Regionalising Board Game Research

In this presentation, I argue that modern board games in East / Southeast Asia are significantly different from the western market. I will present some of my research findings from ongoing research to show how play spaces, language dependency, and community formation influence which modern board games make it onto shop shelves. Through this I will argue for area-based research beyond the Eurogame and Amerigame biased dichotomy (Woods, 2012). One core reason is play-spaces: western board game shops lean heavily towards hobby games (such as Warhammer) and trading card games (such as Magic: the Gathering), which creates an audience that skews mechanically heavier and leans thematically towards fantasy motifs (Peaker, 2019). However, board game cafés in East Asia follow in internet cafes’ footsteps (Deplaedt, 2021; Konieczny, 2019; Wang, 2017), serving as popular activities after work or school for youth (Liu, 2020), which in turn support lighter games and bigger groups. Language dependency also plays a significant part. In previous research (Harrington, 2023) I found that within 47 games played within a specific Hong Kong based community, only one was neither translated into Chinese nor had no language dependency. Even in a globalised world in a bilingual region, playing in English loaded the mental stack in unsavoury ways. Finally, board game hobbyism is still regionally specific. Board game projects on popular crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter still have majority US backing. This is not only because of language dependency, but also because of shipping concerns, expensive prices for Southeast Asia, and because the board gamer mythology (Calleja, 2022; Tyni, 2020; Werning, 2017) presented on Kickstarter does not align with the distinct mythology being formed in East / Southeast Asia, created through local influencing channels, regional tastes, as well as different entries into the world of modern board games.