Shanghai board game company eyes international market
An expat family learn to play Justice Pao at a board game exhibition.
Overseas Chinese students in Manchester play a patriotic board game based on Chinese scientist Qian Xuesen.
Board games are very popular overseas.
Du Shaofei, founder of Joypie, said he became more involved in role-playing board games since 2006.
At that time, he was a buyer for a Fortune 500 company. Frequent business trips prevented him from having a stable circle of friends in Shanghai and role-playing board games filled up his idle time.
He quit his "vagabond" lifestyle in 2009 and opened a board game club in Minhang District as his entrepreneurial endeavor.
"A board game firstly attracts you with its package design. Then you open it and experience its mechanics," Du said.
"The mechanics ensure all players are equal. Their time of participation and amount of information are roughly the same. Each player has their sovereignty in a game.
"If the mechanics, the soul of a game, are designed well, the players play wholeheartedly and are fulfilled. They experience a release of dopamine."
With the store operating well, Du and his team turned to product design in 2014.
"Ten years ago, a new trend of people willing to pay for their own emotional satisfaction started to appear. In the five years between 2009 and 2014, we accumulated a group of devoted fans. In 2014, we started to market to them," Du said.
They launched a crowdfunding event at Taobao.com, a leading e-commerce platform in China, for a product called "Koi," and within one or two days hundreds of transactions had been clinched.
"We were beneficiaries of the earliest form of crowdfunding and our products were exclusive and popular," Du said.
It then occurred to the company that they should give back to society.
"The thought occurred when my own child started to show his interest in board games. He was around four years old in 2016 and was curious about my products. Then I realized there were few of my products that suited him," Du said.
Joypie started with "Come On Bite Me," a forest adventure-themed board game featuring roles of wildlife, hunters and even bacteria. They also designed games for young children to train their hand muscles.
"The same board game is also helpful for the elderly with Parkinson's disease."
In 2018, the company had access to some venture capital. Supported by those funds, it started a cooperation with cultural IPs.
One of Joypie's signature self-developed board game IPs is "Justice Pao," based on a Northern Song Dynasty (AD 960-1127) statesman known for his justice and integrity.
In 2019, they took a suitcase full of more than 30 packages of the game to the global Spiel Essen board game exhibition in Germany. All were samples with only Chinese introductions, but they sold out within two days at 25 euros (US$27) per package.
"The style is traditional Chinese ink and wash painting, featuring martial arts characters. The maps of the game are made of silk. It attracted quite a few foreigners during the exhibition," Du said.
"We tried to adapt our business strategy from 'to customer' to 'to business,'" Du said.
A typical ToB product is a Red Culture-themed board game that corresponds to the nationwide celebration of the strength of young people.
"The fictitious time of the game spans about a century from the May 4th Youth Movement in 1919 to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2022. The young people were the first group that noticed something was wrong when the country was at its weakest. We marked historic moments and presented them in our game. Each player, through their immersive experience in the game, felt they were in the role of a New Times youth with their deep attachment to their country," Du said.
They next designed a game featuring Qian Xuesen (1911-2009), scientist and founding father of the missile and space research in China, for general science promotion in the city. The game was also available at a UK board game store in Manchester and was popular with overseas Chinese students.
Other board games with grandeur themes Joypie have designed include games on wetland survival and civil defense engineering.
"The majority of board games in China are now imported from Europe and the US. Eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic are noted for some of their talented designers, while Germany, French and Italy are both innovation countries and consumer countries of board games, with Germany showing strength in mechanics design and French in visual painting, especially.
"Both China and the US are big consumer markets. But as globalization deepens, a product may have a French visual designer, German mechanics designer, a US market and multiple language versions," Du said.
His aim, the game expert said, was to export more original Chinese-designed board games to the world.
The company might also apply augmented reality when the technology becomes widespread and fully matured one day, and artificial intelligence is now used for quick feedback on game models.
