Edwin Wong: September This Side of Earth

Gaming has been booming this side of earth since our last report!

MALAYSIA
After 8 qualifiers stretching over 8 months, and a record 96 participants, Malaysia finally picked their 2 representatives for the Settlers International Finals - congratulations to Ryan and Kok Keong, who beat 14 other finalists! 

The tournament received massive media coverage, which in turn created huge public awareness! Even Starbucks joined the frenzy, hosting a 6-week promotion (where their customers could try the game in 6 outlets), two qualifiers and the Malaysian finals!

Several game cafes also sprung up over the last 3 months with Settlers Cafe and Toybox opening in Selangor, 3rd Dimension in Penang, and Chilax in Kuching. This is in addition to existing game centers (Games Cirlce, Comicscorner, KL Boardgame Meet-Ups) seeing huge crowds every weekend!

With the long school holidays around the corner, and several mini-conventions lined up (the most recent being the Movies & Collectibles Fair @ the capital’s first cinema complex, Cineleisure), the gaming scene is certainly poised to grow further by year-end!

Even the miniatures side has reported growing crowds, with a new wave of 10-14 year olds joining the Warhammer 40K junior ranks packing game centers on weekends. This month also saw the 1st Confrontation mini-tournament, a dry-run for a major tournament slotted for the year-end.

CCGs continue to see strong support, while RPGs continue to be sidelined in comparison.

Next month (7-8 October) will see the 1st Euro Game Retreat at the breathtaking Awana Golf & Country Resort, near Genting Highlands. This is organized to provide an “Essen-experience” for the many gamers who can’t make the trip to Spiel’06 next month!

SINGAPORE
The gaming scene in Singapore continues to buzz with excitement!

In addition to the Settlers qualifiers, which saw Ricky Purnomo and Marcus Tong beat 8 other finalists, after 4 qualifying rounds, Singapore also held their 2006 Boardgame Championship, which was not only a rousing success, but also attracted a Member of Parliment to grace the occassion and sit down for a game or two!

The game cafe scene, which came onstream before Malaysia, continued to blossom, with Settlers Cafe, Mind Games and Pitstop Cafe seeing a growing number of new gamers. In addition to the Boardgame Meet-Ups, Singapore saw another gaming group (Singapore Open Gaming) kick-off.

THAILAND
With availability of euro games still a rarity in Thailand, Bangkok nevertheless saw 2 game cafes spring up recently. Settlers in Silom and Playloft in Bangrak.

Playloft will be going full gear with the 1st online store in Thailand, so that should be a great relief to Thais looking for euro games.

© 2006 Edwin Wong

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Terrific news that the good word of gaming keeps spreading in your neck of the woods, Edwin.  Keep on doin’ what you’re doin’! Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 1, 2006 at 11:44 AM | #

Thanks for the encouragement Larry! We seem to be getting good support from parents switching their kids away from PC/console games to actually sit with their friends and play euro games, which is an important seed for the hobby in the long term. Posted by Edwin Wong on Oct 2, 2006 at 12:01 AM | #

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