Around the world in 80 plays SAUDI ARABIA
Travelling 1500 miles south-east from Greece, last month’s country of interest, sees our tireless tabletop tour set down in the arid and mountainous lands of Saudi Arabia. This wealthy kingdom’s historic gaming roots largely build off of the import of games such as Backgammon, Mancala, and Dama, with the most popular being the Indian classic Carrom. Whilst Carrom has always maintained its status as an occasional game to dust off at family gatherings, amidst the current coronavirus panic, the game rapidly sold out. In a response to curfews and an abundance of free time, Saudis have flocked to toy stores – where prices of Carrom boards have subsequently tripled – hoping to fill their evenings with the satisfying clack of the game’s flickable pieces.
Whilst our current global pandemic can be attributed to a sudden spike in the popularity of tabletop games, particularly Carrom in the case of Saudi Arabia, board games have actually been on the rise for the past few years.
Owner of board game store Challenge Round, Rami Sunnari describes the first Saudi Comic-con as a pivotal moment for the country’s board game resurgence. Held in 2017 in Jeddah, the three day convention saw over 20,000 people united in a celebration of both national and international pop culture. Aside from the unusually progressive choice to add some flexibility to the typical gender segregation associated with public spaces – alongside the allowance of cosplay – this government-backed event also exposed a previously buried subculture of tabletop gamers and talented writers and artists. Thanks to the convention, Sunnari was seeing an average of thirty people a day paying to play in his Jeddah based store, with that number growing every month. Similar conventions have since been held in the capital city of Riyadh, with demonstrators showing off impressive Warhammer armies and teaching various board games to the thousands of attendees.
Game designs by Saudi nationals are fairly sparse, but Mahmoud Zaini, an artist at the Inov8 game company, is looking to change that. Aside from contributing character art for the card game Wjh Alnhs (Face of Misfortune), Zaini has also produced his own design in the form of Almeshwar (The Way). Comprised of a wooden board and pieces, Almeshwar connects with Arab and Islamic culture through its gameplay of collecting knowledge and artefacts for a city that has lost its old values.
Zaini notes that Saudi Arabia’s small gaming industry leads to some competition between his company and others, such as Nard Games, RPS, and Ekkah. Whilst the designs from these publishers don’t see wide releases, the large number of lovingly illustrated card games, including Hazer Meen and Wala Kilma, nonetheless provide Saudis with a distinctly national feeling source of tabletop fun.
Despite the promising first steps toward, at least, an acknowledgement of pop culture and niche creative industries, there are still instances of tabletop gaming being viewed as somewhat taboo in certain Saudi Arabian contexts. In 2018, controversy arose from an image of four women playing a board game in the premises of Mecca’s holy mosque. As the photo circulated online, a mixture of responses ranging from utter shock to indifference resulted in authorities issuing an urgent statement explaining how officers were dispatched to the scene to advise against ‘doing such things’. The game in question was the 1982 title Sequence, a patternbuilding game not dissimilar to games found on smartphones – which, coincidently, are not prohibited in the premises.
Our trip through Saudi Arabia has painted a picture of a country in the exciting early stages of a blossoming industry. Tabletop gaming’s gradual exposure through conventions and gaming stores will hopefully continue to inspire new players and designers, alongside shining a spotlight on existing talent.