泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Hunger for new challenge
November.12.2013
Recently I received an investment offer for, what is called, a 'run style' game. I found nothing special except just a little bit of differences from another running games while I was playing game. I suddenly felt hunger for new challenge at that time. Looking at lots of mobile games newly released, there are too many running games and TCG (Trading card game) or CCG (Collectible card game). Is good to place too much disproportionate emphasis on the specific genres? I'd like to talk about it this time.
The future of the mobile gaming industry is uncertain. There are not only the external factors but also internal factors. Where is the unclear future coming from? It has many different causes. Some of reasons are quantitative and the others are qualitative. I can list the factors as many as I write a thesis on. But the reason why I mentioned about the market, market uncertainty is partially responsible for the circumstances. When the market is uncertain, game developers definitely want their products to generate steady sales. Game makers inevitably prefer a particular genre which is already guaranteed to make a certain amount of money.
But I want to talk about another story here. Is it possible to make steady figures with the specific genre of game which would assure a certain amount of money? I don't agree with that. Because the games don't meet the expectations of users. In spite of lots of constantly-released games, common games are certainly one of biggest factors to lower expectations of consumers about the newly released games. Mobile games have evolved quantitatively in the 21st century. And there have been plenty of fine games in the center of it. They are a large number of old feature phone games and newest smartphone games as well which people, who have only a little interest in the gaming, have heard of the names. For example, there are good games like Bungeoppang Tycoon by Com2uS; the first instance of tycoon games, Hulk by Com2uS; the action game which is still very much talked about among developers, Nom by Gamevil; the most typical one button game, Rule the Sky by JCE; the game which contributed to promoting social network games, Wind Runner by Wemade; the beginning of the craze over running games. Unfortunately, they were the basis for making many other games that are similar. There is a saying, "Imitation precedes creation." And benchmarks are also needed to make good games. Imitation with deep thought and consideration definitely create something entirely new. But imitation without effort and preparation is just an poor remake. Game users no longer look forward to bland names like “OOpang or OOrun". The games, which are already familiar with and never exceed players' expectations, give customers only a little satisfaction. This enables a vicious cycle in the circumstances where the insecure market induces developers to make similar games, and further, the scissors-and-paste games aggravate the market. An industry remaining stagnant is inevitability moving backward as it says, "Stagnant water is bound to corrupt." Now it's time to do something new to break the vicious cycle. Brand-new games following the aforementioned masterpieces consistently need to be released. The vicious circle won't be broken out of unless developers rise to new challenge. Because they cannot continuously come up to users' expectations with only external factors.
There is a saying that "the butterfly effect" which means that the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. Every single challenge of developers now will have a huge influence on development of the mobile gaming industry later. They should see many foreign developers making entirely-new games full of new challenges. And they must compete in the highly volatile market by creating more individual and witty games. In order to do so, I would like to stress again that we need to stop making uniform games and should explore new possibilities.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
