Games, the Contents and the Economy in Korea

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Hang in there, Korean games!   The Admiral: Roaring Currents, a South Korean naval war film, has recently smashed the nation's box office records. Summing up for people who haven't watched the movie, it's a story of the historical Battle of Myeongnyang in which Korean naval commander Yi Sun-sin, who were seriously defeated in the Battle of Chilcheollyang, led the only 12 ships remaining in his command to a great victory against an invading Japanese fleet of 333 vessels. The number of viewers crossed the 16 million mark as of August 2014. Of course, I don't want to talk about the film. Actually, I'd like to write about the question below:   Is it possible for The Admiral doing well on foreign markets?   Cultural products, which are generally called 'content', are appealing to the member of a particular group or society sharing the same cul...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Conflict in a video game   I have talked about what I think about the video games industry through my columns. Although I mentioned a game itself a couple of times, there was always the games market at the heart of it. But I want to talk about another topic today. When it comes to content, there should be a message which connects between a creator and a consumer. It is usually called a narrative or subject. If that is the case, how can the creator deliver the message to the user? When the creator frames a story, he/she generally uses the conflict. Today I'd like to deal with the conflict in a video game. The conflict can be divided up with many different types of categories. I especially sort it as following: a conflict between +(plus) and +(plus), a conflict between +(plus) and – (minus), and conflict between – (minus) and – (minus). Firstly, (+)(+) conflict is ba...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Hit effects of video games   Anyone who likes a movie probably knows Nowhere to Hide, a 1999 South Korean film. Most people, at least, would have heard of the movie title and watched the trailer with the two main characters' punch scene in the rain and the murder scene on the stairs. The murder scene on the stairs, which is one of the film's most famous scenes, is a tribute to the best-known sequence 'Odessa steps' from Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 Soviet silent film. The reason I describe the scene tediously is that it is very useful to explain effective directing. Before explaining it, first, let me talk about hit effects led to mentioning directing. A term 'hit effects' is commonly used in the gaming industry. Although it literally means a feeling of a hit, the point of the word is to make a gamer feel quite real watching action scenes of character...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Realism in video games   A film Obsessed was released not long ago. I usually have many chances to watch movies because I sometimes invest in films as a venture capitalist. The movie reached about 1.5 million views nationwide. It was not a total failure when it comes to box-office record, however, there was harsh criticism for low-grading acting of the main actors. Especially I thought that Song Seung-Heon looked very awkward due to his too dry acting skills. Recently, at a gathering, I met someone who really loved his performance in the film. He has a similar experience with Colonel Kim Jin-Pyeong — the colonel had to kill numerous enemies — played by Song and he commented that Song portrayed the character very well. An idea crossed my mind at the moment; What is 'realism' for content? Of course, I don't want to mention realism and hyperrealism here. Including ...

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...