Editorial
#MalaysiaYangMuda is a series of short interviews with our friends and movers of politics, arts, and culture who continuously make Malaysia and its people livelier. With us today, Ho Yi Jian!
In our seventh week, our collective editorial was having a good time interviewing Ho Yi Jian, a Research Associate at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute for Southeast Asia and also one of the founders of Tabletop Game Designers of Malaysia (TTGDMY). An ASEAN scholar himself, Jian completed his bachelors in Political Science at the National University of Singapore and proceeded to complete his masters in International Relations at the Australian National University. He has designed and helped design Malaysian board games, among others like Koraptiko, based on our many, unfortunately, corrupt politicians. Let the games begin!
Ho Yi Jian with his thinking beard!
MM: Malaysia Muda / HYJ: Ho Yi Jian
MM: When we were growing up, we remember games like chess, Monopoly, Uno, Dungeons and Dragons, and Saidina; over time, most people stopped playing these games and moved on to games on their PCs, consoles and mobile phones, except maybe chess which was considered a sport to some. In recent years, we’ve suddenly seen all kinds of board games suddenly flood the market involving empires, multiple boards, maps, figurines and even weird contraptions. When, and what spurred this sudden movement?
HYJ: I wouldn’t call it a flood, but we are feeling the effects of a western-centric ‘silent’ and ‘golden’ revolution of board games that started in the mid-90s, and itself is a product of trends which started earlier in the 70s and 80s in the US, UK and Europe. In the early 70s to the mid-90s, we saw a wave of innovative tabletop game design that laid the foundation for modern board game design, and its various offshoot genres: games such as Diplomacy (1959), Acquire (1964), and 1829 (1974), introduced new ways to play. In 1974, Dungeons and Dragons was authored by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, modifying war-gaming to control single characters instead of armies and empowering them with magic and abilities–now itself an entire genre of tabletop game. Magic: The Gathering was designed in 1994 by Richard Garfield initially as an alternative to D&D to play while standing in line at conventions–again another new genre was born.
The more recent development that led to today’s boom in titles (2000 to 6000 per year in recent memory), is the advent of the internet and crowdfunding. Previously, designers were a closed knit crowd. But now with platforms such as boardgamegeek.com (which serves as the 1MDB of the board gaming world), drivethrurpg.com, wargaming.net, and itch.io, players can connect more deeply with each other to discuss the design of the games they love, and gradually in that process of interaction a new generation of self-taught designers were born.
In the West, there is now a cottage industry of design podcasts, tabletop-related YouTube play and review YouTube shows and lyric game design scenes that help support the industry. Lastly, crowdfunding has allowed many would-be designers to publish their games at a much lower quantity scale without the traditional style of pitching a design to a games publishing company. That also means that there can be niche games for every taste and fancy (the so-called “designer games”): either they go for previous unexplored markets (anyone for left-leaning or eco-centric games? tie-ins with more established IPs?) or they double-down for the enthusiasts and provide deeper, more strategic experiences for the seasoned player (Twilight Imperium 3E is notorious for needing a dawn-to-dusk outlay of time). The combined effect of all these movements is that it broadens the tabletop market as a whole. Although strictly speaking, the digital games market is many times larger than tabletop regardless.
MM: Is there a market in Malaysia for Asian or Malaysian games involving Malaysianisms, local culture, icons and local history?
HYJ: I think there exists a market, but the market hasn’t consolidated well and nobody has a solid lead as a publisher to become a full-time, sustainable business with local designs as of yet. Politiko (2013) has sold rather well–my rough estimates put it at about 1000 copies a year since its launch, although it is winding up at the end of the product life cycle. The Malaysian Dream (2019) had a print run between 15-20 thousand units but could rely on the strength of MGAG as a marketing platform and the success of its predecessor, The Singaporean Dream (2018). The first successful Malaysian crowdfunded game, Drama Pukul 7 (2019) finished its crowdfunding at a modest 33,500MYR with 314 supporters. Their recently concluded sophomore outing, Nak Makan Apa? (2020), only managed to raise 8,800MYR.
However, if you ask the average Malaysian, especially those outside of urban areas, they haven’t been introduced to this style of play. Ask them what board games they know, and they will tell you Congkak, Saidina and Sahibbah. These are effectively Malay-language versions of mass-market games that serve as a price-competitive version of Monopoly and Scrabble. If anything, these have the strongest marketing and presence in retail outlets but are ultimately extremely conservative when it comes to innovative game design.
I probably have to say a little bit about the other genres of tabletop games. There are now at least 3 official Warhammer shops in Malaysia, although enthusiasts tend to be on the higher end of the income spectrum, requiring thousands of ringgit to start. Collectible Card games such as Magic: The Gathering remain strong and are popular amongst students with some disposable income and easily spread through word of mouth. Role playing games are probably the cheapest to start, with a bourgeoning indie role playing game scene on Twitter (check #RPGSEA) although I would say because it’s mostly indie designers, the marketing reach and audience conversion is not as coordinated or consistent if it were driven by a company investing money into it.
MM: We have also seen a short surge in the sales and interest in a game called Kleptopoly around the period of 2016-2017. What is Kleptopoly and what made it popular suddenly?
HYJ: Kleptopoly is a game I was brought in to consult for in 2017 and I managed its supply chain in the first half of 2018. It was conceived by C4 Center, a non-government organisation focussing on anti-corruption, to raise awareness on 1MDB issues, with initial conception beginning around mid-2017. It is due to its materials and graphic designer, Law Hwa Siang of Hardknock Creatives, that it had cute, well-designed miniatures parodying known figures in the 1MDB scandal, giving it a strong collectible value.
It also helped that C4 Center managed to get its Executive Director, Ms Cynthia Gabriel, on a stage at a 20,000-strong political rally at Padang Timur to showcase the game to its core audience, which in turn gained a lot of press attention as well. We published 500 copies of the Premium version with the casted miniatures, and 500 copies of a standard version at a more access price point. The Premium version sold out two months before the standard version: evidence that a more expensive game can sell more if you have a better value proposition.
MM: Coming from a background of Politics and International Relations, do you see a niche or potential that board games may have in educating or exposing the youth towards local (socio-political) issues?
HYJ: Yes, I firmly believe in the power of games as an educational tool–albeit, in a limited way. My take is that games are efficacious, but not efficient. There are other educational methods that can deliver a lot of information to learners quickly, such as a lecture or reading. But games are specifically useful for demonstrating hard-to-grasp alternative logics and driving home concepts where learners are struggling.
In its own right, universities and schools have been doing this as ‘Model United Nations’, where students role play as national representatives endeavouring to come to agreement to collectively author a UN resolution over 2-3 days. Video games such as Oregon Trail, Kerbal Space Programme and Minecraft have real, demonstrable educational value. I think for many casual board gamers, Politiko helped solidify knowledge about the constellation of Malaysian political parties in 2013 and how these parties gathered support amongst particular demographics. I personally own a small collection of political board games, and each gives a slightly different meaning of politics through its culturally-specific themes and game play.
However, what I see as the weakest link is organised play and the supportive activities around board games, and how it fits into lives. For better or for worse, tabletop games are still a physical, retail object and unlike digital games, require players to do the hard work of understanding the rules before play. That means the game must not only be designed to suit a particular demographic, but have consistent engagement events where potentially new players are exposed to the game, and the designer/publisher must actively support a community who plays regularly and often.
There’s always been talk about introducing board games to schools and universities, but it is easier said than done. Because of the learning curve, you must have a teacher-champion within the school who actively plays the game with the students. Without a credible programme to induct teachers, there is no take-up and acquired board games are left in a locked-up cabinet unplayed. At the university level, the efficiency/efficacious trade-off comes into play: tutors have scant 1-hour tutorials with students. Can they play a game that hones in on a particular subject all within that one hour or less?
MM: In an age where everything is rapidly going online and cafés literally have to offer monetary discounts to encourage customers to put down their phones at the dinner table, where do you see physical, printed, sculpted board games and brick and mortar board game cafes fitting into the cultural zeitgeist? Is there a future for people in your line?
HYJ: It’s a bit bleak at the moment. A lot of tabletop games have moved online to simulated platforms such as Tabletopia, Tabletop Simulator, Board Game Arena, or Roll20. These platforms import in the components but do not hard-code the rules compared to your typical digital game. But the crux for enthusiast players have always been that digital games are missing something–it’s the player interaction and social reading of other players that digital platforms have difficulty in conveying.
From some early discussion with distributors here, the collectors are still collecting, but I think the wider non-enthusiast market for designer games is likely hit due to retail stores closing due to COVID lockdowns, and the heavier marketing presence of mass-market games (Monopoly, Scrabble et al), those will likely be their preference. It will also be more difficult for us at TTGDMY to promote local board games as many of our physical events will not be possible to organise. Local board game cafes will also struggle as they will likely have to reduce the number of tables, or if their primary clientele are university students, see a large reduction in foot traffic as undergraduates are mostly studying remotely.
Cover photo credit: Goh Choon Ean