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I wanted to back the project, partly because I love Gary Kim's Koryŏ and partly because I love getting something that's a mystery to me when I open the box. I almost never want to pick up games set in space or in fantasy worlds or in the Wild West, for example, because I already have a pretty good idea of what those games will feature. Sure, those fulfilled expectations are a plus for most people, but I like being surprised. When a new movie is announced by a director I enjoy, I avoid previews and read nothing about the movie because I know that I'm going to see it and I want to experience the newness of the movie in the theater itself rather than seeing bits of film repeated over and over again, then seeing them in context and going, "Oh, yeah, that bit."
But I wasn't sure whether the games would include English rules or how to pay in won, so inertia won out and the project ended and that was that — until Happy Baobab picked up the now-titled Play Jeju and released it at SPIEL 2015, where I recorded an overview video. Australian publisher Grail Games then picked it up for wider release in English, and now Jeju Island is everywhere, while of course still being in Korea as an actual place that folks can visit to carry out this game's actions in real life.
My Korean exchange student was quite surprised when I showed her the game as she had not expected to see Korean games or games showcasing parts of Korean life while visiting the U.S. It's nice to think about such things making their way around the world, giving us all a taste at home of places we might never see otherwise.
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