A game where culture wins

Chinese elements

The board game is the latest to actively highlight and promote Chinese elements and culture.

Two other previously launched games have also garnered attention for their focus on China and Chinese characteristics.

In 2018, Gugong (Forbidden City) designed by Andreas Steading from Germany won wide acclaim. Set in China in 1570, the game enables players to travel, sail down the Grand Canal, purchase precious jade, play a part in constructing the Great Wall, and meet the emperor. On BoardGameGeek, or BGG, an online community that provides a large database of board games, it scored 7.53 out of 10 after being played and rated by about 5,500 players.

Another game is Dunhuang: Pearl on the Silk Road, conceived by three Chinese designers. Players assume the role of landlords, seeking to achieve prosperity through utilization of property, making murals, creating porcelain, planting tea and producing clothes. It has achieved a score of 7.1 out of 10 on Gstone, and many reviews attest to its enjoyment, even after being played multiple times.

"In China, games used to be looked down upon as a waste of time," says Bass, "but these games might help overcome that prejudice."

Bass, who, as a child, started playing board games, such as Candy Land and Monopoly, says that they actually function as a good family pastime, creating bonds among relatives and friends.

However, compared to an advanced, mature board game market overseas, such as in the US, China's market scale has been growing somewhat slowly, and the market population is relatively fixed.

Zhang Zhiyang, a proficient player of the card game Magic: The Gathering, conceived by US mathematician Richard Garfield in 1993, says that players prefer board games that consume less time and online games with multiple players. Generally, a board game takes more than 45 minutes to play.

As the market remains in a developmental stage and problems like piracy still exist, Bass says, at present, board game producers are not making enough money.

Despite of all this, he is positive about the future of the industry, adding that people's awareness of copyright is improving, and the board game, A Great Nation's Dream, with its unique Chinese features, is proof that the domestic industry has something great to offer.