 3 years. That's the difference between an established publisher and indie publisher. 

I have no idea why there is one copy sold before the release date. Might be some administrative correction. Or pre-order? 

Game design is overrated

I was a game design snob. By that I mean I used to scoff at many game designs for lacking innovation, for being too shallow, for being yet another samey game. I faulted the game designer. I felt if I were the designer I wouldn’t design something like this. Good game design should not be like this. It should bring something new to the table. Wait. I realise maybe I still am a game design snob. 

One thing I am gradually realising is that game design may be overrated in many situations. If we define success of a game as how well it sells, the game design may not be the most important contribution. A well designed game does not sell by itself. You need good art. You need to choose the right setting that attracts your target audience. Your publisher needs to have a strong distribution channel. Good marketing and social media presence help. The brand recognition of your publisher helps. Being able to reach your target market is crucial. Many things affect the success of a game, and the game design is only one of them. 

If you want to be a successful game designer, where success is defined as your game selling well, there are many things you need in place, not just your game design. If you find a good publisher, it helps a lot. 

Good game design still matters. It separates the flashes in the pan from the long term successes. Some modern boardgames become modern classics because they are great designs. 

Now that I have entered the business side of the boardgame industry and am no longer purely a consumer, I have learned to better appreciate many game designs. These games are designed not as works of art for hobby gamers to admire how clever they are. They are designed to be attractive to their  particular target buyers and to deliver a fun experience for them. Not all games are designed for the hobby gamer. The hobby gamer is only a small and niche target market. We often overestimate how important we are. 

Design means deliberately creating something in a certain way to achieve a particular purpose. So whether a design is good should be measured by whether it achieves its objective, not whether you like it. 

Do I design games to make myself happy? I must admit that is certainly part of it. It makes me happy to create an innovative and clever game. I hope my games make other people happy too. I hope there is an overlap between what makes me happy and what makes other people happy. I hope I do a good job of promoting and marketing my games, so that they reach more people, and help them make happy memories. 

gamer, blogger, designer, or publisher

This blog post is a note to self. I need a space to do some thinking and reflecting. 

My first physically published game is Dancing Queen, released at the end of 2022. That was followed by Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs (early 2024) and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (mid 2024). In 2025 I am planning to publish Pinocchio and the Malaysian second edition of Dancing Queen. The international edition of Dancing Queen from Matagot will be released in June 2025. I have a fourth game project in 2025, Malaysian Holidays. This is a collaboration with Specky Studio. They are the publisher. I am the designer. When I first got into game publishing, I told myself I needed to set a 5-year plan and a checkpoint at the end of that. I was going to publish one game per year, and when I got to the fifth game I would do an assessment to decide whether and how to proceed with this publishing journey. I have already started thinking about this last year. I have been thinking about several related questions. Why am I doing this? Do I want to be a publisher or a designer? I more-or-less have an answer, but I have not really organised my thoughts properly or planned what's next. 

Matagot international edition of Dancing Queen

The why. Got to start with that. The rest follows. When I design and publish games, is that just to feed my ego? Am I looking for validation? Recently a student in my class asked a question which gave me much food for thought. "Do you do it because of the craftsmanship?" Do I do it because it is art? If this is my art, I should insist on the final work being how I have envisioned it to be. I probably wouldn't let another publisher publish my game. The game is a piece of art, not a product. Another possible why I have been thinking about is do I do this to make money. Do I want to build a business out of this? Since it is something I enjoy, I can have fun throughout the ride, but the end goal should be about building a sustainable business, a stable side income, or even turning this into a full-time business. I know these are not easy. Not impossible, but not easy at all. Sometimes I ask myself, why am I spending so much time, energy and money doing something that's not exactly profitable? Am I holding on to the hope that one day this will work out and become something sustainable? I tell myself that there is value in games. I want to spread the awareness and culture of playing games, particularly in Malaysia, where most people do not know modern boardgames. I hope more parents get to know about boardgames and play  boardgames with their children. I hope this creates happier and healthier families. I hope children learn through boardgames. They learn to communicate, to think, and to solve problems. They learn how to learn. Playing games is something valuable. Having fun and being happy is valuable in itself. I hope my games bring people joy. I hope they help people create happy memories. 

Or maybe I just want to play boardgames. If I go back to just being a regular gamer, plus doing some blogging to share my journey, that would be perfectly fine. Why go through all that trouble designing, testing, producing and selling games? Sometimes it seems designing and publishing games is for people who have too much time and money on their hands. This is not just in Malaysia. It's the same everywhere else. If you don't have a stable job, it's probably not a good idea to jump full-time into designing and publishing games. Unless you have set aside some savings that can sustain you for a while. Only people who really love boardgames and have spare time go into game design. I wonder whether going into game design a symptom of my mid-life crisis? 

My upcoming game Pinocchio

Considering the various whys above, the first one I can deprioritise is money. I know it's hard to make money from doing game design and publishing. I'm not counting on it to become my livelihood. At the same time, I also don't want it to become just an expensive hobby. I don't want to be the kind of person who burns money for an ego boost. So I want the games I publish to be quality games. Games which offer something of value. Games that people do want to buy, and will truly enjoy. I sometimes imagine being able to achieve what Oink Games of Japan has achieved. I read an interview of Jun Sasaki and was greatly inspired. He started his boardgames business as a side hustle, and now it has grown to become a company that can support a large team. They have released many good and successful games. If money is not the most important goal, then between being a designer and being a publisher, the latter is less important. Being a publisher involves a higher risk because you are putting your money on the line, but if things work out, you make more profit.

Should I just go back to be a normal gamer? Being a gamer doesn't directly conflict with being a designer or publisher. It is just about how I allocate my time. If I enjoy both, I can do both. I don't need my design and publishing work to feed my family, so I can do it at my own pace. I do enjoy doing it, and I can enjoy it like it is a hobby.  

The remaining two whys are creating art and promoting boardgames. Yes, creating good games is important to me. I do want to create something special, something that I can be proud of. This might conflict somewhat with promoting boardgames. When promoting boardgames, I need to think of the general public, the mass market, so the games I make will need to be games which they can understand and enjoy. If you want a summer blockbuster, you probably shouldn't be making artsy type films. It is not often we have films like Lord of the Rings which are artistically superb and at the same time also widely loved. Creating awareness of boardgames in Malaysia is a gargantuan task, certainly not something I can do singlehandedly. I just hope to be one of the contributors in this, playing a small part. Being able to find others who also want to do this together is wonderful. It is fun and not at all like the trip to Mordor. I sometimes tell follow Malaysian designers that if we the current cohort can persist until the local market grows to be more robust, we would by then be the makers and movers in the industry. We would have survived many hardships, learned many lessons and accumulated valuable experience. Pardon me - I am still thinking a bit about creating a profitable business here. How long will it take for the Malaysian boardgame market to be big enough to sustain a game designer or publisher? Five years? Ten? As Malaysian designers and publishers, we have a dilemma. If we want to make a living out of this, we probably should think internationally, because the local market is too small. But if we don't develop the local market, it will never grow to be a strong economical base.  

With my priorities clearer, it is easier to decide what I should be doing and what I should not be doing. What kind of games should I make? To promote boardgames to a wider audience, I should use themes which are attractive to them. I need to make easy games. I need to set prices which non-gamers find palatable. One thing I plan to do is to explore collaboration with a friend who is in the premium gifts business. We want to propose boardgames and card games as corporate gifts or merchandise. Some organisations use gifts for promotions and for marketing or branding. Recently ZUS Coffee in Malaysia gave away a simple card game as a promotion. By leveraging large organisations, I can put games into the hands of more people. When I designed Sabah Honeymoon for the STTOS competition, I imagined it being sold at souvenir shops. It is a game which tourists will buy and it will make them remember Sabah fondly. I chose to publish Pinocchio as my next game because it is a simple game which non-gamers can pick up easily and find the fun quickly. The price point is set low so that people who are only browsing can decide easily to buy a copy to try. 

Malaysian Holidays prototype. Photo by Choon Ean.

Another idea I have been toying with is to develop games about social issues. Games are a medium of communication. They can be a tool to bring awareness to important topics, and to trigger discussion. Think Daybreak. I can collaborate with organisations which champion specific issues, and use boardgames to support them while at the same time spread the awareness of boardgames. There are many boardgames which are designed to teach entrepreneurship and financial literary. I have seen some and I must say I feel disgusted, because from a game design perspective, they are bad games. However as gimmicks which attract potential buyers and as engagement tools during workshops, they serve their purposes. I hope I don't make this kind of game. Maybe I should work on a financial literacy game with modern boardgame sensibilities. Not yet another modified Snakes and Ladders please. 

I participated in many events last year. Many took up much time and energy, but were not very productive. I now tell myself to be more selective. I will skip some events. However I also need to remind myself that the value of an event is not just about the profit or achieving breakeven. If it is something that helps promote and spread awareness of boardgames, there is value. Whether I manage to sell many games is one measure of how well I have spread boardgames, but it is not the only measure. 

I needed to write all this to organise my thoughts. In my full-time work I sometimes coach and guide my students. I need to apply the same techniques to coach myself. I realise I should not think of myself as a gamer, blogger, designer or publisher. I should think of myself as a boardgame ambassador.  Working on boardgames is meaningful and valuable, and I'm going to keep at it.