泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Between 2003 HULK and 2015 Marvel: Future Fight

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

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