泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Business ethics in the gaming industry
January.16.2014
There are many people probably heard about House of Medici in the Renaissance. The Medici family, the Italian political dynasty in Florence, Italy, is well known for sponsoring many artists of its time with a great fortune. Famous artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli etc. were supported by the Medici. The reason why I mentioned the family is to talk about investment in the gaming industry.
I heard a silly story recently. Summing up, the story is this. A company named XXXX (hereafter called 'A') invested in a game company named OOOO (hereafter called 'B') for a mobile game development project, however, B launched a game with a new program on the Google play store without A's consent and insisted that the deal had been closed. I don't want to place the blame on either of the companies. A is in the middle of a lawsuit against B and the court's decision will side with either of the two. But examining the proposal, the contract, and the released game, I can't help thinking that B did so intentionally for the money in the third person. It seems that I'm in favor of A because I work for a venture capital firm. But I'm merely feeling a mug looking at the series of the process—B uploaded the app in haste a month before the completion date after informing A that it will leave out a part of the project which is considered very important. B insisted that it was not essential for fun of the game, however, a social network game without nurture does not hold water like I Love Coffee without shop decorations. It's cheesy and sleazy.
B will continue to make games and it can make a lot of money from some good games in the future. But an executive of the venture capital firm mentioned that he personally doesn't want to invest in video games later saying that it's hard to make an investment in games in the company due to the failure of the first investment in game project followed policy of the company to aggressively invest in the gaming sector—A invested a lot of money in the domestic contents industry and has been considering investing in the gaming industry expecting to create synergy with the other contents. B actually blew up many chances for some game companies to raise money from A.
There is 'corporate ethics' or business ethics' in every range of industrial sector. It can be also expressed in many ways like manners, etiquette, or basics of the industry, however, it means that there is a sense of duty which industry officials should have. B didn't seem to keep corporate ethics in this case to say the least. A lot of gaming firms compete with each others to make good games struggling to be invested on. Please don't take away chances for those companies to have The Medici family to back them up. I pray that lots of firms silently keeping the morality in business will be successful in developing good games.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
