泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Let's take a look at Korea's gaming industry (Part 2)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
 
Let's take a look at Korea's gaming industry (Part 2)
 
I'd like to talk about South Korea's gaming industry more specifically.
 
The composite leading indicator (CLI) is a business barometer showing short-term economic movements. The best example of the CLIs is a stock index. It means that the stock market index reflects business forecasting. If buyers expect high earnings, stocks will rise, and the opposite can also happen. The representative CLI for venture capital (VC), which deals with unlisted stocks of startup companies or small businesses, is the scale and the number of cases of investment in the industry.
 
According to data from the Korean Venture Capital Association, investment in the gaming industry has been declined year by year for the past three years from ￦176.2 billion in 2014 to ￦168.3 billion in 2015 and ￦142.7 billion last year. I'm not sure but I reckon it will be worse this year. Of course, the number of investment in Korea's cultural content including video content has also reduced from ￦279 billion in 2014 to 267.8 billion in 2016, however, decreased investment in gaming industry is unusual because investment in most sectors—electricity/machinery/equipment, chemistry/materials, and biotechnology/medical, etc.—has increased steadily during the past few years. Besides, given significantly reduced investment in the video due to the government blacklist stretched beyond culture, the gaming industry is certain to be hit hardest of the whole venture capital investment.
 
We can't tell right away the results of an investment. Investors usually expect great achievements a few years later. Seriously reduced investment, which is regarded as one of the composite leading indicators, means that investment experts have predicted the slump of the local gaming industry in the coming years. It's more than a problem beyond various regulation policies. The domestic gaming industry is losing its vitality. The number of developers will keep decreasing under the influence of diminished investment, so does the number of employees in the industry. Video game-related departments will receive less attention, as new workers are hired fewer.
I mentioned several times before the necessity of an academic-centered approach to the gaming industry and I still maintain my previous opinion. Korea's gaming industry struggling with decreased investment continues to pull down academic progress and it will lose its vitality.
 
To be continued
 
 
※ 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