"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]   Cultural industry and acknowledging cultural differences   In recent years, with playing some local video games based on Samgukjji (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), I have seen a couple of transsexual game characters from man to woman. The trans characters for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms have been already created in Japan several times, which made me be interested in the concept. But until recently, they were not be seen in the Korean video games. We usually regard Japan as a standardized country with pervasive school bullying. But let's look back. Isn't Korea much worse when it comes to cultural diversity?: macho remarks, revised historical figures, reference to politics and thought, etc. For this reason, I'd like to discuss acknowledging cultural differences and cultural industry in this column. I think that bullying cultural diversity prevents CT (Culture Te...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Importance of a narrative in a video game   The film is generally called 'gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art)'. It delivers artistic beauty of arts and photograph by images which is visual arts and shows the beauty of music and literature by sound effects and lines. So, in that respect, a video game, I think, is also very close to comprehensive artwork because it contains visual images, sound effects, and stories. Today I'd like to talk about the narrative, one of the most important parts of the total artwork. In fact, hardly domestic game users read a story. Less than 10% of players probably cleared story mode of StarCraft which, I estimate, millions of Korean have played. It is common for players to skip lines while playing RPGs. The situation has made game designers not be interested in a narrative. From a conversation with them, I found that they are satisfied...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Character development and player development   Do you remember Street Fighter, the iconic '90s fighting video game? What about Super Mario a little bit to the past? If not, what about Tekken (Iron Fist) or Onimusha (literally 'Oni Warrior')? You would know StarCraft at least. The reason why I mention video games of the past all of a sudden is to talk about auto-combat games which can be found easily in the recent mobile gaming market. I don't want to criticize the auto-battle games like Monster Taming, the most representative auto-combat game. A gamer usually is required two things when he/she play a character-based video game which has developed steadily since the establishment of the video game. One is character development. The character-based games usually, aside from genre characteristics, lead the players to develop a character through various factor...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   It's time for a game designer to impress users   Some time ago, I wrote about "Are video games art?" Apart from the artistic value of a video game which I strongly claimed, I'll talk about some others. In recent years, I have had many chances to talk with game developers. There were some great game designers who I, as a former game designer, wanted to follow their examples and some of them were honestly less than worthy designers. I don't think that I am better enough at a game design to evaluate their qualification and skills. I only want to talk about the basic elements of a game designer. The element of a video game is divided into game design and game graphics. Unlike the others, game design is a combination of various factors. It needs to include a story that a game designer wants to tell a player and show a theme of a game. But most game designs are ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   A good player is not always a good coach   A long time ago, I read an article in which Cho Hun-hyun, the South Korean 9-dan professional Go player, mentioned Lee Chang-ho, the South Korean professional Go player of 9-dan rank. Summarizing the story, I don't exactly remember the specifics, Cho thought that Lee was a fool or a rare genius when he saw the little student. I meet many video game developers because of my job. As an ex-game developer, the time with them is very enjoyable. But some project managers or team managers used to make me get a wry smile. Because they were sure that they can run an ideal company if they become CEO. It might be a wrong assessment like the first Korean 9 dan player Cho; I don't mean that I'm at the same level as one of the greatest players of all-time. But, in most cases, they say that they would not do such a thing if they were the ...

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...