泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Adieu 2015!!! (Part2)
Let me summarize the 'Part1'. In 2015, numerous highly popular role-playing games have been published and many famous actors who modeled in TV commercials have heightened the status of the video games, however, a small number of RPGs are dominating the domestic market due to excessively high advertising costs. This year, indie games, called clicker games or idle games, have shown better-than-expected performance and Chinese games have advanced in the Korean market in large numbers.
Following the issues, Nexon and Webzen, which were both powerful in online game development, have pulled ahead of the other mobile game makers. Nexon didn't show any clear results before 2015. Webzen was also gradually declining with its glory behind and MU The Genesis, the most ambitious mobile game of the developer, made poor performance. However, Nexon came back in 2015 as a new boss of mobile game industry releasing top-ranking games from Dominations to Hit, which brought the company up to No.1 in sales ranking, and Fantasy War Tactics. Webzen emerged as one of the strong in the mobile game market since MU Origin, a mobile version of MU, was released in the local market after its huge success in China.
Licensed games have been so popular in 2015. YD Online's God of Highschool and Lunosoft's Disney Catch Catch followed after the success of Netmarble's Marvel: Future Fight in early last year, which became a motivator of the successive release of others. The boom of licensed games has a lot to do with advertising costs. With easy name recognition, it relatively spends less advertising campaign costs than a new, untested IP. It seems that the trend would be continued by 2016 because there are many licensed games which are currently planned and developed.
Besides, I'd like to talk about game developers who have left the country abroad. I've already noted this issue in 2014. It started to be evident starting from 2015. Overseas Korean game makers haven't yet had anything to show for, however, they reexported games, which they already released in the overseas market, to Korea. Some of the companies moved to America or Japan, while most of them moved to China. This trend would be accelerated further if the gaming industry is continually snubbed by the Korean government and some of them perform well in the foreign market.
Also, there are many depressing stories like shrinking investment for the game market, existing imbalances between released games, and rising production costs, etc. But I want to see the positive side. I examined the past eventful year with the title named 'Adieu 2015!!!'. The new year has come. People in the gaming industry have never given up whenever they faced with periodical adversities. Game developers and their employees may be in difficult situations in 2016, however, I guarantee that they could navigate through the rough waters of the changeable gaming world.
※ 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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