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.
