Hello everyone! I'm Eugene, founder of Genie Games and creator of Rats to Riches, Peranakan: Tiles and Tactics, and Singapore Showdown. This is my first time ever writing a guest blog, and I'm incredibly honoured to be given this opportunity by Oliver to share my story with you. As the title states, I'm 29 years old as of writing this. Nine months ago, I quit my job as a Singaporean Navy Officer, to start my own company to design and publish board games full-time. How did I end up here? Well, the answer to that goes back 20 years ago.

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Ryan Dancey was, until last Wednesday, the Chief Operating Officer at Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). On LinkedIn, the self-help site for managers who want to tell each other how great they are and how little their subordinates/customers appreciate them, Dancey published a post (link to a photo of the post, because I do not link to LinkedIn) in which he explained that he is firmly convinced that AI (or rather the LLMs that are usually labelled as AIs) will, in just a few years, be as useful as any employee.

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Historical board games occupy an awkward space in our hobby. They are usually not designed to teach history in any formal sense, and they are also not entertaining in the sense of being fun. These games stop short of education, offering no syllabus, no claims of being a detailed treatise of their setting, and no obligation to explain themselves. The subject matter historical board games draw on, war, exploitation, inequality, famine, and systemic violence, doesn't suit the lightness or escapism people often expect when playing board games as a leisure activity. The result is a form of play that somehow feels serious but incomplete. In this article, I want to explore this in more detail.

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Let me be clear from the start: there is no such thing as a "good game". I know, it sounds controversial. After all, at the end of every year and often many times during the year, lots of people publish lists of the best games and regale you with how "good" these games are. If you're seen as the board game expert in your family circle or friendship group, you will be asked what "good game" they should buy or play next. Yet, "good" by itself is pretty meaningless - but let me explain.

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I have long been fascinated by historical board games. I was never very good at history in school, but whenever I play a board game with a historical setting, I feel I learn something. Often, I feel compelled to find out more about the events that took place back then. No class in school ever evoked that curiosity in me. These days, I look at historical board games from an additional angle: the human element. While war games rarely identify individuals and often work on a larger scale, there is a new breed of historical games that bring players closer to the human experience. In this article, I want to explore these games further,

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As I was listening to an episode of the Ludology podcast recently, one focused on games and health, I started to think about how much the people we play with influence our gameplay experience. Selecting board games based on the audience is much more important than we may like to believe. Get it wrong, and you have one player rebelling and playing opposite to expectations, another disengaging completely, and the overall mood shifting from playful enjoyment to uncomfortable tension. In this article, I want to discuss how a mismatch can impact the enjoyment of the whole group, alter the tone of reviews, and even affect playtest outcomes.

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