João Marum: Playing in Portugal

When you hear about Portugal one of the things you’ll not associate it with is board games, at least not right away. However recent changes over here have changed the way board games are played and perceived, and hopefully the future will hold more positive changes.

With this article I hope to expose and explain the boardgaming scene here in Portugal: how the hobby is viewed by players and non-players, the availability of games and groups, and the reputation of boardgaming.

Portugal is currently not a strong boardgaming country. In fact most people haven’t heard of designer board games at all, being convinced that the world of board games begins and ends with Monopoly and Scrabble. In fact, Monopoly is the most sold board game here. Traditional board games are the rule, and people often buy them because they are unaware of the existence of other games.

The most played traditional games here are checkers, chess, Monopoly and a card game called Sueca, a team game played with a traditional deck that’s faintly reminiscent of Tichu. There are even world tournaments of Sueca, such is popularity of the game. People play all kind of traditional board games, with those above being notable examples. Most people view board games as meant for children. There has been a noticed increase in tolerance towards board games though, since more people are starting to play designer board games to try them out.

Awareness and Availability

In terms of awareness of boardgaming as a hobby, things are improving, albeit very slowly. Though it is rare to find a retail shop that sells designer board games, the situation is improving as a good number of shops are starting to order some board games even if most board games consists only of Catan and Carcassonne.

One recent event has exposed the public to board games in a way that hasn’t been done before. FNAC, a well-known retail chain that attracts middle-class consumers, has started to sell a large quantity of board games, and the move has been so successful that the company decided to create a section in its shops solely dedicated to board games. This exposure has been a moderate success since a large group of people now are aware and enjoy designer board games, and there’s also the word-of-mouth factor since the general reaction of non-gamers who play designer board games for the first time has been positive. FNAC selling board games has not been a breakthrough for spreading the hobby, but is a huge step in the right direction.

As for FLGS, there aren’t many and those that exist are often found in the large urban centers. In Lisbon the better known ones are Runadrake and Homem-Azul. There are other shops, like Puros & Co., but they are still a rare kind of shop, those that sell designer board games.

As for online shops, we have Diver and Netsurf as well as Runadrake. However, it seems that the online shops the Portuguese boardgamers turn to are international, like the popular, at least amongst us, Planetongames, which shows that things can improve in the area of online shopping here.

So to conclude it appears that trying to buy a boardgame here has been more difficult before than it is nowadays but much still has to be made. Boardgaming isn’t a popular, or even known hobby around here so we still have a long way to go. FNAC is a step in the right direction to expose the public to boardgames and hopefully more chain retailers will pick up on that and start selling boardgames.

Design and Distribution

Devir might be the best known boardgame publisher even though its main focus is distributing Magic: the Gathering in Portuguese. When it comes to board games Devir mostly translates the most famous designer games, like Catan and Carcassonne. These translations are both in Portuguese and Spanish since Devir operates in markets where Portuguese and Spanish are the primary language. The company has recently released some designs of its own, like España 1936 and Castellers, both good games. Most of Devir’s fame among boardgamers is due to its translation of Catan, which uses the German version of the game. Unfortunately it has translated only the base game and none of the expansions.

Runadrake, which distributes games to FNAC, El Corte Ingles and more places, is likely the distributor with the largest volume of sales. The company has organized several events, giving some awareness to the general public about board games, and has translated games like Wings of War. Runadrake is the better known company amongst gamers, while Devir is known amongst the genral public – but with FNAC that is bound to change as that company has made a good deal of effort in spreading the hobby here.

Another new emerging publisher with a lot of potential is Morapiaf, which also focuses on translations, with Woolly Bully and Werewolf being the two better known ones. The company has also actively pursued a strategy of selling the games in as many shops as possible, which has allowed it to sell games to people who would not know about them otherwise.

We also have Majora, one of the older boardgame publishers in Portugal. Their games, however, are of the traditional kind and they haven’t ventured into the designer games territory.

And from publishers we move to designers. At this moment there is one independent designer who is really making a mark for himself. João Ribeiro (or JohnnyBeGood on BoardGameGeek) is a prolific designer who has made many prototypes. Amongst his creations are Crossin’ Colors and his latest design, A Pirâmide de Tutankhamon (Tutankhamon’s Pyramid). His designs seem to be leaning heavily towards the Euro genre and the reception to his works has always been quite good.

Playing and Preaching

Portugal does have a fair share of gamers and groups, but not as many as we would like to have. Gaming is not seen by many as a social activity you can spend with your family; as I’ve said above it’s often seen as a toy for children rather than an entertaining social activity. However a good number of groups have emerged with many of them owning large collections of boardgames. These groups are spread all over the country, from north to south, all of them having fun.

A peculiarity about the groups is that most of them actively encourage people to look at board games with a different view and give them a try. Though we aren’t that many we have introduced a good deal of people into boardgaming, and the success rate is quite high. There has been a slow, sometimes imperceptible, increase in the formation of boardgaming groups, probably thanks to the efforts by the stores. Though slow it has been steady, yet it’s still too soon to say whether the growth is exponential. Still more people are becoming aware of the joys of boardgaming and that leads to more groups forming, so it’s only a natural progression we’re watching right now.

There are some groups that have more visibility than others, mainly due to their online presence. Groups are often identified by the city in which they live and while men are the prevalent gender, women also have a strong presence in all groups, more so than in most other countries.

The known groups tend to play very regularly. I believe that, according to the latest statistics of games played, that we don’t strongly favour one genre of board game over another. Generally speaking we all play Euros, Ameris, and wargames alike with a slight tendency towards the Euro type of game. However most groups have a varied collection of games that includes almost all types and genres of board games, so in this we at least have a varied experience of play.

There are no huge groups, with more than ten members, meeting in private homes like in other countries. One reason for this could be that there isn’t enough available space at the organizer’s home, or perhaps there’s not enough interest to create such a large group. However there are two groups that meet every week in both Lisbon and Porto. These groups often have a large number of participants and they are open for everyone. The meetings are publicized in various sites and the meetings themselves take place in public places. In Lisbon the group often meets in Runadrake, while in Porto the group meets in Cristal Park and has already attracted the attention of many non-gamers who became gamers.

All in all there are at least a few dozen active gamer groups. Casual groups, however, are left out of this equation since it’s almost impossible to know how many there are. If what people talk about casually in FNAC is a sign of things though, then there is quite a good number of casual groups. Since Catan is the most notable designer’s game in terms of visibility, then it’s natural to say that the majority of those groups have Settlers of Catan. Other games that can be found in a general store – when you find such stores – are Carcassonne, Lobo and Woolly Bully, so it’s very probable a casual group would have started with one of those games. There are about 750 registered BoardGameGeek Portuguese users, a good number albeit still small.

The media’s attention to board games has been null up to this point and it’s the hope of both those groups that one day the media will notice them, in a positive way of course. Efforts are underway to attract media to the Porto meeting at least. Such attention would be beneficial to the hobby since exposure would mean more new gamers.

There are two reference sites in Portugal when one talks about boardgames, with the first, abreojogo, being the main site where everything is planned and discussed. This site has a nice amount of members and decent activity, though it has been much more active in the past. Abreojogo is the brainchild of Ricardo Madeira and we have much to thank him for because this site alone dynamized and vitalized the boardgame scene and opened the door to the Lisbon and Porto groups, amongst others, to be formed by means of a common point to organize events. The site also caters for RPGs and wargames, but the boardgaming community is the most active there.

Another reference site is Rededejogos, made by . This site is purely for board games and though the activity on it is less than on Abreojogo it is a useful site for board games, with a layout different from Abreojogo and catering to boardgamers only. It has also helped dynamize the hobby in ways that Abreojogo couldn’t.

• Jogos de Tabuleiro
• Spiel Portugal
• Jogo EU
• Bode Gueims

Conventions were very rare until a year ago. Though some local conventions were held, with variable attendance levels, it was one convention that changed the whole scenery for the hobby: LeiriaCon, which marked a new turn for the hobby over here. It was a con that matched the outside cons in terms of organization, events and guests. The attendance for the con was huge, considering the size of our hobby here, and it was a resounding success. Mac Gerdts and Andrea Angiolino were the guests, with Mr. Gerdts bringing a unique expansion for Hamburgum and the world record for the most participants in a Wings of War game being broken. All in all, this convention injected a renowned sense of vitality into the scene. It will happen again next year as well but if we do some objective analyzing, the convention was too “national,” or in other words, there weren’t a lot of foreign attendees last time. However as the convention grows in events and prestige, so too will the attendance grow. Next year the special guests are Martin Wallace and Mac Gerdts, with more expected.

And that leads to my next point, the international impact of our scene.

Spiel Portugal awards the Jogo Do Ano award each year. This award has helped put our scene on the map and seems to be a respected award, but now other groups and sites are creating their own awards. Manuel Pombeiro, or Firepigeon as he’s known in BGG, has created the Prémios Abre O Jogo at Abreojogo. Voting for the Prémios Abre O Jogo 2008 has started. The JogoEu blog is also going to give away his JogoEu Users’ Game award soon, though everyone can still vote in a game in the blog. These awards hope to help put Portugal in a more prominent position for boardgamers.

One of the easiest ways to ascertain the impact of a country’s scene in the international scene is through BGG. As of today there have been four Portuguese Geeks Of The Week. Luis Filipe e Costa (fs1973), Paulo Soledade (Soledade), and Manuel Pombeiro (Firepigeon) were three of them, with me being the fourth. This shows that we are active on BGG and in helping spread our hobby at home, but in truth, we’re still a small scene compared to many others.

The level of boardgaming activity in Portugal is, therefore, higher than one would expect. Though nobody today associates Portugal with boardgaming it is our hope that, over time, more and more people will discover the pleasure of playing a good board game and become part of our community. All the signs are favorable and the growth seems to crawl at times but it is steady, right now the tendency is for the community to increase rather than decrease.

In the end only one thing matters, we all love board games. We love them because they entertain us, exercise our brains and give us fun.

We’ll keep on playing board games – it’s the fun thing to do…

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