Taiwan has seen a growth in the popularity of board games, with the number of dedicated shops growing from one in 2008 to about 300 this year, according to a company that makes board games.
“Going to a board game shop is exciting. The 200 games it has can show you 200 different worlds. If 200 is not enough, then the number can go up to 1,000,” said Yawan Wang (王亞灣), who runs board game maker 2Plus.
Wang, who comes from the family behind the company that created the Taiwanese version of the Monopoly board game, said she founded 2Plus in 2008.
Photo: CNA
She said she is from the generation born in the 1980s, who were inspired by the rock band Mayday (五月天) to pursue their dreams and start their own businesses.
Following six years of losses, 2Plus has grown into a company that plans to launch 12 games this year, half of which are developed by the company, Wang said.
Among the 80,000 board games available in the global market, 400 are widely distributed in Taiwan, but only 10 percent are local products, she said.
Wang said that about 300 board game shops, with new shops opening every month, play an important role in increasing the popularity of the games, because shop staff can teach customers how to play the games.
The Taiwanese market is ready for board games and consumers are willing to buy or rent board games, Wang said, but added that the supply side is not ready and still relies on foreign content.
Local content can sell, Wang said, citing the success of Voyage with Taiwan, a board game 2Plus created with Academia Historica.
The game, which takes players through historic events in the past 400 years in Taiwan, sold its first 3,000 copies in 15 days, which Wang said was a record for Taiwanese board games.
Total sales reached 12,000 in 18 months, she added.
It is not the first board game created by Academia Historica, which has also released games on the themes of the 1911 revolution that led to the creation of the Republic of China (ROC), the Chinese Civil War and the 10 major construction projects under former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Academia Historica chief secretary Nancy Chen (陳立文) said.
Chen said that when Academia Historica staff played the 1911 revolution game, they ended up with results that were in line with history.
However, the employees’ children had different outcomes, with the Qing Dynasty regime defeating the revolutionaries led by ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), Chen added.
Another Taiwanese board game maker, Tsai Huei-chiang (蔡惠強), who created the Dadaocheng game based on the development of Taipei from 1851 to 1920 with his partner Eason Kao (高宇呈), said they are eyeing a bigger market by developing games in Chinese and English.
A small amount of copies of the game have been sold overseas, they said.
To ensure higher sales, Tsai said they have adopted the crowdfunding model for each game.
Dadaocheng raised more than NT$1.6 million (US$49,650) before its launch, he said.
Another board game backed by crowdfunding is the Beautiful Island series, which is based on Taiwanese politics and elections.
The third installation in the series, focusing on the internal struggle at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), raised NT$4.2 million in just one month ending on Jan. 31, its developers said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to