泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Vitamin and painkiller

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Vitamin and painkiller

 

As I mentioned several times before, I am a venture capitalist who specializes in investment in the content industry. In the area of investment, as much as anywhere else, there are lots of proverbs or sayings. One of the most well-known maxims is probably "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". This is a piece of advice which means that an investor should not concentrate all resources in one area, no matter how attractive it is, as one could lose everything—in other words it means that the investor should reduce risk factors, which may be left out on review, through diversified investment. It also means that a low loss rate is more important than a high rate of return in the long term and focusing on a specific area is little short of gambling. For example, if you invest 100 won in a company A and take 150 won making 50% profit, however, if you lose 50% from B which you invested 150 won, the total amount of money is 75 won. On the other hand, if you invest 50 won in A and B each and make 50% earnings and loss 50% respectively, the total amount of money is 100 won. It seems like it might be simple, however, it's not easy to keep the principle. Another saying is "An investment is a marriage which involves divorce". It means that investor and investee work together after investment to achieve better results, however, they have to go separate ways once the investor retrieves its investment for realization of revenue.

 

I'd like to talk about a saying "It's better to invest in a company building a painkiller, not vitamin" among many other ones. Not everybody takes vitamins every day although they know that vitamins are good for their health. Most of them think that it doesn't matter even if they don't take them regularly. However, people cannot help taking a painkiller when they have severe pain. It would be better, as it were, to invest in living necessaries. The reason why I mention some investment sayings is to think whether the game content is a vitamin or painkiller. The game content, in an intuitive manner, is seen more like vitamins. People who are not good at video games don't put their life on hold or feel their lives are being threatened. They may not need games a lot fewer than vitamins. It seems that whole contents including video games, in the grand scheme of things, look like vitamins.

 

I have a different opinion on that. We have more leisure time as civilization progresses and our lives are getting easier. Most people today live and work in the close confines in the cities of artificial environments, while we have much free time. Now content is essential to modern people as entertainment to spend their spare time due to constraints of space. Video game, in common with much other content such as literature, film, music, is a simple entertainment for people in the society with a highly developed civilization. Competition between painkillers intense, so we have to focus on making games on a selective basis.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui