泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Yuna Kim, silver medal, and territorial behavior

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
 
Yuna Kim, silver medal, and territorial behavior
 
Yuna Kim has ended her competitive figure skating career with a superb performance. Instead of winning the gold medal, unfortunately, Kim relegated to the silver medal position: of course, I don't mean that the silver medal is not worth it. There is an obvious bias issue with the scoring because there were no judges from South Korea and Italy. From my perspective, Yuna Kim deserves it more even if I have little to no expert knowledge on the winter sport.
The reason why I unexpectedly mentioned skating is to talk about the territorial behavior of humans. By definition, territoriality is the behavior of a male animal that defines and defends its territory and humans have many similarities to animal's territorial behavior. There are a lot of people to lord over newcomers in each industry and it can be also a "barrier to entry" or an "economic barrier to entry".
Nowadays, many game companies are investing a lot of energy to extend their business abroad. Korean game companies' overseas market expansion has become essential as the competition is becoming fierce in the domestic gaming industry. Yet there is a small number of domestic experts in the field of global games market and new players are often prevented from entering the field. Various forms of territorial behaviors—language environment, users of different gaming cultures, market strategies, and finding related professional manpower, etc.—have been shown in the overseas market. Sadly, I cannot come up with a great solution to tide over the difficulties. Meticulous preparations and serious efforts are the only way to solve these problems. Local game companies should strenuously partner with foreign companies to train more overseas specialists and various attempts in international expansion have to be made to have the know-how. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But they need to go through the process of finding their own breakthrough.
I hope to see many game companies could be valued by more people like the South Korean ice skating queen who are recognized as world No.1 although she narrowly missed the gold. I believe that they will not be lorded over some day. And the very best of luck to Yuna Kim who inspired the South Korean public and every video game employee in Korea.



※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
   (http://www.khgames.co.kr)

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Video game and the separation of banking and commerce

Image
泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Video game and the separation of banking and commerce September. 12. 2018. Recently, I read an article on the subject of ease regulations on the separation of banking and commerce and video game by Kim Sang-Hyun, an executive editor in our paper. In the article, he was full of hope for positive effects: game developers such as Netmarble and Nexon run an online bank—internet-only bank, which can boost the local gaming industry thanks to ample capital and financing. I also completely agree with him about the aggressive investment in domestic games. But I do oppose to ease banking-commerce separation per se so that I'd like to deal with it this week's column.  What does the term mean? It means that industrial capital should be separated from banking capital; banks are not allowed to affiliate with other businesses. Separation of industrial and financial capital is analogous to the principle. It mean...
Read more

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Thirteen-year-old Infinite Challenge

Image
泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Thirteen-year-old Infinite Challenge May. 31. 2018. Infinite Challenge—MBC's reality TV show—, which had gained popularity for the last thirteen years, recently went off the air. It is probably the longest entertainment program in South Korea. The show had included my 30s since it was started when I was twenty-nine years old. It is very difficult to steadily create content for long periods. It could be a really hard challenge for Muhan Dojeon which didn't follow any specific format. Most real-variety shows have an overall concept, for instance, cast members take various trips throughout South Korea during 1 night 2 days performing missions at a certain mealtime or live in a little rural or finishing village creating three meals a day and calm themselves. With a definite format, it's relatively easier to generate content. Of course, during the airing of the episodes, the non-dram program made ...
Read more

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] China's double standard

Image
泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] China's double standard October. 11. 2018. There is a Korean slang "naero nahmbool". The abbreviation, that seems like an idiom, literally means that “my affair is a romance, but other people's romances are all loved affairs." It is often used to satirize someone who is inconsistent or distorts the same situation to his/her advantage.  The 2018 BRICS summit was held in South Africa this July. BRICS is the acronym coined for an association of five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. They are major emerging national economies with a large territory, big population, and rich resources. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, strongly criticized the U.S. in his keynote speech. Xi argued, "While unilateralism and protectionism are increasing over the world, we should be against economic hegemony and power politics." The paramount l...
Read more