Faculty of Multimedia and Creativity (FMC)’s Games students visited Meeples Board Games Cafe in Subang Jaya for a workshop on the 31st March.
Meeples is the first European-style board game café in Malaysia. Termed “The Board Game Heaven”, it is a gamer’s paradise offering patrons a variety of board games while they socialise over food and drinks. Meeples imports and distributes over 1500 games titles from foreign game publishers, as an effort to promote the European board games culture of fun, social interaction and intellectual development.
The trip was organised to help FMC students get inspiration and generate ideas for their final project, where they would need to design either a card or board game. Students were divided into small groups and each group selected and played games from over 400 titles available on the café’s shelves. The games varied in type and design, allowing the students to explore and learn the fundamentals of game design and mechanics.
Lim Gieng Fung, one of the lecturers who had accompanied the students said board games are the basic of game design, hence students seeing and understanding a variety of games will help even in the design of computer games.
“We emphasise the importance of understanding game basics. Board games allow students to learn and explore game mechanics and design in the simplest state,” he said.
Students said the trip was an eye opener to games design fundamentals, since they had never related board games to computer games design, nor given board games much appreciation when compared to computer games.
“I now appreciate board games and the effort put in designing them. You have to use your imagination and creativity to come up with such exciting game ideas,” said Sadiq Musa Suleiman, a semester four Games Art Development student from Nigeria.
Local student Tan Wei Yang, doing his first semester in Games Technology, said the visit brought back fond memories of his childhood, especially since he hardly plays board games anymore. He said playing the games had excited him and inspired ideas for his final project.
“Everything about board games is interesting. It has inspired several ideas for my board game design final project,” he said.
At the end of the visit, Kong Log Cheng, Director of Meeples Board Game Café, talked to students about the importance of a game’s design. He said the game industry is growing, and it is demanding well-designed games that stimulate and challenge players intelligently. He also emphasised the importance of a good marketing strategy, saying even if a game is exceptional, it might not do well in the market if it is advertised poorly.
This visit was one of the many Limkokwing University’s efforts to create industry ready graduates with skills and capabilities matching the industry demand. The University continuously sends students on site visit to industry leading companies and brings in top industry personnel to speak with the students in campus.