"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]   Video game and fund (Part.2)   In Part.2, 'd like to talk about not the influence of the world capital market but the global video game market on the domestic gaming industry. The Korean gaming industry is highly interlinked with the global games market. In the early 2000s, many local video games — mostly PC games — generated a lot of revenue since they made inroads into the global market, which helped some of the companies to list on KOSDAQ at that time and they are now estimated between hundreds of billions to trillions won worth of valuation. Also, Korea's mobile-game developers were in high demand worth of between tens of billions to hundreds of billions won of valuation across the world based on their advanced technology in time for the initial growth of the smart-phone market throughout the world. It could not have happened without large foreign capital in accordance ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Video game and fund (Part.1)   Recently the local gaming industry is having a hard time due to reduced investment. As a venture capitalist, one of the biggest reasons is mostly a huge investment loss in the entire industry from 2013 to 2015. When it comes to venture investment, investors generally expect to make profits, as much as making up for the other losses, from a few companies that they invested in. However, multiple-combined serious losses of the whole industry could lead to a negative view of putting investors' money into video game development. Very few people have generated revenue from game makers in the last three years, while most investors have been losing money. I cannot give you a precise figure, however, the company I'd be in is no exception from it. The world of national investment, in common with domestic gaming firms becoming more global recently,...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Harsh advice for local game publishers   I loved Hong Kong action films such as A Better Tomorrow , Casino Raiders , The Killer during my school days. In the early 90s, Hong Kong pictures were pretty fun and their movie characters were all awesome. Schoolboys tried to look cool with a matchstick in their mouth like Chow Yun-fat and Leslie Cheung even appeared in the domestic commercial film on the small screen. However, the Hong Kong cinemas had seen their best days in ten years due to repeated production of popular-formula genre and a few top-rated actors appeared in several movies.   Many people say that Korea's gaming industry is struggling nowadays. Top-ranked games have remained the same in order and newly-released games haven't done especially well. Even good performances of some of them are minuscule compared to those of the greatest hits in the past. In such c...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Brexit and game worlds   Today I'd like to start this column with a none-video game-related story.   The Brexit referendum was the biggest news for me recently. Brexit, a portmanteau of "British" and "exit", is the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. As an investor working in the venture capital firm, I thought about various effects both on the global and domestic economy and potential negative impact on venture capital as well. However, I'd like to mention another story here. Of course, the United Kingdom, which has developed its gaming industry with its world-class market, certainly can be important in the world of the video game. But it's not the major topic. Looking at the English people to exit from the EU, I found that there was one thing in common between the decision-making structure of game users and the ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   A pleasant confession   I have a confession to make today. Recently I found out that my prediction in public about two years ago was completely wrong. As the introduction says, I've lived as a gamer for twenty years and I've worked in the gaming industry for the last ten years as so-called the game expert. Only two years ago, I predicted that League of Legends (LoL) would be way ahead of the others in the domestic online video game market for quite some time. And I also expected that Sudden Attack would leave all the other FPS games far behind for a good while. I forecasted that even Sudden Attack 2 couldn't be as good as the original game. Of course, I didn't think that nothing could escape my attention. It's just very embarrassing that the potent argument proved to be wrong in two years. The best way to enjoy a video game is to play the game oneself. And it...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   What "stylish" means in a video game?   We often use a word misunderstanding the meaning of it. For example, there is a word of "mudaeppo". It is from a Japanese word " 無鐵砲 ", which is pronounced " むてっぽう (mudeppo)", the meaning of reckless behavior of a solider lunging for his adversary without a gun on the battlefield. There are also frequently misused words in the filed of the gaming world. Many people enjoying video games don't know the meaning of RPG or RPS — video game genres — and MMO or FPV as well. I'd like to talk about one of these kinds of words "stylish" this time.   Recently, I talked the word over with the CEO of a game developer. I asked him about the meaning of "stylish" after he used the word many times since I did not quite accept it. According to his account, it meant 'brilliant computer g...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Building a good business model (Part 2)   Thirdly, there is a flat rate. The flat fee is a pricing structure, regardless of usage, that charges a single fixed fee for a fixed term. At the beginning of online games, the linear rate was used most and it still is used. Developers simply needed to come up with a way to have more users for a convenient source of income and it could be the ideal model for the game makers if they attracted regular customers. However, it was hard to keep a "game over"-like exciting balance compared to the pay-to-play model because it guaranteed playtime within a given period time. Also, game developers used to feel pressure due to continuous updates to increase service hours or production of additional content. Besides, as competition intensified, they had to take other customers. Therefore, marketing costs to attract potential players for a new ...