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

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Byulbram and Pearl Abyss

January. 11. 2018.

 

Kim Gwangsam, a professor of Chungkang College of Cultural Industries, who is better known as his nickname "Byulbram", has recently joined Pearl Abyss, the nation's famous video game developer, which is well known for the hit MMORPG Black Desert. The news was very impressive for me because Byulbram is one of my favorite acquaintances and Black Desert is the video game that, unfortunately, I couldn't invest in due to complicated circumstances. I talk about Byulbram and Pearl Abyss today.

 

Professor Kim is well known for a one-person developer who is responsible for all things related to game development including video game designer, programmer, graphic designer, and composer, etc. Byulbram attempted many experimental things as a single developer or a small number of a development team creating Geunyeo-ui Gisadan - Her Knights, a side-scrolling action game Her Knights: All for the Princess, a fighting game Bloody Cross, an infiltration action game Silver Bullet, a creative-settings RPG Matterhorn. He has launched a game on various platforms such as PC, GP32 (Game Park 32bit)—a handheld game console—, smartphones, and Steam, etc. and served as the president of Korea Game Development Association. The former professor of the Chungkang College of Cultural Industries till quite recently is well known for his unique dressing style with a leather jacket and a red tie.

 

Pearl Abyss, a video game developer of the open-world MMORPG Black Desert, went into open beta in 2014 and now is developing a mobile version since its official release in 2015. The MMORPG is currently launched in more than 100 countries with sales of over 100 billion won and net profit of tens of billion won. Based on its results, the game developer went public on the KOSDAQ in 2015 and increased the value of its assets to 3 trillion won by now. The game is doing so well in North America a Europe peaking at No. 1 on the various game charts in those regions as well.

 

I've ever taught college students about the difference between "work" and "product". To sum up, a piece of work is an artist's message, whereas a product is a manufacturer's output for some potential economic benefits. Therefore, without the intention of generating revenue, the artist should make the piece only based on not an investor's resources but their own or patron's. Of course, I reckon that the two sometimes can successfully coexist. A piece of work having both characteristics in a coordinated manner is called by different names, for example, a masterpiece, a fine piece of work, or classic, etc.

 

Pearl Abyss is one of the country's representative video game developers showing good performance. And Byulbram is a representative single-person game developer of the country. I have high hopes of the two who bring together an amazing synergy, which will produce a good game that comes to be called a masterpiece or a fine piece of work.

 

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

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

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui