泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Between 2003 HULK and 2015 Marvel: Future Fight
A mobile game HULK was released in 2003 with a small capacity of 100KB and a half the size of the current smart-phone screen. The Com2uS-developed game was a shock to me who ran a mobile-game development at that time. It was the one that I desperately wanted to make. Besides, I guessed that an action-mobile game of that level would become into the market in 1-2 years.
Marvel: Future Fight has gained huge popularity with users. I'm also spending the longest time playing it among the recently released ones. It is a superhero-themed video game based on characters of Avengers: Age of Ultron which was the fourth foreign film recorded over 10 million viewers in South Korea. The days when I enjoyed the HULK in 2003 seem to belong to a different age. The tough and strong 'Hulk' character, which I desperately wanted to express, on the very little screen in 2D back then and realistic 3D characters of showy colors today are poles apart like the gap between a bicycle and a car.
In retrospect, it's not easy to find a hit video game based on a cartoon, film, or novel. One Source Multi-Use (OSMU) is widely used in the local content industry, however, it would be difficult for readers reading this column to list more than ten mega-hit video games from a different genre of content.
Why are developers making a video game based on the original content despite a slim chance of success in the market? I can't say for sure, but I believe that the main reason is brand recognition. Marketing costs for recently-released video games are much more incredible than in the past, thus some game makers try to choose a famous character from original work that users are easily aware of it. There should be lots of potential customers who want to play a video game with characters such as Iron Man, Hulk, and Thor Odinson, etc.
But original-based video games simply become a double-edged sword, if they don't meet the high expectations of users. It's hard to build a different worldview from the setting of the original work and not easy to make the well-balanced game due to restrictions on game characters. Poor-quality video games cannot help being drawn criticism from fans of the original ones.
Marvel: Future Fight is a well-made video game. The user response to a recently released The God of High School, which is based on a domestic webtoon, is still good. I expect to see many hit video games with characters based on the local original content, not overseas ones.
※ 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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