泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Every flood has its ebb

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
 
Every flood has its ebb
 
A domestic animation which I invested in was released at the end of last year. Being received positive reactions from the preview, I had high hopes for the children's animation aimed at Christmas and year-end. But it disappeared with a poor score of 30,000 audiences. The animation, which major local film distributor invested in and distributed, was expected to attract 300,000 moviegoers. I think that the biggest reason for the miserable failure at the box office, of course, there could have been many different causes, is the distributing agency's insincere stance; The distributor might think otherwise. There were very little theaters for the film in less than a week and I could barely find it in cinemas in Christmas season against its original plan.

There were too many losses for some mobile games which came out last year due to a publisher's insincerity or incompetence in spite of their early impressions were very positive. I'm sure that a developer, who have believed in a publisher and yielded to its demand in earnest, should have felt betrayed more than a sense of loss. Distributors wield absolute power regarding contents distribution related to distribution channels and operational database. A game maker has nowhere to go if a publisher betrays its trust.

Along with a film and animation, to make a video game, it takes a long time and effort by numerous people and money from hundreds of million won up to billions of won. If the fruit of hard work is abandoned due to what goes on inside the distributor, it can't simply go back to the way it once was since trust has been damaged.

Recently the infamous "nut rage" incident brought the attention of world media. The event serves as a reminder of a bad practice prevailing in the country "gabjil"—abusing of power of the rich and powerful; it is not a problem for the individual and it happened because the powerful person with higher wealth treated the other party as a consumable in accordance with the selfish practice at the cost of survival. But this is not much different from the problems of the publishers and distributors mentioned above. Gabjil can happen between Gab, superior status, and Eul, inferior status. Gap will lose Eul, whom it reigns over, in long-term abuses of power.

I'm reminded of what a representative of a film distributor recently said that he tries to the best for a film studio not to harm its bottom line because that's his job. I expect the content distributors to reflect themselves whether they are qualified to condemn Gabji of Heather Cho. Any of game publishers can be directly involved in the second "nut rage" incident. They should remember that the beauty of a flower will not last ten days.




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

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui

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