Getting game for romance

Chinese board game sets hearts of players on fire

"Without Killers of the Three Kingdoms (KTK), my life would have been completely different," says Liu Fei, 33, director of financial marketing department at the UK-based Standard Chartered Bank's Beijing branch.

KTK, or Sanguosha in Chinese, is currently the most popular board game in China, occupying 80 percent of the market share of 30 million board game players. Named after a classic novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is one of the first original card-based role-playing games with Chinese elements, where each card/role is given distinct skills, weapons and personalities as described in the novel. It has won millions of fans among Chinese worldwide, ranging from 10- to 60-year-olds.

Liu got married on Valentine's Day and is planning on a wedding ceremony this June.

"All this has to do with KTK," Liu says.

Liu's story with KTK began when he first played the game in 2008 and became known as "Flying Bee" among the 200 KTK clubs in Beijing, where members met every weekend. In June 2010, he went on a popular TV dating show called If You Are The One, in which he mentioned he had won four times in a row in KTK national contests.

"Within two weeks after the show, my personal blog had been viewed more than 700,000 times and I had received over 2,000 letters. And my wife was one of them," Liu says.

The couple later met at a private KTK game gathering, where they "fell in love at first sight".

"She impressed me with her comment, 'A four-time winner of KTK cannot be dumb'," Liu says.

"As far as I know, about 100 couples across the country have got married through playing KTK," says Du Bin, CEO of Yoka Games, which helped bring about the KTK craze.

"And at least 10 people have mentioned their experience with KTK in If You Are The One. It is something I had not anticipated."

Liu says Shen Ko-shang, a renowned Taiwan director, would make a documentary film of his romance and enter it in the next Cannes Film Festival. Another KTK romance in the film will be that between two migrant workers in China.

KTK made its debut in December 2006 and now one may come across KTK cards at venues such as 7-Eleven convenience stores and board game pubs.

The founders of KTK are three young men: Du Bin, 30, from Beijing; Huang Kai, 25, from Fuzhou, Fujian province; and Li You, 24, from Chengdu, Sichuan province. Du graduated with a PhD degree in computer science from Tsinghua University, and the latter two are from Communication University of China. Huang specializes in the field of game design and Li has a master's degree in animation.

Du says the legend of KTK goes that the idea of creating a game with Three Kingdom figures hit Huang when he was a sophomore, studying in a classroom. He designed and drew the cartoon characters by himself and schoolmate Li soon after. Then they turned the drawings into cards by using a paper cutter.

Huang and Li sold the manually made cards on Taobao.com, one of the most popular C2C e-business websites in China and it caught the attention of Du, who was also a game fan. The three met face to face at the end of 2006 and decided to create a dream come true by turning their hobbies into business.

By the end of 2010, the KTK had sold more than 2 million sets priced at 30 yuan (3.3 euros) to 80 yuan each.

"This is a huge success, when you would consider it a success in the Western market if a new board game has sold 10,000 copies," Du says.

"Monopoly, the most popular board game in the world by Hasbro, has sold a total number of 200 million sets in the past 76 years since it first came into being in November 1935. When I learnt that the total sales of poker cards in the Chinese mainland in 2010 reached 3.6 billion sets, I know where my heaven is."

Du says the success of KTK lies in many factors. "I think the game has met the core needs of consumers. They want something that everybody can be involved in at gatherings."

The period of the Three Kingdoms (AD 220-280) has always fascinated Chinese. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written by Luo Guanzhong (1330-1400), is as important to Chinese as Hamlet to Westerners. The book tells stories about war and peace, loyalty and friendship, betrayal and power play, wisdom and scheming.

"The Three Kingdom stories are in every Chinese person's blood. It is so embedded in our culture that it has more or less become a collective subconscious and KTK has given us an outlet to be what we want to be," says Professor Huang Xiangzhong with Xiamen University.

"The downside with KTK is it is too Chinese to spread to non-Chinese speaking communities. One has to be very familiar with the novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms to understand its essence and to really enjoy the game," Du says.

Yoka Games entered a world game show called Die Internationale Spieltage in Essen, Germany in October 2010. Du's colleagues posted a notice on a German-Chinese BBS, saying they would give away 20 sets of KTK for free before returning to China. Their hotel lobby soon became crowded with Chinese students who rushed in for the KTK sets. The hotel manager got startled and called in the local police, who simply could not understand why the Chinese should be so excited about some animated cards.

"The annual product value of board games in China is around 100 million yuan, while that of online gaming stands for more than 10 billion yuan. It is estimated around 100 million users a day are playing Bianfeng's online social games. It is very important that we have put KTK online, and launched iPad (iPhone) and Android KTK applications," says Elli Li, business development representative with Bianfeng.com, parent company of Yoka Games.

"The trend of gaming has changed. Now more people opt for short games that finish within 30 minutes or so rather than dwelling on games that would need to upgrade forever," Li says.

Liu Fei says he will invite Du Bin and his Yoka colleagues to his wedding ceremony. He and his bride will be dressed in cute KTK costumes, featuring a general and a princess.

"KTK has made all this happen," he says.