泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] A fried chicken restaurant-like game developer

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

A fried chicken restaurant-like game developer

 

The early presidential election, which was originally been scheduled at the end of the year, is probably the hottest issue in Korea these days. I don't think that political pledges of candidates seem an appropriate topic for a column. So I just want to mention youth unemployment such as founding and employment here.

 

One of the candidates has promised to help the young by raising conglomerates' corporate tax or high earners' income tax, on the other hand, another candidate has pledged to increase employment by supporting large enterprises. As I reckon - it's slightly off-topic, though - that latter isn't much different from the "trickle-down effect" of Lee Myung-Bak administration, which seems to be less effective.

 

Not too long ago, I talked about foreign game developers with a friend of mine working for Google. I had a chance to consider investing in overseas game companies a couple of times last year and I found that he also had similar opinions on that.

Many CEOs of the domestic game developers whom I've ever met wanted to get rich overnight. Of course, an investor needs to find a potential game that can hit the jackpot. However, the game maker just failed once usually don't have a backup plan in Korea. The company will go bankrupt. Investment risk for the firm is expected to increase and workers also have to worry about unstable employment. Sometimes, employees aren't been given their back pay for a few months on the verge of going bankrupt until they find a new job.

 

I think that most foreign game developers, which I mentioned earlier, seem to see the game creating differently, unlike local game makers. The majority of overseas game start-ups put generating sufficient turnover for all members first. And the companies look at diverse ways to boost sales when figures reach a certain level. Of course, all firms aren't like that, however, I have the impression that foreign companies seem to happily accept their job more than national developers. Many numbers of employees working in the overseas game companies look satisfying with a certain level of a fixed amount of salary, unlike most Korean workers who feel unbearable mental pressures from the possibilities of the company's failure.

 

People joke that you are going to open a fried chicken restaurant, in the end, no matter what you do. As I see, foreign game developers made up of a small number of members run their companies like operating a chicken eatery doing what they enjoy and aiming at minimum adequate money required for payment. I hope that the president-elect will create conditions that enable every local game start-ups to feed themselves by running a fried chicken restaurant-like game companies. If they can create a franchise from the diner, it would be better.

 

 

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

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

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui