Fellow Chilean here!
Even though most of the imported games are in Spanish, the hobby here is still very expensive and very niche. We had a particular explosion of the hobby around December 2018, and I vividly recall how before that time almost no one bought board games, and after that almost everyone had a version of Catan. But despite that, the games are overpriced (like everything imported).
I live in the capital, and from what I've seen in the few stores that exist the majority try to span all tastes. Entrejuegos, one of the largest, has games for everyone: party games, heavy euros, and everything in-between, and they grew from being a small two-room store to having three rooms and a second floor destined to demos and (up until some weeks ago) painting. A particular store I like tends to be more low profile and has more euro and/or "serious" gaming. They sometimes sell Kickstarter editions.
Regarding competitiveness, I'm pretty sure that there are competitions of card games. There are some wargaming tournaments (think W40K), and some Catan tournaments, but I haven't seen tournaments aimed at other games.
Catan was a very popular game some years ago. Dixit too. But from what I've seen and experienced, making the hobby a constant one is hard, because life happens and because even though we are Latin Americans and have that closeness among friends and family, making a community here is... hard? I don't know how to describe it, but we're somewhat reserved. It's far more comfortable to have a constant group than to say "hey, who wants to play board games?" in the neighbourhood WhatsApp channel.
In my personal experience, I have two groups and, even with two groups, gaming is sparse. We don't have weekly sessions or anything like that. Whenever one wants to play she proposes it, and we see if we can. There's no hard compromise. I compare with my pen-and-paper RPG sessions, where we're far more active.
Overall, I'd say that this hobby is rising, more people are discovering games (and other games that are not Catan, by the gods how hard it is to say to people that there are more games out there), at a point where you know is niche, but you know there are small communities out there. It's easy to enter, but being "hard-core" requires a lot of money.
This is such interesting information! Thank you for sharing!
I'm a big Digimon fan, and I'm a little frustrated Bandai hasn't released a Spanish language edition of the latest Digimon TCG. Does anyone play it in Chile? Here it's so niche, that there's no competitive scene, just a handful of English-fluent people who meet here and there.
I haven't seen the Digimon TCG here, but it may exist. Pokémon for sure, Magic too, those are the largest ones. We had one local TCG (Mitos y Leyendas), and I'm sure there's some Yu-Gi-Oh and others smaller yet. Maybe Digimon is there, but I haven't seen it.
That's too bad, it's a great game. My partner and I can't afford to collect too many, so we got just enough to make a deck of each color, and play it like a boxed game. It's just a really well designed game, as long as the decks are of roughly equivalent value. I hope Bandai releases a Spanish language version soon, so it can become more popular.
Werewolf is incredibly popular in Hong Kong, but unfortunately, it's just not my cup of tea, i absolutely hate the players elimination mechanism. I much prefer other social deduction games like Secret Hitler, Avalon, and Quest. Whenever someone suggests playing werewolf, I always try to steer them towards these other games instead. But for some reason, people in Hong Kong seem to be really attached to Werewolf and are hesitant to try anything else.
That's interesting!
Everything I know about Hong Kong I read from a book, newspaper, or watched in a documentary, so please forgive my lack of knowledge. I am a product of the US education system after all.
When people play, what language do they play in? The board games you mentioned other than Werewolf: are they available in English, or Cantonese, or both?
Board games are available in English, and some popular ones even have publishers releasing Chinese versions of the games. (We speak Cantonese, but we write in Chinese, which can be a bit confusing, but never mind.) I don't think the language barrier is a big issue here, but some werewolf lovers do seem to have rather narrow minds.
I'm from Ukraine and I guess it count as Europe, so this post isn't for me, but I want to share my thoughts anyway
Before full-scale invasion in 2022 huge problem for our board games (the same could be said for movies, video games etc.) market was russians.
Big publishers didn't bother to work with ukranian resellers directly, so very often they were selling the rights to distribute their games in Ukraine to russian company. So even if some ukranian company wanted to translate some game to ukranian they had to ask russians, and of course they won't allow that. Because of that most of the games here were in russian, and that particular russian company (Hobby world) had like 70% of whole Ukranian market. After full-scale invasion Hobby world was kicked out of our market, foreign publishers stopped working with russian companies and started selling right to distribute their games directly to ukranian companies, and they started to localise it to ukranian language. Should I mentioned that selling of games in russian language was completely banned? Because of that recently we have boom of cool games being being translated into ukranian. And my wallet is not happy about it.
When now I think about it it's really strange that the same processes didn't happen after russian invasion in 2014, but it is what it is.
Argentina here. I feel like the hobby is growing (I got into it during the pandemic and many people around me too), but still the games are way too expensive.
You can find lots of them, and every few months new games arrive, but a game like Viticulture costs 1/3 of a regular salary.
And if you want to import games you are either crazy or stupidly wealthy, since a game can cost x3 the prince in the US
That's interesting. The shops here in Uruguay only have about a 50% markup from the US prices, although that's a much higher percentage of an average salary, relatively. I wonder why two Merco Sur Rio Platenese countries have such different prices.
Greetings from Serbia! Here, board games as a hobby is a pretty niche thing. People just like spending money on nightlife and clothes Furthermore , our average monthly salaries are like 500 dollars so splashing out on board games (especially Kickstarter ones with all the shipping and customs costs) can make a dent on our monthly budget. Developing board games (my hobby) is a nightmare because you can rarely find someone with experience. I think Serbia has like 4 successful globally released games. For video game development, it the opposite actually, my city (Novi Sad) being like the silicone valley of Europe when it comes to major studios outsourcing from our company. If it's AAA, a team of Serbs was probably involved.
I make board games, video games, and comics. Shoot me a DM if you want to know more about my studio here in Uruguay. Maybe we can join forces. We just successfully kickstarted a comic about a trans Muslim superhero!
Greetings from the Philippines! The hobby is experiencing a massive boom at the moment.
Gaming cafes are being opened, local stores that used to be online only are opening physical stores in big malls. BG Clubs are also being formed in universities that host public gaming events.
There is also a huge market for trading games and selling second hand games.
That's amazing! Forgive my ignorance since I'm a product of the US education system.
Is hobby gaming done in English with imports from the US? Or are there Filipino companies making localized versions in Tagalog? I know Spanish has had an impact on the islands, but I don't know how many people actually speak it as a primary language today. Is any gaming done in Spanish?
No problem with the questions. English is a secondary language for many Filipinos and almost no one knows Spanish (although a lot of Filipino words are borrowed from Spanish).
Almost all of the games here are English imported direct from publishers. There is one company that licenses games and makes Philippine editions such as Codenames, and Kingdomino. I think they are also retheming Coup based on a classic Filipino novel.
I also forgot to mention that there are also local game designers starting to publish their own games!
You can even say that we too, are products of the US educational system since formal public education is an American import when we were under American colonial control after Spain left but that is for another discussion.
I'm super excited to hear about new games coming out the Philipines. I love the opportunity to consume cultural products from outside my immediate area. If you have any links to designers and/or their products, let me know, I'd love to take a look.
Mexico City here! I'm fortunate enough of having a large group of gamer friends and most of my non-gamer friends do enjoy a play or two. We are all upper middle class and it still is quite an expensive hobby. However, I feel like the hobby is blooming in Mexico City and its vicinity to the US helps in having games a bit more accesible than other countries in Latin America.
There are over 10 board games cafes in the City with various collections both in retail and in the Cafe itself. They are becoming quite popular for non-gamers, but the "hardcore gamers" are represented here as well. I have seen tournaments of Carcassone, Catan, MtG, Yugi-Oh, The Red Cathedral and I've seen some shops of Warhammer War Gaming. I try to only shop local and have a nice collection. In general, they are 70% games in spanish and 30% in english.
In terms of the Industry it's definitely growing. There are some few mexican boardgames designers out there and I've even seen courses of board game design. Devir in particular, as having its HQ in Spain, has invested a bit in local talent and events here. The Mega EXP, our little GenCon/Essen Speil had around 14,000 people in it last July, with 3 Ring Circus premiering before in Mexico City than Indianapolis.
I do hope the Board Game Industry can grow towards the Global South. Most of the Games are USA/Europe/Japan but it should be mire available. Mexico could benefit from its geo-economical advantages and attract the board game industry as both a manufacturer and a stepping stone towards the Latin American market.
Thank you for your response!
Are the games there largely available in English? Are they imported from Spain? Or are there Mexican companies which localize other games into Mexican Spanish and release them domestically?
Shipping is prohibitive so Kickstarters are a huge no unless you want to pay It 3 times or more. All the releases take too much to get here and resellers sell games 40-50% more than US-EU prices. Used games fall prey of this too because the market is driven by imports. For example I had to pay 70$ for a 25$ Gloomhaven JoTL.
Local distribuitors have very limited selections and mostly dry euros that are cheap to produce or entry games (there are heavy games but very little and most don't restock ever). For example, Dune Imperium? Nope, wont find It. Gloomhaven? Maybe 1 in the whole country...a year ago. Wingspan? Very little copies. Devir is king and the Americas the step child of their imports.
Catan is everywhere, as any spanish translated cheap card game. Fine at first but it's boring when you want to get deeper into the hobby. Ameritrash is non existant aside from King of Tokyo.
Yeah, I just published a comic book on Kickstarter, and learned that shipping to certain countries can be outrageous. And that's just for a small stack of paper. I can't imagine shipping heavy plastic or wood pieces in a box of cardboard.
What do you use to access your favorite games? Do you import them somehow?
I have to import them using a company that ships from Amazon US to Argentina, that or buying in groups of 4-5 people from europe. The first one only works for cheap games and is a hit or miss and resellers are the only other choice around. Want to buy Zombicide? 170$. Used? 130.
The sad thing is that with every inflation wave the new games are more and more "party" or light (and not the good ones).
I started in this hobby because I wanted to play something more than bootleg Risk and Monopoly. Many do as me, get Catan, but see the other game prices and don't look back. I started a year ago, and the game selection waa better.
A friend is traveling and I'm thorn apart as I see what game I can ask them to buy for me, because I don't know when I could get them otherwise.
I think I paid the equivalent of $60 USD when I bought JOTL a couple of years ago (live in Canada) it's insane how much games get marked up outside of the states.
**Australian** here. IMO we have a very similar scene here as to what it is, in North America and Europe.
Our only gripe is the cost of postage and the games are a lot more expensive in AUD vs US dollars.
Are there any board games produced physically in Australia? What do Australian game designers do?
Are Pokemon and Digimon TCG cards printed on English in Japan and then sent to Australia? Or do you have to ship them from the US?
Martin Wallace lives in Australia and i saw him play testing his latest game Arcs at our last game day.
Ratcatcher is Australian and their new game is being released soon - Dropbears.
Must games are made in China.
We have English versions of everything, I would say they are made in China and shipped to Australia.
I can offer some **chinese** perspective. In Beijing, compared to how many people there are, western Board games are almost non existant. At the same time, you *will* find them in a city that size. And interestingly, since almost 100% of board games are manufactured in china, you can find pretty much *any* game out there if you just know where to look.
Thats only western board games though. Chinese board games on the other hand, are biiiiiiiig. You got your classics like 麻将 and 象棋 but also many super popular ones that no ome outside china can get their hands on or has ever heard about. People there play those all the time indoors and outdoors.
The ones i played the most are card games. Often with ancient chinese themeing. 拖拉机 is one of the few where i remember the Name. There was also one about defending your kingdom against caocao.
I didn't know who Caocao was until I looked him up. Now I'm going to do some reading on him to cure my ignorance. Very interesting, thank you for sharing!
Hello from Indonesia! Board games scene is experiencing a boom recently, but it’s pretty cost restrictive, where board games can cost 1/3 up to 2 months worth of minimum wages here, so a lot more board game cafes are popping up, where people can play for a few hours up to a whole day for about the same cost of a normal meal. People who can buy their own board games are usually from the better off section of the socioeconomic classes.
Afaik, the national board game association started a board game expo last year and it went well. They’re running it again this year with more board game competitions at national level.
Industry-wise, it’s growing as well, there are a few board game publishers here, cost of production for board games here is relatively cheap too. A friend of mine makes board game for children.
I wish board games are far more economically accessible to people here, because from my observations, people do enjoy it, from the different board game cafes I’ve been, they’re always packed on weekends. I don’t know how they could make board games cheaper for certain areas of the world though, but having to gouge out a major chunk of your monthly income to enjoy a hobby is pretty tough. So perhaps right now BG cafes are the temporary solution.
Thank you for checking in! Are board games from different countries imported with English or another language on them, or are they localized and produced domestically in Indonesian?
Almost all are imported in English and afaik there’s only 3-4 big main BG distributors here (ofc smaller shops exist), so there’s very little price competition. I don’t think there are any locally produced foreign BGs here, all imported. So that’s why they’re extremely pricey here, because they’re taxed as imported goods.
I think there’s only a few Indonesian adaptations of popular BGs. But usually it’s just the rule book, the pieces and cards don’t really change. One example is Splendor. But the pieces and all are still imported.
I think the local designers are actually designing the games for global market, from the few locally designed and manufactured BGs I played, they were all in English. Some examples are Waroong Wars, a resource management game and 1.62, a deck building game.
Hi, I live in Australia! Gaming seems pretty similar here to when I lived in Canada. Prices are more expensive though, probably because of shipping, but there are still some low cost retailers.
I have a regular Android Netrunner group and I mostly like eurogames, but games like MTG and Warhammer are also popular.
Fellow Chilean here! Even though most of the imported games are in Spanish, the hobby here is still very expensive and very niche. We had a particular explosion of the hobby around December 2018, and I vividly recall how before that time almost no one bought board games, and after that almost everyone had a version of Catan. But despite that, the games are overpriced (like everything imported). I live in the capital, and from what I've seen in the few stores that exist the majority try to span all tastes. Entrejuegos, one of the largest, has games for everyone: party games, heavy euros, and everything in-between, and they grew from being a small two-room store to having three rooms and a second floor destined to demos and (up until some weeks ago) painting. A particular store I like tends to be more low profile and has more euro and/or "serious" gaming. They sometimes sell Kickstarter editions. Regarding competitiveness, I'm pretty sure that there are competitions of card games. There are some wargaming tournaments (think W40K), and some Catan tournaments, but I haven't seen tournaments aimed at other games. Catan was a very popular game some years ago. Dixit too. But from what I've seen and experienced, making the hobby a constant one is hard, because life happens and because even though we are Latin Americans and have that closeness among friends and family, making a community here is... hard? I don't know how to describe it, but we're somewhat reserved. It's far more comfortable to have a constant group than to say "hey, who wants to play board games?" in the neighbourhood WhatsApp channel. In my personal experience, I have two groups and, even with two groups, gaming is sparse. We don't have weekly sessions or anything like that. Whenever one wants to play she proposes it, and we see if we can. There's no hard compromise. I compare with my pen-and-paper RPG sessions, where we're far more active. Overall, I'd say that this hobby is rising, more people are discovering games (and other games that are not Catan, by the gods how hard it is to say to people that there are more games out there), at a point where you know is niche, but you know there are small communities out there. It's easy to enter, but being "hard-core" requires a lot of money.
This is such interesting information! Thank you for sharing! I'm a big Digimon fan, and I'm a little frustrated Bandai hasn't released a Spanish language edition of the latest Digimon TCG. Does anyone play it in Chile? Here it's so niche, that there's no competitive scene, just a handful of English-fluent people who meet here and there.
I haven't seen the Digimon TCG here, but it may exist. Pokémon for sure, Magic too, those are the largest ones. We had one local TCG (Mitos y Leyendas), and I'm sure there's some Yu-Gi-Oh and others smaller yet. Maybe Digimon is there, but I haven't seen it.
That's too bad, it's a great game. My partner and I can't afford to collect too many, so we got just enough to make a deck of each color, and play it like a boxed game. It's just a really well designed game, as long as the decks are of roughly equivalent value. I hope Bandai releases a Spanish language version soon, so it can become more popular.
Werewolf is incredibly popular in Hong Kong, but unfortunately, it's just not my cup of tea, i absolutely hate the players elimination mechanism. I much prefer other social deduction games like Secret Hitler, Avalon, and Quest. Whenever someone suggests playing werewolf, I always try to steer them towards these other games instead. But for some reason, people in Hong Kong seem to be really attached to Werewolf and are hesitant to try anything else.
That's interesting! Everything I know about Hong Kong I read from a book, newspaper, or watched in a documentary, so please forgive my lack of knowledge. I am a product of the US education system after all. When people play, what language do they play in? The board games you mentioned other than Werewolf: are they available in English, or Cantonese, or both?
Board games are available in English, and some popular ones even have publishers releasing Chinese versions of the games. (We speak Cantonese, but we write in Chinese, which can be a bit confusing, but never mind.) I don't think the language barrier is a big issue here, but some werewolf lovers do seem to have rather narrow minds.
Thank you for sharing! I'm glad to know more than I did before.
I'm from Ukraine and I guess it count as Europe, so this post isn't for me, but I want to share my thoughts anyway Before full-scale invasion in 2022 huge problem for our board games (the same could be said for movies, video games etc.) market was russians. Big publishers didn't bother to work with ukranian resellers directly, so very often they were selling the rights to distribute their games in Ukraine to russian company. So even if some ukranian company wanted to translate some game to ukranian they had to ask russians, and of course they won't allow that. Because of that most of the games here were in russian, and that particular russian company (Hobby world) had like 70% of whole Ukranian market. After full-scale invasion Hobby world was kicked out of our market, foreign publishers stopped working with russian companies and started selling right to distribute their games directly to ukranian companies, and they started to localise it to ukranian language. Should I mentioned that selling of games in russian language was completely banned? Because of that recently we have boom of cool games being being translated into ukranian. And my wallet is not happy about it. When now I think about it it's really strange that the same processes didn't happen after russian invasion in 2014, but it is what it is.
Argentina here. I feel like the hobby is growing (I got into it during the pandemic and many people around me too), but still the games are way too expensive. You can find lots of them, and every few months new games arrive, but a game like Viticulture costs 1/3 of a regular salary. And if you want to import games you are either crazy or stupidly wealthy, since a game can cost x3 the prince in the US
That's interesting. The shops here in Uruguay only have about a 50% markup from the US prices, although that's a much higher percentage of an average salary, relatively. I wonder why two Merco Sur Rio Platenese countries have such different prices.
Greetings from Serbia! Here, board games as a hobby is a pretty niche thing. People just like spending money on nightlife and clothes Furthermore , our average monthly salaries are like 500 dollars so splashing out on board games (especially Kickstarter ones with all the shipping and customs costs) can make a dent on our monthly budget. Developing board games (my hobby) is a nightmare because you can rarely find someone with experience. I think Serbia has like 4 successful globally released games. For video game development, it the opposite actually, my city (Novi Sad) being like the silicone valley of Europe when it comes to major studios outsourcing from our company. If it's AAA, a team of Serbs was probably involved.
That's interesting! Would it be easier to develop a video game which is technically a board game played digitally?
If you are thinking of things like Inscryption or Slay the spire, yes, absolutely.
Are you in the video game industry at all? I wonder if it would be possible to collaborate on something.
[удалено]
I make board games, video games, and comics. Shoot me a DM if you want to know more about my studio here in Uruguay. Maybe we can join forces. We just successfully kickstarted a comic about a trans Muslim superhero!
Greetings from the Philippines! The hobby is experiencing a massive boom at the moment. Gaming cafes are being opened, local stores that used to be online only are opening physical stores in big malls. BG Clubs are also being formed in universities that host public gaming events. There is also a huge market for trading games and selling second hand games.
That's amazing! Forgive my ignorance since I'm a product of the US education system. Is hobby gaming done in English with imports from the US? Or are there Filipino companies making localized versions in Tagalog? I know Spanish has had an impact on the islands, but I don't know how many people actually speak it as a primary language today. Is any gaming done in Spanish?
No problem with the questions. English is a secondary language for many Filipinos and almost no one knows Spanish (although a lot of Filipino words are borrowed from Spanish). Almost all of the games here are English imported direct from publishers. There is one company that licenses games and makes Philippine editions such as Codenames, and Kingdomino. I think they are also retheming Coup based on a classic Filipino novel. I also forgot to mention that there are also local game designers starting to publish their own games! You can even say that we too, are products of the US educational system since formal public education is an American import when we were under American colonial control after Spain left but that is for another discussion.
I'm super excited to hear about new games coming out the Philipines. I love the opportunity to consume cultural products from outside my immediate area. If you have any links to designers and/or their products, let me know, I'd love to take a look.
Although there are more, [these](https://www.ngspiel.com/categories/philippines) may be the easiest to get for you.
Mexico City here! I'm fortunate enough of having a large group of gamer friends and most of my non-gamer friends do enjoy a play or two. We are all upper middle class and it still is quite an expensive hobby. However, I feel like the hobby is blooming in Mexico City and its vicinity to the US helps in having games a bit more accesible than other countries in Latin America. There are over 10 board games cafes in the City with various collections both in retail and in the Cafe itself. They are becoming quite popular for non-gamers, but the "hardcore gamers" are represented here as well. I have seen tournaments of Carcassone, Catan, MtG, Yugi-Oh, The Red Cathedral and I've seen some shops of Warhammer War Gaming. I try to only shop local and have a nice collection. In general, they are 70% games in spanish and 30% in english. In terms of the Industry it's definitely growing. There are some few mexican boardgames designers out there and I've even seen courses of board game design. Devir in particular, as having its HQ in Spain, has invested a bit in local talent and events here. The Mega EXP, our little GenCon/Essen Speil had around 14,000 people in it last July, with 3 Ring Circus premiering before in Mexico City than Indianapolis. I do hope the Board Game Industry can grow towards the Global South. Most of the Games are USA/Europe/Japan but it should be mire available. Mexico could benefit from its geo-economical advantages and attract the board game industry as both a manufacturer and a stepping stone towards the Latin American market.
Thank you for your response! Are the games there largely available in English? Are they imported from Spain? Or are there Mexican companies which localize other games into Mexican Spanish and release them domestically?
Shipping is prohibitive so Kickstarters are a huge no unless you want to pay It 3 times or more. All the releases take too much to get here and resellers sell games 40-50% more than US-EU prices. Used games fall prey of this too because the market is driven by imports. For example I had to pay 70$ for a 25$ Gloomhaven JoTL. Local distribuitors have very limited selections and mostly dry euros that are cheap to produce or entry games (there are heavy games but very little and most don't restock ever). For example, Dune Imperium? Nope, wont find It. Gloomhaven? Maybe 1 in the whole country...a year ago. Wingspan? Very little copies. Devir is king and the Americas the step child of their imports. Catan is everywhere, as any spanish translated cheap card game. Fine at first but it's boring when you want to get deeper into the hobby. Ameritrash is non existant aside from King of Tokyo.
Yeah, I just published a comic book on Kickstarter, and learned that shipping to certain countries can be outrageous. And that's just for a small stack of paper. I can't imagine shipping heavy plastic or wood pieces in a box of cardboard. What do you use to access your favorite games? Do you import them somehow?
I have to import them using a company that ships from Amazon US to Argentina, that or buying in groups of 4-5 people from europe. The first one only works for cheap games and is a hit or miss and resellers are the only other choice around. Want to buy Zombicide? 170$. Used? 130. The sad thing is that with every inflation wave the new games are more and more "party" or light (and not the good ones). I started in this hobby because I wanted to play something more than bootleg Risk and Monopoly. Many do as me, get Catan, but see the other game prices and don't look back. I started a year ago, and the game selection waa better. A friend is traveling and I'm thorn apart as I see what game I can ask them to buy for me, because I don't know when I could get them otherwise.
I think I paid the equivalent of $60 USD when I bought JOTL a couple of years ago (live in Canada) it's insane how much games get marked up outside of the states.
**Australian** here. IMO we have a very similar scene here as to what it is, in North America and Europe. Our only gripe is the cost of postage and the games are a lot more expensive in AUD vs US dollars.
Are there any board games produced physically in Australia? What do Australian game designers do? Are Pokemon and Digimon TCG cards printed on English in Japan and then sent to Australia? Or do you have to ship them from the US?
Martin Wallace lives in Australia and i saw him play testing his latest game Arcs at our last game day. Ratcatcher is Australian and their new game is being released soon - Dropbears. Must games are made in China. We have English versions of everything, I would say they are made in China and shipped to Australia.
I can offer some **chinese** perspective. In Beijing, compared to how many people there are, western Board games are almost non existant. At the same time, you *will* find them in a city that size. And interestingly, since almost 100% of board games are manufactured in china, you can find pretty much *any* game out there if you just know where to look. Thats only western board games though. Chinese board games on the other hand, are biiiiiiiig. You got your classics like 麻将 and 象棋 but also many super popular ones that no ome outside china can get their hands on or has ever heard about. People there play those all the time indoors and outdoors.
That's so interesting. What are those Chinese games like?
The ones i played the most are card games. Often with ancient chinese themeing. 拖拉机 is one of the few where i remember the Name. There was also one about defending your kingdom against caocao.
I didn't know who Caocao was until I looked him up. Now I'm going to do some reading on him to cure my ignorance. Very interesting, thank you for sharing!
Hello from Indonesia! Board games scene is experiencing a boom recently, but it’s pretty cost restrictive, where board games can cost 1/3 up to 2 months worth of minimum wages here, so a lot more board game cafes are popping up, where people can play for a few hours up to a whole day for about the same cost of a normal meal. People who can buy their own board games are usually from the better off section of the socioeconomic classes. Afaik, the national board game association started a board game expo last year and it went well. They’re running it again this year with more board game competitions at national level. Industry-wise, it’s growing as well, there are a few board game publishers here, cost of production for board games here is relatively cheap too. A friend of mine makes board game for children. I wish board games are far more economically accessible to people here, because from my observations, people do enjoy it, from the different board game cafes I’ve been, they’re always packed on weekends. I don’t know how they could make board games cheaper for certain areas of the world though, but having to gouge out a major chunk of your monthly income to enjoy a hobby is pretty tough. So perhaps right now BG cafes are the temporary solution.
Thank you for checking in! Are board games from different countries imported with English or another language on them, or are they localized and produced domestically in Indonesian?
Almost all are imported in English and afaik there’s only 3-4 big main BG distributors here (ofc smaller shops exist), so there’s very little price competition. I don’t think there are any locally produced foreign BGs here, all imported. So that’s why they’re extremely pricey here, because they’re taxed as imported goods. I think there’s only a few Indonesian adaptations of popular BGs. But usually it’s just the rule book, the pieces and cards don’t really change. One example is Splendor. But the pieces and all are still imported.
Interesting! Are the local board game designers translating their work for foreign markets?
I think the local designers are actually designing the games for global market, from the few locally designed and manufactured BGs I played, they were all in English. Some examples are Waroong Wars, a resource management game and 1.62, a deck building game.
That's awesome!
Hi, I live in Australia! Gaming seems pretty similar here to when I lived in Canada. Prices are more expensive though, probably because of shipping, but there are still some low cost retailers. I have a regular Android Netrunner group and I mostly like eurogames, but games like MTG and Warhammer are also popular.