"Games, the Contents and the Economy" written by Acean D Park]

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   The first step is localization to enter the global market   Game Next Summit 2014 was held not long ago. A lot of people in the gaming world participated in the event and there was plenty of conversation. It was about performance in 2012 and expectations or concerns, various service index, and directions in 2014. Of course, I don't write this to introduce the game event. I'd like to mention a lot of gaming companies considering planning to take their firms abroad. Looking at the domestic situation in the recent mobile game market, a small number of games generate the majority of profits and many in the bottom barely make a much smaller profit than their production costs. Despite such reality, consumer's expectations increase for game quality, which leads to cost so much to make. Of course, there is no fairy tale where every developer earns money as long as they make...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Looking for Ijungballyong   Not too long ago, I was asked about my pen name " 泥中蟠龍 (Ijungballyong)". To put it simply, it's a hidden dragon, a big snake called Imoogi, which tries to turn into a dragon. The full text of the poem is as follows:   八九年間始欲衰 (It began to decline in 8-9 years) 至十三年無孑遺 (There is nothing left in 13 years) 到頭天命有所歸 (You did your best and submitted to Heaven's will) 泥中蟠龍向天飛 (The dragon hidden in the mud will ascend)   You may find the details from The Records of the Three Kingdoms. It's been a half year since I started to regularly write the columns and I didn't take an opportunity to explain about the pen name. It's not the only reason I want to talk about it. I'd like to clarify the third line " 到頭天命有所歸 " of the poem. It means that the time has come at last. It expresses that Liu Bei, who sur...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiti ng for an opportunity]   Looking back upon masterpieces of the past   Mobile-version games, which were originally superb online games be loved by many game users of the past, have been recently released. Looking back upon the experience of playing, I played some and they led me to play very big game hits released right after App Store's opening. I don't want to talk about my memory of enjoying mobile games. I'd like to mention what I felt while playing the great games and the iOS' hits. Playing masterpieces of the past, I got frustrated. Even though I played them all night at that time, I've never enjoyed the games. Of course, my age or familiarity were not good reasons. The free-to-play business model in the mobile games put me under stress and I found it annoying. F2P, which was not found in the originals and not common in the games during the early days of App Store, is now taken fo...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Yuna Kim, silver medal, and territorial behavior   Yuna Kim has ended her competitive figure skating career with a superb performance. Instead of winning the gold medal, unfortunately, Kim relegated to the silver medal position: of course, I don't mean that the silver medal is not worth it. There is an obvious bias issue with the scoring because there were no judges from South Korea and Italy. From my perspective, Yuna Kim deserves it more even if I have little to no expert knowledge on the winter sport. The reason why I unexpectedly mentioned skating is to talk about the territorial behavior of humans. By definition, territoriality is the behavior of a male animal that defines and defends its territory and humans have many similarities to animal's territorial behavior. There are a lot of people to lord over newcomers in each industry and it can be also a "barrier to...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Imitation precedes creation but the two are not identical   Recently various rumors are abroad about trademark registration of a British video game developer King in the gaming industry. The U.K. giant King.com has "trademarked" the word "Candy" for Candy Crush Saga, the most successful social game. It seems that a wider range of discussion about whether it can obtain trademark registration for the particular word which is widely used. Plus, a recently released mobile game Anipang 2 by SundayToz is pretty hot in the Korean market these days. But adding on to the trademark issue, Candy Crush Saga has naturally become an issue again after the launch of the sequel because its basic structure is very similar to the puzzle video game of King. I don't want to argue about whether it is plagiarism or not by law. We should respect the court's judgment if King...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Business ethics in the gaming industry   January.16.2014 There are many people probably heard about House of Medici in the Renaissance. The Medici family, the Italian political dynasty in Florence, Italy, is well known for sponsoring many artists of its time with a great fortune. Famous artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli etc. were supported by the Medici. The reason why I mentioned the family is to talk about investment in the gaming industry. I heard a silly story recently. Summing up, the story is this. A company named XXXX (hereafter called 'A') invested in a game company named OOOO (hereafter called 'B') for a mobile game development project, however, B launched a game with a new program on the Google play store without A's consent and insisted that the deal had been closed. I don't want to place the b...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Are video games art?   December.26.2013 Recently I read an article about why video game is not an art. Summarizing the critical review, video game must reflect its artistic side to become part of a culture, however, game graphic is just a skill which lacks elements of art and video game story doesn't have literary value on the lower level of collect and edit without any meaningful factors. In fact, I never knew the game critic who wrote the story. He is a total stranger and it's nothing personal against him. Both as a gaming industry employee and as a person who loves games, I just want to say a few thing about it which is, I guess, being ignored. To begin with, I don't agree with a proposition which states that artistic aspect is essential for defining as a culture. Should a culture reflect artistic side? A culture embraces an art and a culture is not a s...