Re-designing Chinese Traditional Board Game, ‘Dou Shou Qi’

Abstract

This research analyses the characteristics of the traditional Chinese board game, Dou Shou Qi, to examine its cultural connotation and the limitations of its development in the modern market. It cultural connotations, which are"natural society" and "live together harmoniously". It has developed a wealth of game forms during many dynasties but has been lost due to improper inheritance. Dou Shou Qi mainly has two game forms on the market at present, board games and video games. However, the traditional Dou Shou Qi is facing the crisis of being eliminated by the market since the modern game market is fiercely competitive and the speed of updates are fast. In order to enable Dou Shou Qi to be inherited by future generations, this research was designed to develop a deep understanding of modern children's needs for Dou Shou Qi through interviews and observation focused on early childhood children. On this basis, through the analysis and discussion of the research results, a directional proposal for the redesign of Dou Shou Qi is suggested. It includes the following three aspects. The first aspect is to redesign the game in order to enhance the game’s function of assisting in early childhood education. The second aspect is to integrate the functional characteristics of the traditional game mode of Dou Shou Qi with existing game methods, to cultivate children's creative ability through traditional culture. The third aspect is to diversify the game form of Dou Shou Qi by adding more elements of transformable and mobility.