泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Think different bit

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Think different bit

 

Recently, the banning of the 'burkini'—the-whole-body-covered swimsuit, except face, for Muslim women—has stirred up controversy in France. France's ban on wearing the bathing suit, which is similar to a full-body athletic swimsuit, is obscure to me in the country representing liberty, equity, and fraternity. The move was criticized by many people throughout the world because it's the suppression of personal liberty. On the other hand, others believed that it reflected public sentiment in France against radical Islamic terrorist groups. But I think that we can look at this from a different perspective. In France, politics is constitutionally separated from religion and all types of religious expressions from public places are unacceptable. The burkini ban may be a matter of sartorial choice, however, it is quite a different story in the country where a big cross or other religion-related installations cannot be displayed in public places by law. Because the general public can be aware of it as a sign of religious expression. But, apart from that terrorism is a deadly sin or crimes of violence, there is a whole different story about whether Muslims are good or bad.

 

I'm not particularly interested in the swimsuit for Muslim women. I'd like to mention vastly different perspectives on the issue. Some value freedom and others warn of possible dangers of Muslims. Someone talks about the social significance of religion or the historical legitimacy of Islamic groups. Diversity helps people to keep things in perspective beyond the superficial single event. Sometimes a narrow-mindedness view makes us forget important things or blinds us to different ideas. Uniformity leads to other problems all the time. A diversity-deficient-organization may expose itself to the danger of ruining the whole structure due to an unsolved problem. If a farmer plants a single item, the crop may be heavily damaged by blight and harmful insects. Therefore, valuing diversity is an essential aspect of the cultural industry. Similar films or video games will eventually threaten to put all of the film studios or game developers out of business when they are shunned by consumers demanding the new.

 

The recent gaming industry is flooded with numbers of video games that are only slightly different in appearance. Users are no fools. Gamers are obviously aware of the similarity between those games even though they haven't turned away from them yet. You are probably getting tired of eating the same food for a month no matter how delicious it is. Cook needs to try to come up with various recipes to enjoy the same ingredients. So do video games. Even many video game planners making complaints about users—most of them feel safer doing something familiar—and management—they prefer well-tested systems—, are often afraid of breaking free from the frame. Korea's gaming industry is experiencing large difficulties. The local gaming industry is losing competitiveness due to diminished both foreign and domestic investment and lower returns in Korea, while China further enhances video-game technologies. I don't mean that developers should ignore or throw away the genre of conventional video games. But the similar games lacking novelty may speed up user migration faster and there will be no place for national game makers to take a step back.

 

 

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

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

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui