Sharp eyed forumites may have noticed that nothing happened here last week. I know we did a check-in six months or so back. I think I’m personally tapering off on topics - though I’ve enjoyed the last year and a half of this.
I’m not done just yet, but I’d anticipate in the next few months I’ll post a final sign-off.
But for this week! And a few after! I’m thinking about geography and setting. I’ll throw out East Asia, and define it with a line running between Iran and all the *stans next to it, also walling off Russia to the north (as excluded).
What are your games in South, East, and Southeast Asia? Any special affinity for it, and do any common themes come out in these games (presumably evoked by the settings)?
Off the top of my head, I have the following games that are either set in East Asia, or at least have a theme that leans that way:
Jaipur
Gugong
Yokohama
Tokaido
Hanamikoji
Age of War
Shogun
Ghost Stories
Samurai Spirit
Godzilla: Tokyo Clash
King of Tokyo
Hokkaido
Legacy of Yu
Kiri-ai: the Duel
Floating Floors
Night of the Ninja
Yokai Septet
Takenoko
Unmatched: Sun’s Origin (and I suppose the Bruce Lee character expansion)
I live in East Asia and some of my favourite games are set “here”, so I have some affinity for it.
A common “theme” I don’t like is so many Japanese-y games seemingly taking place during the same week of the year, despite other weeks also existing in Japan.
I do seem to anticipate that rice and copper will be resources in these games. The former pretty appropriately. The latter feels more like “I read a book and remember one fact about Japan so let’s make something about copper.”
The Legend of the Cherry Tree That Blossoms Every Ten Years
Iki
Agra
Hanabi?
Where does Tigris & Euphrates sit on this dividing line? Just in or just out? I think just out but not fully confident.
In some ways it feels quite over represented at over 10 percent of my collection. I wonder about this but won’t speculate here as I think it drops probably needs a political discussion. Also of interest is half these games set in east Asia are designed by East Asian designers. With 3 more games by east asian designers not set in East Asia. I wonder how this compares to games put out by East Asian designers as a percentage of the market overall. As Burano, Iki, Hanamikoji and 1889 are regularly amongst my top games I think that East Asian designers are doing well. On a very old SUSD podcast Quinns made a comment about social context being important for game design and so game designers from different contexts will necessarily make different games. I think there’s something about that but also feel it’s disprovable quite easily with counter example. No idea which episode just a long time ago. It does feel like games from East Asia are often a little more experimental or theoretical on a game play concept angle than many from
Europe or North America currently. Possibly some confirmation bias or advertising pick ups there but also possibly to do with size and costs of Essen compared to Tokyo Game Market and the expectations of what success looks like to attendees.
The most consistent theme is trains in East Asia for me. Sadly it seems Japanese women in stereotype is second place. As Legend Cheery Tree and Hanamikoji both arguably fit this category. Good job they don’t have leery art as well.
I don’t think i have any strongly thematic games with an East/South Asian setting. Onitama, Ghost Stories, Hanamikoji, Yokai Septet could all be (and two of them have been) released with entirely different settings. I don’t think I can really count Kabuto Sumo either!
So if I’m looking for a game in which the setting is in this region and more than just a coat of paint…?
I really want to play Shinjuku again. The whole shared infrastructure is really fun! The contemporary style art feels nice as it is set in modern day Japan.
Mottainai is Mottainai. But I’m feeling now that Glory to Rome allows more long term stuff to happen with its longer duration. Theme is non-existent. It’s this vague minimalist lifestyle of a Buddhist monk (from what I remember!). I have this ““problem”” with Innovation as well (it’s not really a problem).
Pax Pamir 1e - A sliver of it is in Iran but we’re gonna ignore that. I like both editions, but Werhle put the scoring track in 2e. I like the theme of geopolitical struggle between the two imperial powers. What I also like is that the Afghans are a faction in the game. It’s not a chess game where there are two players and every one else are just chess pieces.
This is an often wrong perception of the Cold War too and it is also used as a lens on other geopolitical conflicts as well. And so you have this awful conversation among White people (thinking about it, it’s even narrow than that. Just Western people!! See how these ghouls talk about the Ukrainians) who talks about these topics from THIS specific angle and heavily implies that non-Western peoples have zero agency. Significant power imbalance especially after the Industrial Revolution? Yes. Zero agency? No.
It’s the infantilisation of the various nations of the former colonised world. Which is still an awfully common trope today.
An Infamous Traffic - unlike JoCo, the game play is streamlined and abstracted so the game is often at the forefront rather than the theme. Like, there’s no effect in the game of us selling opium to the Chinese. You might as well sell anything. But that’s fine if the author wants to narrow the scope.
Indonesia - I like how Splotter utilises the seas as the way to transport goods between A and B - rather than railroads.
Tonga Bonga, Kaivai, Bridges of Shangri-La - these are so old school that the theme is so pasted on.
Oops, I forgot Maharaja: The Game of Palace Building in India.
I should probably point out that out of the now 20 games I have listed with an East Asian theme, I have only actually played 13 of them, and of those 2 were not a physical copy.
I’m definitely seeing Japan win the overall popularity contest for this subsection of the world.
Which is a bit not-interesting - most of the designers I can think of from this area are Japanese and as far as game exports, most of those come from Japan. And with video games and cartoons the English speaking world has the most affinity for Japan.
But also is interesting, as things like Chinese dynasties, Genghis Khan, South China Sea piracy, urbanization of Singapore, the himalayas - there’s just a lot of ripe content that doesn’t involve samurai or edo period or dutch trade.
Which triggers some games that none of us have mentioned:
Nanga Parbat
K2
Honshu
Marco Polo I / II
Takenoko (…pandas. Is this China with a Japanese sounding name?)
Sekigahara
Rising Sun
King of Tokyo
Still weighted to Japan.
edit: And I can’t think of a single game that touches either Korea. Interesting.
I used to own King of Tokyo and Takenoko. The former is with my nephew who enjoyed the game a lot when we brought it along on a visit and the latter got boring after we discovered that one of the scoring mechanisms was stronger than the others (or at least it seemed that way back then and I don’t remember which one)
That one slipped through my searches. I own it as well.
You need a chain of ships from the same company to transport from A to B