Gaoyuan Chen
Shadong Boardgame 2021.1-
Purchase Links：https://m.tb.cn/h.UsIjGG9?tk=JD5Zdl8iMeO
Introduction
Shadong Boardgame is a team confrontation game that parodies the Chinese regional banquets drinking culture and incorporates elements of performance and ready-made installations. I am trying to engage the public and make them pay attention to and reflect on this bureaucratic and patriarchal cultural phenomenon.
"Shadong（沙东）" is the nickname for "Shandong Province（山东）" on the Chinese Internet, which carries a certain sense of flirtation, while calling the drinking game a representation of this "board game" is an even more ironic form of cynicism.
Players will be randomly divided into two teams, Guests (宾客) and Paternity (陪客), and will perform behaviors such as toasting, avoiding drinking, and forcing others to drink within the confines of the rules according to the textual instructions of the cards. The team with the least number of drinks within the time limit is the winner, and the individual with the highest number of drinks in the winning team is the MVP; the maximum number of drinks for an individual is 20, and he/she will be counted as out of the game if he/she exceeds the limit.
The cards are divided into regular, character, food, and table-turning types, with attributes of attack, defence, and deflection, and each card is further divided into SABC ranks. Most of the text on the cards is adapted from real-life words and rules.
Full props version
portable version
Recording of the game site
Player group photo, Volatile Lab, Shanghai, 2021
Game Beta, 2021
Sixth "Good Art Festival"，Shanghai，2023
Demo version video , 2021
Video of the first public demo of the full props complete version, 2021
A demo from China's famous gaming media outlet G-core, click on the image to enjoy the original video
I used the game to shape this drinking game is fake, the wine is also fake, and this actually drinking game can go on smoothly. But isn't the reality of the drinking game just as fake? The focus of the drinking table culture is never the wine, but the power, as long as this unequal feudal power relationship still exists, replace the wine with cola milk tea, all do not affect the procedures of the drinking table culture to run.
Why am I making this game?
I am a person who grew up in Shandong, China, where the cultural atmosphere is more conservative and traditional, and where there is a lot of bureaucracy and most people are proud to be government officials. Under this cultural background, banquet in Shandong naturally has complicated rules, and every step you take to do a little bit wrong may offend someone, and banquet is like a power game.
For example, you can't just sit anywhere, you have to take your seat according to the seating rules. The Chief Paternity, that is, the invitation to the meal, the Chief Paternity of the left and right hand side respectively is the Deputy Guest Chief Guest, the Chief Guest is the most honourable guests, the Chief Paternity opposite is the Deputy Paternity, the Deputy Paternity is the largest amount of alcohol is responsible for bringing the wine, so the Deputy Paternity by the position of the back of the door, to facilitate the reception. Others, are unimportant minions.
Toast is also an essential link, who first toast who after the toast, toast a few cups have to pay attention to. The summary of the drinking session is to find ways to let the other party drink more than they drink less, and also to achieve the purpose of the team to talk things into.
Regional culture
Shandong banquet seating plan, classic version for 8 people
Due to my limited age, I haven't experienced many workplace banquet. I have experienced more extended family banquet where the rules are not as strict, but there is no shortage of situations where I have been asked to make a toast by my juniors. Every time I encountered such a situation, I felt awkward.
At a family dinner in the summer after my senior high school exams, my young female cousin was asked by her father to give me a toast and was told something like, "If you don't learn how to give a toast now, you'll be at a disadvantage in the future." This had a huge impact on me, and at the time I felt like I had become an accomplice to the drinking culture, which was more unacceptable to me than making me a victim.
This, coupled with the subsequent spate of vicious social incidents, such as the slapping of a bank employee who did not drink the wine toasted by his leader, and the molestation of a female subordinate by the leader of Alibaba, a major Chinese company, at the drinking banquet, all made me feel that I had to do something.
Personal experience
Why use the board game format?
Similarity and Participation
When I was looking at the table seating plan, I thought, "Isn't this a "power map"? A top view, eight people, playing their respective roles, holding different powers, and carrying out various actions in this abstract circle. This kind of behavioural scene based on tabletop, with detailed rules, where you have a cup and I have a cup of power, is similar to a turn-based board game.
In terms of creation concept, I don't want my work to be just a still life placed in an art gallery for a small number of people to see, because my creations are generally based on real issues. Since I have done it, I hope that my actions can more or less create more possibilities to change the reality, so I prefer that people from all circles can participate in it.
The highly participatory form of the game is very suitable for this topic, if people can personally participate in a magical drinking game to feel, the effect is certainly more effective than I make a video to directly criticise the bad habits of the drinking table.
I chose board games over video games because, in addition to the many similarities between tabletop gaming and table culture that I mentioned earlier, there is also the fact that tabletop gaming can be more powerful at a lower cost in this theme. The live nature of table games is one thing that current video game technology cannot yet match. Using a live medium such as table games, players can be more immersed in a drinking game, and personally go through the motions of making toasts and persuading people to drink, so they can be able to watch what they say and keep up the verbal sparring.
Shadong Boardgame demo live，2021.1
Atmosphere Creation
So atmosphere and performance are the focus of this game, and I don't intend to make a serious and straightforward critique of it, but rather to deconstruct and ironise this power relationship by means of a darkly humorous parody.
In order to create a very absurd atmosphere, I prepared a large round table, a full set of hotel tableware, a custom tablecloth with the number of seats printed on it, bottles of white wine filled with Sprite, and some fake food models specially selected according to the ordering rules.
The game is set up like a private room in a Chinese restaurant.
A high-fashion Maotai bottle with a sticker that reads "Organisation's internal special wine".
modelling dish
Card Text
In terms of the use of cards, the game is not like the common card games where you just play the cards, but you also have to read out the toasts on the cards to perform the required actions.
The text on the cards is also based on a lot of social research. I asked people of different ages about their experiences at the drinking table in Shandong and what they knew about toasting. I found that young people would mostly tell me about it in a spiteful manner, while middle-aged people would share some of the experience they had gained over the years as old players with a sense of pride and boastfulness, without feeling that it was a forced dross, and seemed to be as basic a social skill as driving a car.
In addition to the interviews, I went on to read some table success books, books that focus on understanding some of the rules that are common across the country. I also went to browse the vast amount of trolling of Shandong's drinking tables on social media platforms.
Crafted Cards for Beta
Marketability and Mass Production
The live video I posted of the game in early 2022 got quite a bit of discussion, with many users asking me where to buy it. Although this project did not initially have a commercial listing purpose, I believe that this game is a participatory social engagement project, the more people involvedinherently, the stronger it becomes, and it doesn't make much sense for its artistry to be intact if only very few people get to play it.
I am not against commercialisation. Commercialisation is just a means, and it depends on how it is used. Why is it that some works involving commercialisation are trendy art, commercial work, while others remain serious and pure art? I think the criterion for differentiation is whether commercialisation is part of the work, whether it promotes the expression of the work, or whether it is just a means to make profit after the work is completed.
What's more, my major emphasises interdisciplinary skills, so after detailed research on the commercialisation process of board games, I started to work independently on a mass-produced version.
In terms of the game's objects, I removed the large physical table and used a tablecloth to make it a symbolic map referring to the table, but the diameter of the tablecloth was reduced from 120 cm to 60 cm. I also reduced the number of players to 6 or 4 to make it easier to organise a game. Some players said the tablecloth looks like a Taoist ghost exorcism scene when it is spread out, very grounded.
Remove the fake food model and replace it with a new "menu", which is equivalent to adding a little bit of serving and ordering. Delete the cutlery, but include a 35ML wine glass, so that it can be used as the standard amount of one glass.
Object Design
Package Design
The packaging is a collaboration between myself and my friend "Li Zelong", who studied Visual Communication. We considered that the core of the game was to parody the traditional rules of the game, exposing the most absurd and magical side of the Shandong drinking table in a scandalous way, so the art style had to match. If the artwork was delicate and aesthetic, it would devalue the strength of the work and make the whole work illogical, turning it into a glorified consumption of the drinking culture.
The box is the first impression of the player to see the game, we want to make this black humour satirical atmosphere to come out, so we used laser paper, imitating the white wine packaging on the market, the middle of the character photo is a direct deduction of the class reunion group photo, and the bottom of the toast is also written all over the word, the whole is very earthy and wild.
Card Illustration Design
Since we're going for mass production, the card art can't be too muddled, so we've added new illustrations as well. Considering the budget and capacity issues, we chose to go with a drawing style that is on the minimalist and flat side, which is both simple and effective without stealing the show from the text.
In terms of illustration content design, I didn't want the illustration to be a redundancy for the sake of being there. So we didn't let it be like the regular card illustrations on the market, which are either tautological and repetitive, but merely illustrations of the text, or purely decorative with no actual content, but let the illustrations become a kind of re-creation based on the text, adding more connotations to achieve the effect of looking at the one and not thinking of the other, so that the card illustrations are full of black humour and parody spoofs of classic pictorial symbols.
The overall process is that I drew or photographed sketches, and then handed them over to the illustrator for processing and completion, and later, because of the rush, I got three more friends to draw them, they are Ziyang Wang , Han Wang and Angxuan Lu
Card Detail
For example, this illustration of a Chief Paternity card parodies a classic image from Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. In the film, an orangutan touches the Black Tablet, produces an evolution of intelligence and learns to use tools, and then the director uses a montage to suggest that the orangutans, who use bones as weapons, have been transformed in the future into humans piloting spaceships on interstellar voyages.
The text on this card is to show the brain-intensive process of making up a toast, and I used the illustration as a joke to imply that it was the brain training of writing the toast, rather than the Black Tablet, that prompted the orangutan's evolution and eventual annihilation of the human race.
Stand up and say, "I'll start with three drinks haha", what about the first one, to our **XX (Chief Guest), what about the second one (pretending to think) errrrrrrrrrrr. To our **'s XX (Organisation/Industry/Circle), and the third cup uh uh uh to XX (Self-created)." (Speak in a way that comes across as stuck, reflecting the brain's frantic thinking)
Effect: +3 to yourself +3 to each of the remaining players
Just by reading the text of this third paternity character card you'd think it was just a normal scene of a subordinate toasting his boss. Instead, the wreath of flowers in the illustration implies that this is a funeral scene, that the superior is actually dead, and that the subordinate's toast is meant to be drunk in his next life.
Pick a superior player, stand up and raise your glass and say, "It's an honour to dine with the leader today, I'll toast the leader with two cups and wish him good work, good health and prosperous business!"
Effect: +2 to yourself
Sat down and say, "Honestly, I've never had a drink in this place. Is there anyone here who is an artiste? Come on, let's have a drink for the artistes."
Effect: +2 to all players tied to the art industry
The text of this conventional attack card is adapted from an interview I did with a netizen. She used to work in a theatre group in Shandong province, and the creators were all figures of some importance in the art circle, but she never thought that the creators would still treat her like a clown and make her toast the director and threaten her like the old men in the traditional industry do at dinners.
In the eyes of the public, free and avant-garde artists are in fact as greasy as those in the traditional industry, doing dirty work in the name of art.
This illustration is a tribute to the father of conceptual art, Duchamp's The Fountain, which was a very rebellious piece of work at the time, redefining art and mocking the art associations of the time. And as I am also teasing the rules with this work, I used this illustration with the text to make a small mockery of the art world as well.
In terms of the scoring system, I've added a new page-flipping scoreboard instead of the original dedicated scoring. Choose to turn the page scoreboard instead of tokens, etc., first, because the game needs to see the number of cups of all people in real time to make gaming decisions, the score needs to be intuitive, and second, because it is a kind of competitive competition symbols, used here as if to make the table can not be on the stage of the table as a professional competitive competition, the show effect pull full.
Some summaries
The game opened its crowdfunding pre-sale on 19 September at 19:00 on the MoDot platform, and the crowdfunding amount was met in 10 minutes. By the end of October 20, more than 2,500 people had participated, and the remaining stock was also put on Taobao after the first of the year, which was quickly sold out, and we are currently preparing for the production of the second edition and designing the DLC expansion packs. This was a very unexpected result for me, kind of a win-win for both art and business. So I've also collected a few issues I find valuable to talk about at the moment.
Q: Your game is meant to be against the drinking culture, but this game requires drinking, so in case this game catches fire and everyone is drinking, isn't that contrary to your original intention?
A: As I said before, the focus of table culture is on power, not alcohol. And the game also suggests real drinking but not real alcohol, and the small 35ML cups disguise a reduced drink intake. Power players who would actually go for a drinking table culture wouldn't bother choosing my game, and the card text is more offensive, so if you're offended by someone else's card play, you're certainly not going to have a good time. The vast majority of scenarios in which my game appears are in the context of friends' gatherings, in which everyone is on equal footing and knows to be on point. Take the words of a netizen: "This game is like a childhood gathering of people to make fun of imitating a nasty director of education", if the players just take my game as an entertaining game to cheer up among friends, of course it's fine, not only relaxing, but also enriching the strength of my work, but there is a person who plays the game in the course of playing or after playing it, will think and pay attention to the things behind the game, then my purpose is achieved.
Q: What was the biggest difficulty you encountered in bringing Shadown Tabletop Games to market?
A: The biggest difficulty is maintaining independence with a lack of funding. In order to maintain the independence and freedom of creation, I didn't choose to take the route of signing with a publisher/distributor, so I had to do almost all the work myself. Luckily, I later found out that there are crowdfunding platforms in China where I can get the initial funding for the production, and there are also factories specialising in the production of board games which can reduce the risk of the production process. And in order to lower the cost to reduce the price so that more people to play, each design details can not be arbitrary, such as the size of the cards if the use of non-conventional size will need to spend 1000 U.S. dollars to open a separate mould, the size of the packaging box should also take into account the regular size of the market courier box. Logistics, factories and crowdfunding platforms all need to be carefully investigated and researched. Design, publicity, production, delivery, customer service, the whole process of independent operation and planning down to the mental and physical can be said to be a lot of pressure, but it is also a valuable experience.
Q: Isn't the drinking culture nationwide? Is a name with a place considered to be geographically discriminatory?
A: Although there are some common places in the wine table culture, the content of my game is more for the wine table culture in Shandong, not describing the common wine table and then take the blame for the name of Shandong. And the wine table culture is not "table dumplings" this kind of local almost rare, purely by the Internet of foreign users invented for regional black things, it is the real existence of the dregs, and still has not been swept into the rubbish heap of history, in shandong is still widely popular, a lot of people do not think that shame, on the contrary, thought of pride, B station and all kinds of video sites! B station and various video sites, there are a large number of Shandong table old man holding "teach good knowledge and skills" proud attitude in the "popular science".