Why Bitcoin is a Bubble in Making

The rise of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin took Wall Street by surprise with many industry leaders stepping forward to give their opinions what they think of this new technology that can potentially disrupt the role of banks.

What is cryptocurrency? It is a form of digital currency that can be used to purchase goods and services and is limited in quantities, much like gold. However, unlike gold, cryptocurrency can be transferred through the internet, across the borders, without the need of going through customs nor banks. This creates a burning problem for governments in the form of illicit money flow which can be used to finance illegal activities and threatens the central banks abilities to control money supply, which is one of the key tool for economy management. Read more about cryptocurrency.

I Met My Girlfriend Through Kickstarter and She Blew Up My Campaign.

After years of fruitless sessions of speed dating and empty conversations with Tinder, I kinda of gave up on dating for a while. My personal life also underwent major changes which makes it almost impossible for me to focus on dating. First and foremost, my grandma was diagnosis with vascular dementia and she was transformed from a sweet lady, into an irrational angry person, constantly cursing in 4 different languages and accusing me and my dad sleeping and impregnating my helper. None of this is true of course as her delusions were the result of dementia play tricks on her mind. The stress on the caregivers was tremendous as we adapted.

5 Financial Lessons from Financial Boardgame: Debtzilla

Debtzilla: The Board Game is a superhero co-operative board game that puts players in the role of a secret identity superhero, who has to manage his finances as a common salaryman during the day, and combating villains at night. At the end of the game, the players have to defeat Debtzilla as the final boss in order to win the game. The game is making use of the superhero theme to bring out essential financial lessons and here are 5 of the important ones:

Debtzilla - Game Design Diary Part II: Money Mechanics

After 1 year of design work and 13 design blueprints later, Debtzilla the board game is finally born. The biggest challenge of designing Debtzilla is the challenge of incorporating various important money concepts such as income statement and compound interest without resorting to players filling out a real balance sheet and whipping out their calculators. The other challenge is to create a game that flows, easy to learn, builds tension gradually to a climax and engaging the players at an intense level making them feel that time flies by quickly.

A Logical Timeline

In Debtzilla, a daily routine is developed which mirrors the working routine of an average working adult. In the morning, players work, earn an income and plan how you want to build their wealth in order to buy gadgets to power up your hero. In the late afternoon, they knock off from their work and head to the shopping street, checking out the latest gadgets that they can use to battle the villains. At night, the villains begin to prowl the streets looking for innocent citizens to scam while the players try to stop them with whatever resources they have accumulated. Once the villains are confronted and the dust has settled, the damage done to the city is tallied and the impact of the hero's actions will be felt in the following day in the form of interference from the final boss: Debtzilla. This flow of events help players get into the game quickly, minimizing their game learning time as it is intuitive and correspond to their daily lives.

Gamification of Balance Sheet

The biggest problem when designing this game is to find an efficient way to represent an income statement without resorting to actually filling in an actual income statement and slowing down game. How do I incorporate expenses such as interest payments, insurance premiums, personal expenses, while at the same time allowing players to build their income via dividends and proving their saving rates by budgeting and re-financing their loan. I borrowed heavily from the deck building mechanics of a famous boardgame named  Dominion whereby players start with a stand deck of cards and they get to pick new cards from a common pool, resulting in each players having different sets of monsters and abilities by the end of the game. However, the huge variety of cards offered by Dominion often result in a steep learning curve for players, which is daunting for non-gamers, which Debtzilla is trying to reach. As a result, a simplified version of the deck building mechanics is designed, with players limited to 8 cards to choose from, rather than hundreds typical in deck building game. The system is designed in such a way that more cards can be added to the Income deck in the future if I am keen to add in more kinds of debts and money instruments, such as medical debt, investment loan and car loans.

Law of Compound Interest

One of the key mechanic that I am trying to design into the game is the idea of an escalation mechanic similar to the boardgame Pandemic where players have to stop viruses from spreading exponentially. The world of finance has its own form of virus, it's called the the law of compounding interest represented by this formula

The actual calculation of compound interest actually requires a financial calculator and the mechanic to represent this formula in an actual game mechanic took some trials and errors before I got it to work elegantly.

The law of compound interest is designed into the health of Debtzilla in the form of the interest rate bar. At the initial stage, Debtzilla grows at a slow pace, often prompting players to be more reckless in their spendings. As the gauge move beyond 60, Debtzilla health starts to jump much faster, often causing panic among the players, who now will be trying to pay back the debt they have borrowed, but more often than not, the accumulated interest payment has grown so much by than that whatever amount thrown at the monster only delays the apocalypse by a turn or two. It translate the feeling of despair of crushing debt very well as players are now forced to work together to as any mis-step will lead to a losing end game.

Other Challenges

There are other challenges in design, such as balancing a 2 player vs a 4 player game and ensuring a good win-lose ratio for a cooperative game. However, these topic I will leave for another day as there are more things to talk about in the game design process.

So You Want to Be an Asian Board Game Designer?

When Capital Gains Studio first entered into the tabletop scene in Singapore, many of the previous generation of tabletop game publishers have thrown in the towel and left the scene all together, along with their industry knowledge and competency.  With no established publishers in the region, game designers often have to double up as game publishers and we can totally understand why our predecessors left as the board game publishing environment in this part of the world. Making tabletop games in this part of the world is harsh and unforgiving. We started with wanting to just design a simple low budget educational game for workshops and classroom  as a side project with no knowledge whatsoever how a good game is produced. Fast forward three years later, we have gained a lot more knowledge and expertise after attending the tabletop school of hardknocks after publishing 3 games and about to launch another Kickstarter for Debtzilla. With Kickstarter launching their operation in Singapore and Hong Kong in 2016, we are seeing more designers trying to fund and launch their tabletop game via Kickstarter. So I thought its timely to share with some of the local up and coming game designers and publishers some of the challenges they will face.

Ain't got Time and Money for Board Games
In the ancient past, tabletop games are reserved for the rich and noble, whereby they are the only people who have the time and money to enjoy a strategic game of chess. This is somewhat true for most parts of Asia as the majority of the population is trying to break out of the poverty trap and moving into the middle income. Many Asian countries also boast the some of the longest working hours in the world and by the time we reach home at late at night, we are too tired to even make babies, leaving little time for board games. The thriving bootleg market also means that the average popular board games be purchased at a discount to their actual retail price. When we tried to penetrate the less developed markets which have a much weaker currency exchange, we have to decide if we wanted to slash our retail price by more than half in order to compete with bootleg board games or only target a very niche elite market who can afford the game. In high population and high growth markets such as China, India and Indonesia, board game is still considered as a luxury niche product and the easier markets to penetrate are the smaller rich nations with a higher disposable income such as Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea.

Other Challenges Facing the Asian Designer
Asia has a similar problem to Europe: There is such a huge in differentiation of culture and language that localization is the key to sell your board game. In South East Asia alone, you will need to translate your game into 6-7 different languages in which each country probably will have a demand of 300-400 units with sustained marketing efforts. Hardly worth the effort to do a minimal print runs for each country. Therefore, the ability to design a language independent game where it can cater to different languages by able to update the rulebook is important for a designer aiming to distribute their games in Asia.

In terms of art, anime style artwork tend to gain better traction in North Asia and South East Asia, due to the popularity of Japanese anime and manga in the region. Just looking at the attendance of pop culture conventions will give you an idea of the demand for art. Anime Festival Asia (AFA) which features mainly Japanese pop culture has an attendance of around 150k while Singapore Toys, Games and Comic convention (STGCC) has an attendance of around 50k. The local illustrators we worked with often shared with us on the better marketability of anime art as compared to the more semi-realistic art more favored by the western markets. However, designing a board game with a pure anime theme may find trouble when marketing to the western markets as there is still a stigma against anime artwork.

Heavy games which takes a few hours to play will also find limited traction in Asia and the more popular games are usually smaller and quick to learn and play social games, as evident from many of the table top games published by Asian designers. For example, social games such as Werewolf and Saboteur are popular in China, while Japan has a more dominant card game culture. One of the best selling game in Malaysia is a game about a social game called Poop.

Therefore, a designer who is considering to market out of their home country to different parts of Asia have to consider the language, game mechanics, art and limited demand for board game. It is a high risk and potentially low return strategy. Confronted with such a design and logistical nightmare, many designers choose to design their games with the US and European market in mind, only to be hit with another set of challenge.

Marketing in US and Europe? Time Space and Money

In Singapore, I often participate in game testing sessions and when I asked the game designer about their target audience, the game designer will often say, "United States and Germany." It is not a surprise since many designers believe that there is a lack of demand locally while the grass is greener on the Western front.

Asian game designers also tend to believe that Kickstarter will solve most of their marketing challenges and helps to penetrate the Western Markets. The truth is that it is not as effective as they think. They often under-estimated the amount of money, time and networks they need to build before and after the Kickstarter campaign with the media, publishers and distributors which are often done during conventions and tradeshows. However, the cost of air tickets and logisitcs often makes the cost difficult to bear and most small Asian indie designer simply does not have the resource and time to attend all these conventions.

Financially strapped and fearful that they will be stuck with a load of board games which they cannot sell, designers often go for small print runs of 500 and below. There is a joke within the Singapore creative community: "If you can sell 500 books, you are considered to be a best seller in Singapore". Not willing to take a risk to go for a bigger print run, the per unit cost of manufacturing shoots up too high for these designers and given that most major distributors in the western markets will want 60% of the product retail price plus shipping, it makes distributing into the US market unprofitable for most designers who are not willing to risk a print run of 2000 and above.

Lastly, the western markets are getting more competitive by the day as the number of board games being launched is increasing on a yearly basis. In order to stand out from the crowd, a board game has to have top notch production value in order to compete at the highest level. An board game considered as excellent standard in the local context, is normally considered as average to good when pitting against some of the best board games around the world. You have to raise the bar beyond your usual standards if you want to stand a chance even to compete on a global level.

Design Locally, Think Globally

Hence, here are the choices which an Asian designer can take

- Design a game with art, language and mechanics suitable for the local market with the benefit of cheaper marketing cost but at the risk of limited demand. A good example is a Singapore adaptation of Cards Against Humanity "Lim Peh Says"  which raised more than $120,000. As the jokes are only unique to Singaporeans, the product probably will not go international anytime but a simple card game raising a 6 digit figure is still no joke.

- Design a game with the Western Market in mind with top of the line artwork, components and unique mechanics. The best example is Three Kingdom Redux, a beautifully designed and balanced heavy Euro game which has a better distribution network in the Western Market than in Asia. They did not launch their project on Kickstarter.

- Design a game with mechanics and artwork that appeals to the local market but at the same time, can still be enjoyed by an international audience. This is the route that we took for Wongamania: Banana Economy, but this is a risky route whereby you may risk alienating all the markets you wish to pursue rather than making everyone happy. For example, Wongamania: Banana Economy is often referred as a "Simple Game" by the more seasoned players in the western market, whereby it is considered a "Difficult Game" locally as the most commonly exposed tabletop games in this part of the world are simple games such as Cards against Humanities and Monopoly. Trying to maintain that balance requires designer to put in a lot more effort in terms of designing every aspect of the game.

The Choices Designers Have to Make

So you live in Asia and want to design a board game? Before you start, you need to do a quick check of your own resources and who you want to design your board game for. If you are unable to take time off and invest a huge amount of time and money in design, artwork, air tickets and convention fees to US or Germany, consider designing a simple game for your local market and build your expertise from ground up. When we first started, we are amazed by the kind of cardboard you can use to design a simple card game and learning the 101 variety of cardboard, is the first step to become a good designer. We are also seeing an increased interest in tabletop gaming as Asians are getting increasingly wealthy and work life balance becoming a priority among Asian families. Who knows, that small game you have designed for your local market with limited demand may become the next big hit when the tabletop culture become more widespread in years to come. 

Debtzilla - Game Design Diary Part I: Theme

Right after the launch of Wongamania: Banana Economy, I started to brainstorm on a new game which can portray another aspect of the world of finance. There has been requests from different sectors on different subjects. Some wanted me to create value stock investment game, some wanted me to focus on commodity and there are ideas on using a game to teach people about real estate investing. However, as we reach out to more people, it became apparent that debt is a common topic among the man on the streets. There has been rising cases of young people getting into debt with little understanding of the consequences that they face as a result. We decided to create a game that touch on the consequences of Debt.

The initial game idea is pretty simple. Your uncle is deep in debt, as a result of certain unsavory habits (gambling, drinking etc)  and you work with other players to manage the different aspect of your uncle's life and the objective is to dig your uncle out of the pile of debt. I shared this idea with a couple of my friends and there is a generally negative response.

"Look, there is always an idiot in the family that gets themselves into trouble, resulting in the need to borrow money from his or her relatives. This almost always result to family argument and conflict and most people prefer not to play a game that reflect real life so accurately. I know I will prefer not to play the game because I will recall the unhappy times when our family quarreled over debt problems."

Well, that's pretty good feedback. One of the purpose of games is to help people escape from realism and allow them to do things which they normally cannot do in the real world.

"You can turn the uncle into a gnome or some troll," my friend continued. "It definitely beats a realistic modern setting that will distance people from their real problems."

That is one of the biggest challenges in creating education games. The need to communicate real life lessons, yet to be disconnected from the real life to let people have fun and escapism.

I took my friends suggestions to the next stage and replaced "Uncle" with a creature which I created in Wongamania: Banana Economy - Debtzilla. So the story goes that Debtzilla goes into debt and a bunch of merry men made up of lawyers, bankers and psychiatrist is there to help Debtzilla get out of Debt. This idea immediately ran into a logic trap. How can a fearsome monster merrily spend its time going into Louis Vuitton, buys a luxury bag and get intimidated by a bank officers calling for repayment? That sounds too incredulous, even in an alternate universe in Banana Republic.

At that point of time, Captain America: Civil War is screening with great reviews in the cinemas and one of the highlight of the show is Spiderman. That sparked off my inspiration for the new game design idea.

What if, most of the superheroes in Banana Republic are like spiderman. They are not too rich, get into debts and is scrimping together some small savings to finance their superhero lifestyle in order to battle and corruption and injustice in Banana Republic? How about making Debtzilla the final boss and is the result of the manifestation of the debts which the heroes have accumulated? The theme is fresh and gives a new take on the superhero meta theme, while fulfilling the purpose of highlighting the debt problems that everyday people faces.

With this idea in mind, I started to share with some of my friends on this idea. The idea pretty much got a universal thumbs up from everybody and the common feedback is that the idea is familiar and yet fresh and is guaranteed to get attention from people who are looking for a fresh theme and game concept to try out. 

Here is the theme of the new game:

  In the land of Banana Republic, an incompetent and corrupted government has caused a wave of crime and lawlessness in Banana Republic. 

A few brave souls have finally showed and decided to take on the mantle of heros - to combat the Villains who are stealing the hard earned savings of ordinary citizens. However, beneath every hero lies an average human being, who has a job to perform, daily expenses to pay and crime fighting gadgets to buy, using their trusty credit cards. Little did they know that their credit card bills are feeding the ultimate monster of mass destruction: Debtzilla, which they have to confront at the end of the game. The more they borrow, the more powerful Debtzilla becomes.

Debtzilla is a 2 to 4 player, cooperative board game where heroes work together to protect ordinary citizens from being scammed by Villains, and take down the final boss: Debtzilla. Sharing the same universe as Wongamania: Banana Economy, Debtzilla focuses on the issue of how debt affects the lives of ordinary people in Banana Republic. Using a combination of card drafting and dice mechanics, players have to race against time to bring down the bad guys before the law of compounding debt interest destroys their chances of winning the game. Be too stingy on your finances and you will find your hero too weak to do any good in a real fight. On the other hand, splurging too much on those flashy hero gadgets on borrowed money will result in the final boss too difficult to defeat. Can you balance your books and save the world at the same time?

With Great Power, Comes Great Debt!

Most designer board game started with the design of game mechanics, before looking for a theme that will sell well in the current market. However, for an education game, the purpose and theme comes first before finding the right mechanics to communicate the educational message, while at the same time, retain the fun element of a great game. This triples the difficulty from a game design point of view. The next blog post, I will talk about the difficulty of finding the right mix of game mechanics to bring out both the educational message, fun factor and the tension involved in a superhero game.