"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]   Adieu 2015!!! (Part1)   The year 2015 is coming to an end soon. This column would be probably released in the new year. I feel like to blame a love who dumped someone before one can barely go 10lis — approximately equal to 5kms — , however, I want to let the year 2015 go and have meaningful time looking back over the past year.   To begin with, many highly popular RPG(Role-playing game)s have been released in 2015. Until January of this year, Clash of Clans notched up to the No.1 spot competing with No.2 ranking Seven Knights and the other top-ranked RPGs such as Hero and Monster Tamer . By March, Raven immediately rose to the number one just after its release. MU Origin , which was published at the end of April, competed for first place with Raven for some time since, and Seven Knights joined in ever since before the release of Idea and Hit in November. ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   The grief of a sequel   I'm looking forward to Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens , the upcoming epic space-opera film. Probably it would be released when this column is published. Distinguished and successful movie series commonly draw attention before its release of sequels. So filmmakers prefer to make sequels of the box office hits and often come up with a plan of series from the beginning. Star Wars: The Force Awakens especially is widely anticipated because it is a derivative of the original film series which was over.   However, some people advise not to have excessive expectations saying "Follow-up is never going to be better than its superior predecessor". sequels are rarely well-received by audiences and critics. Aside from reviews of a cinematic quality or artistry, Alien and The Terminator yielded higher box-office profits in the second...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Vitamin and painkiller   As I mentioned several times before, I am a venture capitalist who specializes in investment in the content industry. In the area of investment, as much as anywhere else, there are lots of proverbs or sayings. One of the most well-known maxims is probably "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". This is a piece of advice which means that an investor should not concentrate all resources in one area, no matter how attractive it is, as one could lose everything — in other words it means that the investor should reduce risk factors, which may be left out on review, through diversified investment. It also means that a low loss rate is more important than a high rate of return in the long term and focusing on a specific area is little short of gambling. For example, if you invest 100 won in a company A and take 150 won making 50% profit, however, if...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   After attending G-Star 2015   I go to Busan two times every autumn to attend to Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) and G-Star which are annually held in October and November, respectively. Both are the most significant content-related festival in South Korea. In the two events, similarly, there is the announcement of all important affairs of the year in the industry, sales of already-unveiled contents, release of new contents to the public, funding for currently-developing contents, etc.   All that aside, there are big differences between the two. BIFF receives numerous media attention during the period before and after the event and not only celebrities but also many people from across the nation go to the metropolitan city to take part in the festival. During the international festival, taxi drivers show visitors into related sites throughout the city ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Records of the Three Kingdoms , Journey to the West , and Ninja   Autumn has come with a cool breeze in the morning and at night. In my experience, soon it will be winter when I feel the cool air. However, looking at short-sleeved shirts still hanging in the closet, I'd like to say that summer has just passed. A lot of things happened in the content industry last summer. Assassination (directed by Choi Dong-hoon) and Veteran (directed by Ryoo Seung-wan) recorded over 10 million viewers respectively. Also Friends Pop created a great sensation amongst mobile game users. And I heard the news about the production of the feature-length version of The Flying Superboard , a TV animation series.   The most memorable thing for me was Monkey King: Hero Is Back , a Chinese computer-animated film, which drew 20 million viewers in China. It broke all kinds of records showi...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Good BM and bad BM   People in the gaming industry have heard about "good BM (Business Model)" at least once somewhere. It means that the video game business model with balanced in-app purchases that prompt users to spend adequate money on a game. In other words, a game which won't cost users more money is good.   On the contrary to this, there is a word of "devil‘s BM". After an initial free trial, users unwittingly spend small sums very often to level up, win, or advance, which quickly add up and players eventually expend lots of money in the app through pesky in-app purchases. Accordingly, it is universally accepted as the bad business model like the temptation of the devil.   Given the fact that the term is generally used in the gaming industry, it seems that we probably recognize that users have a problem with the current gaming busine...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Content and System   “Video game is content."   The reason why I started with the topic is that so-called game experts have considered a video game as a system for some time. Frankly speaking, I was not much different from them.   If someone asks me about the differences between the content and system, many parts of them would not be explained exactly. But one clear difference between the two is that both have causation. A video game offers a variety of experiences for users based on creativity which is the characteristic of the game as the content. On the other hand, the system presents specific experiences based on algorism where there are a set of rules specifying how to solve some problems. This difference can be explained by the clarity of input and output. Moviegoers who watch the same movie probably don't feel the same way and they can h...